Crazy Taxi Review

You'd be crazy to buy this old Dreamcast port. It lacks The Offspring.

I make no apologies for loving SEGA's Dreamcast. It got me back into gaming and it did have some awesome titles. And among those greats was Crazy Taxi, a pedal-to-the-metal driving game that had tongue firmly planted in cheek. SEGA has revived Crazy Taxi, sort of, bringing the original to PSN and XBLA with 720p support. 

You take on the role of one of four cabbies, racing against an overall time clock to pick up and drop off as many passengers as possible. But just driving won't help your cause at all. You'll need to learn a few different moves, like the Crazy Boost (to speed forward) and the Crazy Drift (to drift, if that wasn't clear). The various moves involve rolling your thumb across the drive and reverse buttons, which can quickly cause severe pain -- but the kind of pain you can live with, because pulling off the moves is so much fun. 

The gameplay is untouched from the Dreamcast original and has all of the modes, including Crazy Box (completing specific challenges) and both the Arcade and Original cities. While playing, I was brought back to my younger days, when gaming was better because SEGA was still giving hope that new and creative titles were going to put a Dreamcast in every home. 

If you've never played it, Crazy Taxi is a mad dash of fun. There are dozens of eager passengers on the street waiting for a ride, all of them color-coded to denote the distance from their destination. The more moves you string together and the faster you get them there, the more cash you earn. And cash is what you need to be a world-class cab driver. 

There's almost no depth to Crazy Taxi, but that's just fine. This is an old school arcade game, the kind designed for eating quarters. It can be addictive, even if it looks old and a bit run down and plays like something from your dad's basement. I love Dreamcast games, but poor Crazy Taxi is starting to show its age. 

Though SEGA did made this "HD-ish," it still doesn't look very good on a large screen. Don't expect some kind of beautifully detailed remake. This was made to play on modern TVs, but it wasn't made to look very pretty. Looks, though, don't really matter if you just want to sit down with an old friend. Oh, Crazy Taxi, it's been so long.

But one very important ingredient is missing that kills the nostalgia -- which is really the only reason to spend any money on this outdated download. SEGA didn't have any problems overcharging for this remake, but it didn't want to spend any money to re-up the licensing agreement for the soundtrack.

See, Crazy Taxi wasn't just about driving fast, picking up fares, and then speeding towards their destination to earn a hefty reward. The music was a big part of what made Crazy Taxi special. The mix of songs from The Offspring and Bad Religion were as memorable and important as pulling off Crazy Drifts and finding new shortcuts. And even though I hate The Offspring in any other context, I absolutely loved them when Crazy Taxi was spinning in my Dreamcast. But there is no Offspring or Bad Religion. There's just a bunch of crap little-known punk bands that have no business filling in for a pair of iconic bands.

Rarely can a soundtrack ruin a video game. But here it does. Maybe if you've never played Crazy Taxi before, you can still enjoy it for a little while. After all, you won't know what you're missing. Fans will instantly know what is gone, and losing the music kills half the reason to pick Crazy Taxi up again. 

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