"Crazy Taxi" - Gamecube

In the '90s, Sega had a development division known as Sega AM3. Primarily known for making arcade games, they slowly transitioned into making some console games during the early 2000s. As a result of making various hit titles for the arcade, like Virtua Tennis, and, yes, Crazy Taxi, they were rebranded as "Hitmaker".

Anyway, that's where our story ends with them-- they made Crazy Taxi for the arcades, and this here is an arcade port on the Gamecube, developed by Acclaim Entertainment Cheltenham, formed by previous members of Psygnosis' south west studio (are all these developers getting confusing, yet?).

We're gonna bump into AE Cheltenham a few times throughout our Gamecube journey, pretty much just developing racing games for the console, so I guess Crazy Taxi is in line with that expectation.

The original Crazy Taxi was a pretty big hit, as evidenced by the fact that you actually know what it is (at least, I bet you do). That being said, I notice on Wikipedia, the Dreamcast port got excellent reviews across the board, but for some reason the Gamecube port did slightly worse across the board.

Why? I don't know. Let's maybe find out:

Wow, that's a bright yellow. I feel like I just got flash-banged.

----- Playthrough -----

In Crazy Taxi, you play as a cab driver who likes to try to get a week worth of work done in approximately 10 minutes if at all possible. The way that he (or she) does so is by driving as fast as earthly possible, picking up customers who need to be across town in 30 seconds, and successfully delivering them to their destination, less than 90% dead.

Don't panic. I have a cab driver's license.

Luckily, in the city that Crazy Taxi takes place in, you'll find that every single citizen is a total action junkie. Presenting them with reminders of their mortality excites them so much, they'll start piling hundreds of dollars worth of tips onto your cab fair for letting them feel alive for a few moments. To do this, you have a couple options:

Your cab comes with a gear-shift that only has drive and reverse. By slamming it into reverse and then into drive again during any turn, you can throw the cab into a drift, which pleases the customers. You can also drive in such a way that you narrowly miss cars, or take jumps in the cab to really rack up money overtime.

50 cents a yard, buddy. Backflips and driving through the ocean extra.

There are different types of citizens that you can pick up which have various destinations. The more red the icon is for a citizen, the less time you'll get to take them to their location, but they have a wider stop area making it easier to pick them up. As a rule, I found the greener the icon was, the longer the trip was, and the more time I was given, which is useful for racking up points.

At any rate, with the main gameplay loop out of the way, let's talk about the game-modes on offer: you have Arcade Mode, Original Mode, and Crazy Box.

Since the main loop is still fresh in your mind, I'll say arcade and original mode are basically the same game mode, but with different maps. As described above, you'll have a limited amount of time to rack up as many points as you can get your hands on. With arcade rules, this amounts to 60 seconds, and you can earn bonus time by picking up civilians and delivering them quickly.

Your life has been long anyway, granny, just relax and enjoy the ride.

The arcade mode map is kind of like a giant loop, and if you really bust your butt you can actually make it all the way around the map to where you started delivering people, but that took me several tries to accomplish.

The original mode map feels more like something you'd see in a Grand Theft Auto game, with a much less obvious looping structure, and more of a grid with various novelties in various locations. The lack of an easy way to tell where you are definitely makes this mode a little more challenging despite having the same mechanics.

What's the matter, in a hurry to meet God? Ha HA! Alright, give me $800.

The last mode, Crazy Box, is a handful of 16 levels that you have to do mostly in order. The early ones are fairly basic, intending to challenge on you on main aspects of the game, such as picking up and dropping people off-- and teaching you the trick to getting a burst of acceleration (shifting into drive and immediately pressing the gas trigger with the right timing).

These guys need to be delivered like 100 feet away from where they start.
Don't you people have legs?

These quickly become more creative and more difficult, with goofy missions that will make you chuckle for awhile as you try them out, like one that focuses on driving on a perilous twisty road surrounded by ocean to deliver 8 grannies to their destination points along the route, all in 40 seconds (it's surprisingly hard).

Everything is under control, ladies

I tried arcade and original mode and got a D rank in both of them, then went on to try Crazy Box mode. Once I had learned (we won't say mastered) the main mechanics of the game, I revisited arcade and within a few tries was able to earn an S rank. Then I went to original, and after another 3-4 runs, got the S rank there too.

It takes like $6,000 to get the S if you were wondering.

When you get S rank in either mode, the credits roll, so I assume other than score attacking or playing for fun, that's the main "point" of the game. Having tried and presumably completed all the modes, I was pretty much ready to close the book on Crazy Taxi.

----- Review -----

How long did I play?
3 hours.

How much did I beat?
S ranked original + arcade modes and completed all 16 Crazy Box missions.

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Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

The shifting tricks were not at all intuitive to me, though I did both of them a couple times by accident, but Crazy Box seems to exist primarily to teach them to you a little more directly, so you can pretty much learn everything you need to know by just playing the game. Picking up and delivering the people is pretty obvious since it's called Crazy Taxi, not, say, Crazy Battleship.

Gameplay: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel?

This game can be pretty tough, Crazy Box mode in particular gets hard, and it feels rewarding to pull off some of the precision maneuvers it asks of you. Make no mistake, there's definitely a skill curve that you'll have to find your way overtop of if you want to get the S ranks and do the various stunt maps. It's a game that's more fun to play the better you get at it.

When it culminates in a race around the entire map, you'll feel like a real collateral damage wizard.

Depth: 

How deep/long is the game?

Considering I completed what seems to be most of the content in a few hours, I guess not very long. This is an arcade game though, so I can imagine it'd be the kind of thing you'd play in small bursts if you were going for high scores.

Presentation: 

How's the sound? How are the graphics?

The sounds of the cars in-game are as good as you probably expect, but my favorite piece of sound design in the game is all the quotes from various people you pick up and drop off. One of my favorites was when I dropped someone off late and they said, "you suck!" and my cabbie responded, "No, you suck!"

I also like it pretty much whenever anybody says, "Take me to Pizza Hut!" because that's just a great line from anyone.

The music is pretty much all licensed which makes it kind of silly to give the game credit for it, but it matches the gameplay pretty well and helps keep the feeling of a fast paced action game going. It's mostly songs by The Offspring and Bad Religion.

The graphics are pretty good, but this looks a lot like a Dreamcast game-- that might be good or bad depending on what you think about games with that aesthetic (think Sonic Adventure and Super Monkey Ball). They have a weird Sega-like quality to them that's hard to describe. It looks pretty good, but it's definitely not going to be the most exciting looking thing we'll see on the Gamecube.

It always looks cool when you smash through the scenery sideways at 100 mph though.

Personal Chord: 

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

Maybe! I like the general style of the game but it's not my favorite of aesthetics either. I thought it was pretty fun to play and I don't have many complaints about it. I'd feel reasonably comfortable repping it.

Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

I think so. I don't know if you should necessarily play it on the Gamecube, although despite what the trends seemed to suggest, this seems like a good port to me. Given, I've never played Crazy Taxi arcade or Dreamcast for more than about 10 minutes before, so I wouldn't be the authority on that.

At any rate, the game doesn't take long to have a run at, and I think it's a worthy thing to check out and experience for yourself.

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