Prepare for the craziest cab ride of your life!
- NA release: 18th November 2001
- EU release: 3rd May 2002
- JP release: 30th May 2002
- Developer: Sega, Acclaim
- Publisher: Acclaim
- NGC Magazine Score: 70%
- Mods Used: Widescreen Code
Crazy Taxi is a classic arcade game that takes the simple task of driving a taxi and makes it incredibly frantic and hectic. Your taxi is very fast, and you have a very short amount of time to get your passenger to their destination. A large arrow hovers above your head guiding you to your destination (sometimes really well, sometimes a bit off), although you’ll need to learn the routes, shortcuts and locations of places on the maps to really do well at the game.
As you speed though the city (with a great soundtrack blaring out of your cab), you will gain extra money by driving dangerously, and all the pedestrians will frantically dodge out of the way to avoid you ploughing into them, which all adds to the immense fun of the game. There’s also one thing about Crazy Taxi that would seem tacky in other games, but I can’t help to love it here: product placement. It’s great having to drive someone to KFC or Pizza Hut as though their lives depended on it, and grounds the game in a strange way.
For the Dreamcast version, Sega added an additional, larger city, which is much more difficult to navigate due to more complex roads and a lot of walls that make getting to higher locations more taxing. There are also a couple of different ways to play: either by the original rules (where your time counts down and you gain more from delivering passengers), or by playing sessions of 3, 5 and 10 minutes. The GameCube version is a very faithful port of this with everything intact.
Another addition for home consoles is Crazy Box, a series of challenges that require the use of advanced techniques, such as the boost that takes some practice to pull off right. It’s great for practicing those techniques, which you can then use to improve your scores in the main mode.
Crazy Taxi is still a ton of fun.
Fun
Inevitably though, games developed for the arcade rarely translate well to consoles. Crazy Taxi may be an exception to the rule to some extent, but the fact remains that there are only so many times you can drive the same customers to the same destinations before things start to get a little dull.
Geraint Evans, NGC Magazine #67
Remake or remaster?
There have been multiple ports throughout the years, but none of them contain the original package. The PC, Xbox and PS3 versions lack the original soundtrack and loses the licenced locations. The more recent mobile versions are wonky emulation that does bring back the original soundtrack, but lacks the licensed locations. We really need a remaster of the original with everything intact.
Official Ways to get the game
The various incomplete ports of Crazy Taxi are available on Steam, Xbox One/Series, iOS and Android.
Europe
Japan
North America
GameCube Games by Date
2002: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2003: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2004: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2005: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2006: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
That random woman who wants to go to KFC has a voice line that I still remember perfectly today.
“Take me to Kentucky Fried Chicken!”
No-one calls it that, you weirdo!
This, alongside Luigi’s Mansion, was one of the two games that I got when I first got a GameCube for Christmas, so naturally, I got very good at it! Especially once you unlock the Crazy Bike, which somehow is better then a car in every respect!
Bit late responding to the thread (have been super busy), but man! GameCube really did have a killer launch lineup!
I don’t think we’ve ever seen a launch lineup as good as the western GameCube launch before or since (with the sole exception being the western Dreamcast launch; which is the best launch of all time, but also a massive cheat because the console had a nearly 1 year delay in the west from its original 1998 Japan launch).
Really puts the Switch 2’s anaemic launch lineup into perspective (especially when GCN NSO is amongst the most exciting parts of the Switch 2’s launch lineup :laughing:).
Also, as an aside, the GameCube version of Crazy Taxi is the only one that matches the Dreamcast original in terms of both content and performance. The only meaningful difference is the fact that they use voice samples from Crazy Taxi 2 for the passengers instead of the originals; for whatever reason. But as @Glen-i pointed out? I’d argue that this is actually an improvement :laughing:
yeah yeah yeah yeah!
Playing Crazy Taxi at an arcade in Tokyo was one of the highlights of my trip. Love that game and obviously the nostalgia plays a bit role.
I love seeing Crazy Taxi in the arcades, but I’d say that it’s one of those rare arcade racing cabinets that I actually prefer playing with a controller.
I just find it quite awkward pulling off the moves like Crazy Drift and Crazy Dash with the arcade wheel & pedals, and quite uncomfortable & unreliable. I find it much more natural to play with a controller; which makes it the big outlier as far as SEGA arcade racing game cabinets go.
I don’t think I ever played Crazy Taxi when it was first around. I knew of it, might have seen videos but just never got it. I have been giving it a go recently as I’ve been playing some GC games and it is fun in short bursts.