Some may not be aware that in the Atlasphere (hamster ball) stages, you can both brake, and boost. Braking is done by holding A, and boosting is done by holding B. The game does inform the player of this in the hint box in Globe Trottin', though some versions actually removed this hint! The game's manual mentions this as well.

But what most people won't know is that wumpa fruit actually affects these mechanics. This strange mechanic is not mentioned anywhere in the game, the game's manual, nor Prima's Official Strategy Guide.

The most notable thing that wumpa fruit affects is the boosting. Holding/tapping B while moving will consume one fruit almost once a second. Having fruit does not increase your top speed, but you can reach top speed much sooner with fruit. So, in a sense, fruit improves acceleration.

Braking does not consume fruit, and you can still come to a near-stop pretty quickly without fruit. However, the Atlasphere's traction is far worse. This makes doing precise movement around obstacles much more difficult. Another prime example is switching to moving in the opposite direction will be much more sluggish without fruit.

So what about time trial? Crash games usually remove all the fruit once time trial begins, but what about this mechanic? Well, it's still present, and you still collect fruit from normal crates! The bad news is lots of crates turn to time crates, and you can't bring up the HUD in time trial mode - meaning you need to keep track of how much fruit you have collected if braking/boosting well is important to you.

I have found that it is often worth it to break boxes along your way to get some fruit in order to improve your boosting speed and traction. There are plenty of spots in all three Atlasphere stages where you can break ? crates (5 fruit) without losing much time, and it will be worth it anyway if you make good use of the improved braking and acceleration.

Here is some mostly useless documentation about what happens to your previous/gained fruit in Atlasphere stages:

• Entering an Atlasphere stage resets your fruit counter to zero.

• Fruit is reset upon exiting an Atlasphere stage to what it was prior to entering (this applies to masks and lives, too).

• Upon finishing an Atlasphere level, you keep the fruit you had at the end of the stage but do not get back what you had upon entering. This also applies to time trial.

• Upon touching the clock to begin time trial, you do not lose fruit collected in the stage prior to touching the clock.