If you grew up during the late 90s and early 2000s, there’s no way you didn’t play Crazy Taxi at some point. The crazy franchise SEGA it became one of the most requested arcade machines in arcades and all thanks to a casual but tremendously addictive proposal. More than 20 years after its release, its legacy is immense and lives on, even if its flame has faded over time.
The birth of the legend
Year 1999. SEGA was at a key stage in its history and the arcades were a field that they dominated with solvency, but the success had to be even greater. The company issues the order that the developer Hitmaker create a video game for said devices and Kenji Kanno he gets to work. From his mind comes a crazy version of taxi driver simulator and that it completely broke with an arcade tradition.
In Japan, it was very common for games to last three minutes for every 100 yen invested, so players had to adjust as much as possible to that time to get the best possible score. Crazy Taxi it completely broke with that norm, rewarding the skilled player with more seconds to continue playing. A basic principle from which his success arose, but it was not the only thing.
A job that can be as bland and routine as being a taxi driver was transformed into a careless version of driving to take clients to their destination. Characters like Axel or Gus were simply charismatic because of their appearance, but also because of the vehicles they drove at full speed through a city that had a festive spirit and was inspired by San Francisco. The streets were alive, the traffic was heavy, the beaches were packed and the iconic places were everywhere. It was easy to recognize posters and advertising that drank from real franchises.
To all this we must add the possibility of performing impossible stunts such as skidding for many meters, jumping on strategically placed ramps, achieving turbo acceleration and taking advantage of hidden shortcuts to scratch a few more seconds off the clock. Obviously, the appearance of the machine itself Crazy Taxi it invited you to grab the wheel, put your feet on the pedals and prove that you could be the best taxi driver possible with a counter of money raised between all races.
It is not possible to talk about the franchise without referring to its soundtrack made up of great hard rock and punck rock songs. The songs of The Offspring y Bad Religion such as Them and Us and Inner Logic dominated each game and matched perfectly with the dynamics of what we saw on the screen.
Step on the accelerator
Popularity skyrocketed and SEGA did what it had to do: create a Dreamcast port. Its revolutionary latest console needed to be nourished by original titles that would keep us hooked for hours. Crazy Taxi It had everything the system needed, as it was to transfer a sure success to your living room. Thus, the domestic version landed in the year 2000 with certain changes.
The in-game map, called West Coast, was expanded to offer more content in a format where we didn’t rely on the wallet to keep playing. Besides, the minigames came to the saga with tests in the Crazy Box mode. The challenges consisted of forcing us to chain customer tips, taking several to different points at a very specific time and all this in unique environments, offering even more variety.
Hitmaker had achieved it, he had been able to shape a unique universe that breathed its own identity and for which the players sighed. How could it be otherwise, Kanno and the rest of the team got down to work and this is how several more sequels were born, reaching the peak of excellence in Crazy Taxi 3. The third installment knew how to combine everything that had made two previous games great, but add very interesting concepts to it.
2002 was the year in which he debuted a work that had several maps, including Las Vegas Inspired Glitter Oasis and that it was played at night. More characters came to the fore, being able to play with them exclusively in some scenarios. Crazy Box was renamed Crazy X and they challenged us to jump astral distances, use the car as a bowling ball or drift between floating platforms.
Carrying groups of people at the same time was already a common practice, as well as knowing the differences between the vehicles that could be transformed into a carriage. Of course, SEGA had already completely abandoned the hardware war, so the game was released on Xbox and PC.
Reverse?
An unalterable formula that worked like clockwork over the years. kanno he pointed that “basically the goal of the game is to have a lot of fun in a short time (…). So rather than necessarily trying to evolve the series, it’s more about taking that concept and putting it in different places and seeing how it works out.” Lots of ideas like Crazy Taxi Next, kind of a multiplayer title with day and night cycles. , were discarded, but Kanno’s vision began to dilute.
This is because the new big installment appeared with Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars, which landed in 2007 under the command of Sniper Studios and Black Hole Entertainment. It was true that Hitmaker was overseeing the project, but we stumbled upon a PSP game that was getting rid of the original soundtrack due to legal issues. A personalized player appeared to use the music we wanted, although the advertising so characteristic was eliminated. Of course, the multiplayer function appeared for the first time for the lucky ones who enjoyed this edition.
The fallow was made official for seven years until Crazy Taxi: City Rush appeared on Android and iOS mobile systems. Totally free, we are talking before a title to the purest Temple Run, where we cannot control the speed and we can only choose the direction to avoid the traffic. Another three years of hiatus until Crazy Taxi Tycoon was introduced in 2017 and offers exactly what it sounds like.
We did not run once, but here everything was concentrated in the offices and managing a business that had to prosper before the Prestige Mega Corp corporation. In 2020 the servers said goodbye and since then, what? SEGA has not spoken again about one more return and we have barely had three games in the last 16 years. The genres for which it has been adopted in the last two installments do not invite optimism when it comes to returning to a classic vision.
Still, hope is not lost. After the leak of a video of the possible remake of Jet Set Radio, it should be remembered that SEGA asked in a survey which games from your catalog we would like to see again. Crazy Taxi It swarmed among the options, so let’s trust the company listens to the community.
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