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But anyone willing to embrace Crazy Taxi’s upbeat arcade aesthetic will find an incredibly gratifying game beneath, one founded on pure, distilled gameplay values and good old-fashioned insanity. It is three-years-old, and a console game at heart, but Crazy Taxi is also a brilliant game. A few extra city blocks, a few new destinations and customers, even some new shortcuts would have been nice. Even better, what if the developers had spent a few months putting together a level editor for the game so that the PC community could get to work making their own cities and towns?

Before long we could have been ferrying passengers to and fro in every major city in the free world! Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets. Until then, unscrupulous minicab drivers will continue to aggressively hawk their services, proceed to take you home via the Watford gap, and then have the temerity to charge you three times the agreed fare. It may not be the most obvious subject for a game, but Crazy Taxi is about as far removed as it’s possible to be from the depressing world of pine air freshener, Magic FM, and the stench of other people’s sick.

In fact it’s quite a cheery take on the lot of the cab driver, insanely so, as the name suggests. Peruse the surrounding screenshots, and you will find nothing but bold, bright colours, blue skies and smiling faces. Not your average PC game then, you might be thinking, and you’d be absolutely right. If you’ve been living in your PC bunker for the last few years, let’s bring you up to speed. A big hit in the arcades, Sega’s Crazy Taxi was an obvious choice to appear on the Dreamcast, and did so to critical and commercial acclaim well, as commercial as you can be on a console owned by about eight people.

There was a Crazy Taxi 2, but it’s the original that we are concerned with here. It’s being converted to the PC by the same outfit that brought us Virtua Tennis, a game that shares a similar history: from arcade hit to Dreamcast classic to PC footnote in the space of a couple of years. Crazy Taxi may have had the Dreamcast brigade drooling into their bibs back in the day, but why on Earth would a discerning PC gamer want to play a two-year-old console game? Rather than posing aggressive rhetorical questions, let’s ask the game’s producer, Strangelite’s Danny Rawles.

So is the notoriously snobbish PC community going to be interested? It’s an ageless classic that still looks great and plays brilliantly – even in today’s market. We can’t argue with that, but is there anything that can be done to improve upon the – admittedly excellent Dreamcast visuals? Our aim is to create a faithful conversion of the DC original and as such, for the majority of players, the game will look identical to the Dreamcast version.

But for those with higher specification PCs, they can benefit from higher resolutions and increased draw distances. Other than that, it’s exactly the same game, and one that sees you take the wheel of that big yellow car in the pictures. Cruising round one of two fictional cities in the titular taxi, the idea is to take passengers to their intended destination in the quickest possible time, something of a breath of fresh air literally for anyone who regularly uses cabs in London.

A fairly simplistic concept, but there is more to it than that, such as the fact that tips can be earned by driving flamboyantly, or to be more accurate, dangerously. Weaving through an impossible gap will yield a squeal of delight from your passenger, and an extra couple of dollars in your arse pocket. Yes, if it wasn’t already blatantly obvious, the game is of course set in America.

As such, crass commercialism is rife, and a number of major brand name outlets provide some of the destinations. Although the general direction is hinted at by a great big arrow at the top of the screen, the cabbie’s proverbial knowledge will come in handy, and being able to recognise areas and find your way around town will be invaluable. Each city comes replete with a working traffic system, with none of the ambient drivers in the least bit bothered that you are in a hurry.

As well as the two cities, a host of challenges are available, such as bursting balloons and even knocking down bowling pins, another parallel with Virtua Tennis.

The emphasis is clearly on ‘fun’, and Crazy Taxi could well prove a welcome departure from the goblin-ridden nonsense that traditionally pervades the PC. The game’s producer certainly thinks so: “Absolutely. Not only are these games fun to play but they are also fun to develop and produce.

Crazy Taxi is one of those rare games that offers instant pick-up-and-play gratification. The game is insanely fast and fun to play and I strongly believe PC gamers will enjoy the ‘adrenaline rush’ gameplay that our console cousins have always raved about.

It may have escaped your notice, but the PC is also privy to another high-profile console conversion of a driving game. Both games are great in their own right but they are different enough to stand out on their own and not get in each other’s way. In the happy-go-lucky world of Crazy Taxi, potential hit-and-run victims show amazing reflexes and athleticism, and prove impossible to mow down, something that may prove anathema to blood-crazed PC gamers.

According to Rawles, this is something PC gamers need to get over. The best Taxi players will try not to hit any objects at all because the whole premise of the game is about speed. Fair enough. Midtown Madness employed a similar system of pedestrians leaping out of the way, and that proved popular enough. Is there a direct comparison with that game? It could almost be classed as a genre-defining game Of course it could. Whatever it is, it’s certainly not a simulation, and while it may technically be classified as a driving game, it has more in common with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater than it does with the latest Formula One title.

Tricks and jumps are all part of your armoury, and the rules of physics are only very loosely adhered to. We’ve been playing an early beta version and it looks to be shaping up nicely, although with the sound currently restricted to just the overly cheery voices, it did eventually begin to grate. The dialogue should prove less irritating against the background of a bustling city and the obligatory angry music, which is one area where the PC version could differ from its console counterpart.

The original Dreamcast game featured a skate punk soundtrack from The Offspring and Bad Religion, but the PC conversion could boast something else. As the producer admitted: “There will be four music tracks in the game but these are yet to be finalised, so I can’t reveal any more about them. You can’t cater for everyone’s tastes so we are currently discussing the possibility of allowing the player to swap the game CD with a CD from their own music collection. The game will automatically play the tracks from the inserted CD rather than the four default tracks for a more personal playing experience.

