![]() ![]() ![]() The only way to extend the clock is by picking up passengers and taking them where they want to go. In Crazy Taxi, you start off with a counter that continually runs down and when the time is out, it’s game over. It is adding a points-based layer of game design to the racing genre, refining the concept, at least to my mind. With score attack, however, it’s a race for the most possible points or the highest score, though time is of course a central limitation within which the player pursues this score-oriented goal. In time attack, there’s a race against the clock, a race for the best time. It is the counterpart of the time attack game. Now I hadn’t heard about this particular subgenre until doing some research on Crazy Taxi. Not a normal racing game, as I mentioned, instead it is what’s called a score attack game. ![]() Crazy, right? My understanding is this was changed in later games and/or re-releases, which is a shame, because these, too, are a part of the severe and sore 90’s vibe all over this game. Yeah, they actually have you dropping people off in front of Pizza Huts©, Kentucky Fried Chickens©, Tower Records… towers©, and Levi’s® jeans stores. Instead, as its name suggests, you pilot the noble gilded taxi, you are the Charon of San Francisco (or an urban lookalike), ferrying needy consumers from one product placement to another. What I mean is, it doesn’t task the player with circling a track or crossing a finish line, completing laps in a certain period of time, picking up death weapons to smash your opponents, or lobbing blue shells to screw the kart in the lead. Well, younger Red, turns out you were wrong, at least in some kind of quasi-nit-picky sort of way: Crazy Taxi is not a normal racing game, by any stretch. But though I popped a few tokens in from time to time at the local Fun Factory, I never got too far, telling myself upon each inevitable game over screen that “ah well, it’s a racing game, after all”. This is the version, the only version, I remember ever playing, sitting on the AC-chilled seat in front of the big screen, steering wheel in hand, pedals beneath my big toe (I wore slippers everywhere it was Hawaii). Hitmaker and Sega’s Crazy Taxi began life in the arcades in 1999, so you’ll know that this version is a port for home consoles. Oh and a very special thank you to RetroGifMonster for supplying the game I’m writing this review for! But not even Crazy Taxi, the third best-selling Dreamcast game, could save the Dreamcast. Much to my own shame, if all the games are this great. If I knew I could have played this game on the Dreamcast way back in 2000, maybe I would have bought a Dreamcast! Unfortunately, like 6,112,870,000 other people in the world at the time, I didn’t buy one. Forget the Final in Fantasy, the Metal in Gear Solid, the Super in Mario Bros., heck… even the Sonic in Hedgehog… Crazy Taxi’s title aptly describes the screaming, overwhelming, exhilarating, frenetic, psychotic, impetuous, adrenaline rush that is playing this game. No game in human history has ever deserved its adjective more than Crazy Taxi. The game will be heading to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on February 23, 2021.“YA YA YA YA YA!” -Offspring, “All I Want” Lion Castle and GS2 Games will be handling publishing duties in other regions. The team has managed to secure the blessing of SEGA, with the gaming giant even going as far as publishing the game in Japan and Asia. As players progress through the game, more cars will be unlocked like American classics from the ’60s. Muscle cars specialise in power, supercars aim for super speed, and Japanese tuners go for perfect drifting. Each of the seven cars will have its own attributes. There’s a range of cars to suit most driving styles too. Take the wheel as one of two drivers: Vinny, a seasoned cabbie or Cleo, a “self-proclaimed influencer”. There’s the normal human customers like reporters, hipsters, plumbers, and rock stars, but you can always go the extra mile with aliens. The good news is the passengers are just as crazy as the driving needed to head through the city. ![]()
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