In the Game Boy Advance version of the game, there is a rare game breaking bug that causes the player to get stuck in the wall in the hub world. It is unknown why this happens and there is no known way to escape without the use of cheats or restarting the game entirely.

While Crash Nitro Kart was developed by Vicarious Visions, Naughty Dog is also credited as participating in development. The game also saw the return of the duo behind the majority of the concepts for Crash Bandicoot: Joe Pearson (who refused to work on any other games with Naughty Dog, because of not receiving proper credit for his original work) and Charles Zembillas.

A "Retro Option" was planned early on in the game. This option would have taken the player into driving recreations of the Crash Team Racing tracks, with completely new and different visuals applied to the old track layouts.

Unused text in the game's data suggests that there was going to be an online mode called the "Virtual Lobby" for the PS2 version of the game.

Crash Nitro Kart was originally being developed by Traveller's Tales and was intended to be called "Crash Team Racing 2". Nina Cortex was also planned to make her debut, however when Vicarious Visions took over the development, Traveller's Tales instead used her for Crash Twinsanity.