Grab a car and driver and here we go! Yah! Yah! Yah! Yah! Yah!…as the music usually starts when you’re about to set off on your manic race to pick up and drop passengers.
I love the Crazy Taxi games, and with the recent announcement by Sega that a new one is in development combined with the 25th anniversary of when it launched in the arcade, it seemed a good time to revisit the original Crazy Taxi!
For clarity, to get footage for this video, I’ve mostly captured the Dreamcast game, but as you’ll see the footage isn’t the best, so have also captured some of the more modern PC port. But whether you play Crazy Taxi on your Dreamcast, PS2, PC, GameCube, Xbox 360, PS4, iPad or whatever, the information about the game will be mostly the same.
Who would have thought that a game about driving a taxi could be fun? Not me. But I guess that’s why they titled it Crazy Taxi to let the people know that this wasn’t a slow drive through rush hour traffic in a black cab in London whilst the cabby tells you his life story. No way, save that for Sid James in Carry on Cabby.
Instead, you pick one of four overly cool 90s people, Axel, BD. Joe, Gena and Gus…well Gus does seem like an American version of Sid James from Carry On Cabby, but the rest are cool. Once picked, it’s time to forget to put on your seatbelt and go on a mad dash across one of two cities to pick up random people and drop them off at brand places like KFC and Radio Shack.
I was addicted to this game when I first got it on the Dreamcast. I could literally loop my way around the levels twice with how well I got to know where every passenger wanted to go and who to pick up in what order to get the best rank.
The controls in the game are fantastic on Dreamcast. You could either control the car with the analogue stick or the dpad and if memory serves, I was more of a dpad guy for this game, although returning to the various versions that have come out since I’m not entirely sure why.
You’d use the triggers for acceleration and breaking and for me this was the first game where I truly understood the Dreamcast’s analogue triggers. It’s weird to think that Nintendo consoles don’t always have analogue triggers and they’re not absolutely standardised.
You’d then use the face buttons to switch if you were in drive or reverse, and this is a key part to mastering the controls for success. Knowing little tricks like quickly switching between reverse and drive will give you a speed boost. Also, you can exploit these to quickly break and spin on the spot. Facing the right way to quickly start off again after dropping someone off is maybe the most important time savings thing you’ll have to master in the game.
The music is a very famous and spoke about part of the game as it famously featured music from the Offspring. I say featured because after the arcade and Dreamcast had it, it was changed in some more recent versions. I forget if it was replaced by the time it launched on PS2 and GameCube, but I think I’m correct in saying it wasn’t on the later releases on more modern platforms. If you know, let me know in the comments.
The music really did set the stage for this to be fun and high energy and is a great example of where licensed music can enhance a game.
When you’re going about the levels, you’ll see passengers who have coloured circles and dollar signs around them. Red customers want to go the shortest distance, whilst orange, yellow and green in that order want to go further and further distances. There’s no definite right or wrong on if you should pick up the red or yellow or green customers, but in my experience, I aim for more low value passengers and occasional yellow ones. Mistakes can cost you dearly and if you drop a customer off later than they’d like you’ll not get a time bonus as you can quickly build up from lots of red and orange passengers.
The great thing in this game is that whilst it’s useful to learn which passenger wants to go where, you don’t actually need to really know how to get there once you’ve picked the passenger up. In a great innovation which I still to this day wish would be integrated into my windscreen of my car, there is a big arrow which will guide you exactly to every passenger’s drop off point. This makes jumping into the game easy for all, but experienced players will know about little short cuts that start to make a big difference.
Beyond the main mode where you can go around cities based on San Francisco and New York, there are the challenges. These are fun but can be stressful. And they take a lot of practice and repetition and determination to overcome. But some of them are great. You’re doing bowling, knocking over pins with your cab, doing huge jumps, smashing balls, and oh, my favourite challenge of all, which is based on a huge skill needed for success in the main game..
The crazy through move. This is a technique whereby you drive as close as you can to other cars, but don’t collide with them. Doing this will earn you an extra tip and the more you do it, the bigger the tips get as a combo. I love this feature of the game as it changes the way you think about driving. There’s also a move you can do where you spin around as you corner or change to face the opposite direction and this will rack up points too. These moves, and especially the crazy through really change up the strategy of the game.
Crazy Taxi has been one of the Dreamcast games I’ve revisited most over the years, and it’s great that it’s been rereleased on so many platforms. There have been a few games in the series, but I think the main reason it hasn’t been as big a hit as it could because it launched on Dreamcast and within a short while that was over. But then the sequel landed on Dreamcast and other than a port of Crazy Taxi 1 and 2 on PSP, the second game hasn’t ever been seen again. The third game launched as an Xbox exclusive whilst the first game landed on PS2 and GameCube. The point is, just as the series was taking it, it got lumbered with a confusing release schedule for the sequels.
The Simpsons Road Rage followed in its footsteps which was an excellent game, but was seen as a big too similar and got the wrath of Sega’s lawyers as a result. Since this time a lot of people get their taxi video game fix from stealing a cab in Grand Theft Auto, but to me this isn’t the same as what Crazy Taxi offered.
There have been more taxi based games since including Taxi Chaos, and the Playdate Taxi Trouble game and Doodle Taxi all of which I’ve enjoyed, but they’re not quite as special as the game that inspired them.
So, what are your memories of Crazy Taxi? Did you love it back in the days of the Dreamcast or have you discovered it since? Let us know in the comments, and I’ll say that playing Crazy Taxi for this video has got me wanting to revisit the others! So if you liked the article let me know and I’ll try to take on the next games in the series soon!
What would you rate this game?
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