Whatever happens, anything will be preferable to listening to Heart FM while slipping in and out of consciousness. Stop the car. A film about a taxi driver might sound like the most boring thing ever, but Martin Scorsese proved otherwise in with the functionally named classic, Taxi Driver. Starring a menacing Robert De Niro as anti-hero Travis Bickle, a loner pushed to the edge by the sordid, violent scenes of the New York night shift, it’s a powerful and dark experience.

Completely unlike Crazy Taxi, although amazingly there are plans for a film based on the game, director Richard Donner The Omen, Superman, Lethal Weapon l-IV, The Goonies has obtained the rights, and was quoted last year as saying: “I loved playing Crazy Taxi and I realised immediately that it had the potential to be a big summer event movie. Sega’s game franchise has the perfect mix of action, humour, and great characters to translate to the big screen.

While a lot of videogames are set in science-fiction environments or fantasy worlds, Crazy Taxi is set in New York City with a Russian cab driver. If you do this right, it’ll be a lot of fun. It’s all gone very quiet since then though, and Sega is saying nothing.

Frankly, we’d be amazed if it ever sees the light of day. It’s not often that a game is fought over in the offices here, but our copy of Crazy Taxi moved its way from desk to desk a lot more than your average game.

It wasn’t just the four guys reviewing the game who were scrabbling for it either There’s something remarkably compelling about the game–and it’s not just that it looks so good. As we said last month, the sign of a really good arcade game is when it’s simple and effective.

Crazy Taxi doesn’t get bogged down with overly complex concepts or rules With that in mind, the frenetic pace of the action drives you to take risks and hurtle about the streets, leaping over other cars and smashing through anything that gets in the way. With the grinding tunes of The Offspring and Bad Religion in the background too, this is a truly exhilarating game.

It’s a shame that Sega chose not to add too much to the final release. The extra city map and mini-games are a welcome addition, but it’s a pity that we didn’t get a multiplayer experience to add a more competitive edge. As it is though, everyone here became fiercely competitive as we passed the joypad around trying to beat each other’s score. Now when was the last time you did that? If nothing else, Crazy Taxi is proof that old-school gameplay values are still alive and well and still capable of being the driving force behind a really good quality game.

Anyone who sees this will want to try to have a go Since Crazy Taxi has now been released on every next generation game console in its mostly original form, chances are you may find yourself already somewhat familiar with it. When Sega released it three years ago for the Dreamcast, it became an instant hit with most gamers due to its entertaining gameplay and solid control system. When it was ported to other systems however, little effort was taken to add any new or extra features and the same can be said about the sound and graphics capabilities.

Unfortunately, this is also the case concerning this latest GameCube port, which is almost identical to the original Dreamcast version. If you’re not familiar with Crazy Taxi , the game is set in a city where a taxicab is driven around town picking up passengers, and the goal is to get them to their destinations before time runs out. Although the concept is almost too simplistic, it works surprisingly well and all types of gamers are able to enjoy it. As mentioned earlier, Crazy Taxi has one of the most straightforward and uncomplicated structures for gameplay, consisting of three major goals.

The first is to pick up a customer. To identify a potential customer, a dollar sign will be spinning over a person’s head in one of four colors. Each color signifies how far the customer is looking to travel with red being the closest and green the farthest. Once the customer is picked up, the game picks up as well with the player attempting to get the customers to their locations by any means necessary.

As the customer enters the cab, a time limit is set that runs parallel to the game time clock, so having some familiarity with the city streets will make an immense difference. Once you take off in a desperate attempt to get the customers dropped as fast as possible, you’ll also notice that when a crazy risk is taken, like squeezing between two cars or driving on the wrong side of the road, the customer will give out extra tips.

These tips are then added to the final total after time runs out. After the customer has seen their life pass before his or her eyes numerous times, you should be close to the destination. Once it’s reached and after coming to a full stop, the base fare will be given along with any bonus fare that was earned. The bonus fare is a straightforward calculation of the time left being converted to cash.

In addition, bonus time can also be added to the game time limit if the customer was dropped off early enough. Up to five extra seconds may be awarded however, if too much time passes in an attempt to locate the drop off point, not only will there be no time bonus given but the customer may also refuse to pay the base fare. If time expires on either the customer’s or the game’s time limit, the game is over and if the customer didn’t reach his or her destination, no money will be received from that customer.

While getting the customers to their destinations, there are a number of maneuvers that can be implemented by combining various buttons and other controls. For instance, a burst of speed called a crazy dash can be accomplished by releasing both the accelerator and brake, then shifting to drive and pressing the accelerator.

Another called the crazy drift, which causes the cab to slide, is completed by shifting into reverse and back into drive while steering hard right or left. All of these are performed without any difficulty, as the controls are easy to grasp.

Hz 3 points. Share your gamer memories, give useful links or comment anything you’d like. This game is no longer abandonware, we won’t put it back online.

Crazy Taxi is available for a small price on the following website, and is no longer abandonware. You can read our online store guide. MyAbandonware More than old games to download for free! Browse By Developer Hitmaker Perspective Behind view.

Buy Game Steam. Captures and Snapshots Windows. Write a comment Share your gamer memories, give useful links or comment anything you’d like. Send comment.

Buy Crazy Taxi Crazy Taxi is available for a small price on the following website, and is no longer abandonware. Buy on Steam. Need for Speed: Underground 2 Win

Crazy Taxi on Steam

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