I am so glad to hear you have enjoyed playing the game and yes, those games were inspirations! Alas we couldn't make it quite like Neodrift Out, our target game, but it is something and yes, all of the cars do support Nitro, but I disabled them to make the game a bit more challenging, until you found the shortcuts!!!!
Other than that if you press C on while in the game your camera will switch from a modern view to the classic view, the game was being made on that classic view but the levels looked much prettier on third person view so we kept them both, but it will be very challenging to complete the game on classic camera view now since the timers are set for third person camera mode.