MadCap's Game Reviews - "Crazy Taxi"

Because I needed affirmation that I'm not a good driver, here's Crazy Taxi.  A game from Sega that originally came out in the long forgotten year of 1999, made by Hitmaker for arcades before getting a port to the classic and still widely-loved Dreamcast...before being ported off to a bunch of other systems because Sega fell right out of making consoles like a bird with no wings out of the sky.

Sorry...too soon?

Crazy Taxi was only a game I knew of by word of mouth.  Car based games are not my thing - as certain reviews I've done might have tipped off long-time readers to - but I was told that this was one I'd really enjoy.  I was skeptical, but I decided to check it out and see for myself, seeing as it came up on my queue in the Xbox Live Arcade.  So, taking up one of four personas - "Axel", if you're interested to know, though I've found little difference in them besides aesthetics - I hopped into my taxi and booted up the main arcade game to see what it had in store for me.

Why in the hell didn't I pick this game up sooner?

I'm not joking, this game is really awesome! You have an indestructible taxi cab and you go around the city of not-quite-but-just-vague-enough-to-maybe-be-San-Francisco picking up passengers and weaving your way around other cars and obstacles to get them to their destinations as quickly and efficiently as possible...or not. Either way, in the end, you get a rating and a score. La dee da. But basically, this is a game that was made for the arcades. In that mode, the player has their set amount of time to run around and get passengers, scoring a few seconds with each successful delivery and certain amount of points.

Basically, the money from fares replaces the score, and you need to get as much of that sweet, sweet green as you can before the timer runs out. Or you could play in "Original" mode and set it for 3, 5, or 10 minutes and basically just do the set thing but within a set time.

That's really all there is to the game.  You have an indestructible taxi and you taxi people around, doing crazy stunts and tricks (which the game has another mode - the Crazy Box - specifically for) in the meanwhile to rack up the points. However, this isn't like a Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing thing.  Your taxi still has to yield to some of the laws of physics. You run into a wall, it's going to stop you, you do actually have to judge your distance to brake instead of just hitting the break button and almost instantly stopping, and your car does take a moment to accelerate much like a normal car would from a complete stop.

That all being said, there are a few glitches here and there, such as the taxi getting caught in a second-story banister during a jump until I reversed and pulled back...hitting the ground with (as you'd expect) no damage whatsoever, but they are few and far between - so I'm not sure whether that's the game itself or the port. And even though I know it's a port, it hasn't aged well as far as the graphics go - which I normally wouldn't talk about, and won't ding the game from 1999 for.

It has just enough realism to balance the game, and plenty of the exact opposite to allow for a crazy fun time. Couple it with an awesome rock soundtrack as you tear through the streets, and you've got one hell of a game!

Crazy Taxi is now available from Hitmaker and Sega for Arcades, Dreamcast, Playstation 2, GameCube, Microsoft Windows, the Playstation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, Cloud, iOS, and Android.  This review being based on Xbox Live Arcade version.

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