The Closeout Warrior

Crazy Taxi was an anomaly in arcades when it was released. As you got better at the game, you actually could play longer. This directly opposite of other arcade games like Generic Racing Simulator 2000, where as you get better the shorter your game is, or Sports Game XX: X-treme X-citement or Rhythm Game: MAX BEATS where your time is pretty much going to be the same no matter how good you are.

So what is Crazy Taxi? In a nutshell, Crazy Taxi is a game that tasks you, the taxi driver, with picking up customers and dropping them off at their destinations throughout San Francisco and collecting their fares. What keeps this game from sinking into the Pits of Ho-Hummery is the presentation. Your goal is to get people where they need to go as quickly as possible by any means necessary. You have to barrel full-bore down crowded streets, jump over traffic and buildings with strategically placed ‘jump trucks’, and power-slide around hairpin turns. Near-misses and skillful driving will earn you tips, and get you to your destination faster. Crashing into other vehicles and maintaining a leisurely pace will ensure that you’ll have a quick, and unprofitable, day.

The soundtrack is a bit on the silly side. It tries to show off how extreme to the max this game is by playing a mixture of Offspring and Bad Religion songs constantly. Well, that and the guys with giant mohawks that want to go to Tower Records.

In short, yes, this game is fun. If you go through the basics of the training, that is. Without knowing how to do at least the Crazy Dash (immediately going to full speed), or the Crazy Drift (powersliding through turns), your games will be short, uneventful, and boring. Learning and practicing these maneuvers, however, turns the game into a totally different experience. An experience that actually sold me my Dreamcast.

I had a copy of this game for the Dreamcast for over a month before I actually bought one, partially because I found it on clearance for $15, and partially because I was tired of pumping quarters and tokens into the slowly breaking and disappearing arcade units. It might be worth noting that I spent upwards of $15 on the arcade units after my purchase of a this game, so I didn’t really save any money, but at least I got some practice in at home.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 23rd, 2007 at 10:03 am and is filed under Arcade, Dreamcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.