Crazy Taxi: The Reason Why I Own A Dreamcast

The record keeping is the best I’ve ever seen on a home console system. Switching between players is a snap. Your friends can keep their own records separate from yours. This is very important since Crazy Taxi is a one player game. The intuitive record keeping promotes an alternating style of game play. You can watch and learn your friends moves, then implement them during your next chance at the controls. I recommend taking turns with your friends in the challenge mode – it is especially entertaining.

Also not to be missed is Crazy Taxi’s attention to detail. Not only are the in-game physics realistic, but so are your destinations. You drive to real-world places like Pizza hut, Tower Records, KFC and Levi Strauss. It’s the one time I felt subliminal advertisement added to game play.

What’s even realistic is the music. It’s made by real bands – Offspring and Bad Religion. I was hoping for more tracks in the home version, but that didn’t happen. This can be a disappointment, because some of my friends have complained about the music’s repetitiveness. As for me, Offspring is one of my favorite bands – I don’t think I’ll tire of those songs any time soon. A few games use commercial bands in their music selection, but Crazy Taxi shows you that it works well. Using commercial bands in video games is something that should happen more often!

Ahhh – Crazy Taxi is my own personal nirvana. There’s a lot going on. There’s excellent driving action, combined with rock music and lots of graphical eye candy. The home version is very true to the original. Aside from the controls, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two versions. Even the loadtime is well managed. Pauses are virtually nonexistent – in any mode of play.

There is some slight polygon pop-up going on in the horizon, and this happens in the arcade too. To me, this is the greatest sin of all driving games. Overall, Crazy taxi manages the pop-up pretty well. The level design is interesting, but never overly complex. You tend to only notice draw-in when you’re on steep angles or if you quickly approach large buildings. This is one of my pet peeves, most gamers wouldn’t even notice the minor draw-in problems with Crazy Taxi.

It’s really odd to me. I used to loathe racing games, but now two excellent racing games have hit the Dreamcast – One is obviously Crazy Taxi and the other is Tokyo Xtreme Racing. I don’t see either of these driving games being matched, at least not any time in the near future. But hey… I’d love to be proven wrong.

Pros: Crazy Taxi is going to sell a lot of Dreamcast systems.
Cons: More tracks should have been added and the control should have been improved