Crash Team Racing - Hot Air Skyway OST [Prototype & Release Mix]

Note : The fist soundtrack you hear in this video, 00:10 - 03:12 is the final product. Other soundtracks are different versions of Hot Air Skyway, including original console prototype version and extracted RAW MIDI.

After ten years on this channel, here is a new Crash Bandicoot related video!

Hot Air Skyway from CTR, along with Rock it & Pack Attack from Crash Bandicoot 2 and Knight Time from Crash Bandicoot : The Wrath of Cortex are ones of my favorites soundtracks from the serie. Hot Air Skyway being my first favorite Crash Bandicoot sountrack I fell in love with mostly 20 years ago when I played CTR for the first time.

Recently, I found out that there's an extended version of Hot Air Skyway, called "Pre-console" that has been released by composer Josh Mancell. It includes an additional 28 seconds segment that consists mostly of the fist loop plus an instrument called the "Cortex's Trumpet". Pre-Console music consists of music before instruments get stripped down, in this case, for the Playstation 1. CTR pre-console music sound great, but I always prefered original console music.

More recently, I joined the CTR-Tools (software used in this video) official Discord server and someone there told me that the original full length Hot Air Skyway is still here in one of some leaked CTR prototype builds. Okay, so I decided to take a look at this prototype build and I found out that the prototype Hot Air Skyway console version doesn't sounds like the release build console one. Some improvements have been made in the release version, especially in the first loop (compare 03:29 with 05:02). Also, the ripped version quality I found on The Cutting Room Floor is quite lower than what we can find in other video game music websites for the release version.

So, nothing really complicated for this video, we are trying to assemble the cut part of the prototype version while keeping the improvements made to the release one.

List of Hot Air Skyway versions you will hear in this video :
[ 00:10 - 03:12 ] Prototype & Release Mix
[ 03:12 - 04:44 ] Prototype
[ 04:45 - 05:50 ] Release
[ 05:50 - 07:22 ] Prototype, MIDI
[ 07:23 - 07:34 ] Cortex's Trumpet, cut part.