Crazy Taxi

"Ah Ah Ah ah AH!! My ears are BLEEDING!!!!!!"

Ok so..I walked into the arcade thinking I was going to fight someone in Soul Caliber, but (surprise, surprise)no one was at the machine! Figures since there's always someone there when I DON'T want to play! Oh well. Then I say(but not out loud of course. That would be CRAAAAAZY) ''hmmm. I'll play Crazy Taxi! The Arcade version has got to be good! You can actually STEER!''. So I went to the game and sat down and the chair was pushed back a bit too much, but(since I hadn't noticed you could push it forward) I sat down anyway and wouldn't you know it*drum roll I only had to insert 1 quarter! Someone had already inserted 2 other quarters! What's up with that? Don't know, but..we have to find the answers by ourselves. Goodbye Goldman. Who is this Goldman you ask? I should hit you for not knowing! A SHAME INDEED!*Bashes you with the stick of shame) So anyway I played it several times and encountered several glitches (and by several glitches I mean a few repeats of the same glitch which involved my car flying a quarter of the way across the stage)! Now time for hats! I mean..sections and stuff.

Gameplay 9.5

Driving cars is boring right? Right! It's boring like that horse drawn carriage that came before it, but wait! In Crazy Taxi you don't just drive the car! YOU LIVE IT! Confused? Good! Now what I'm TRYING to say is about the way you drive. You don't drive around at 40mph while waiting for lights and junk. You jam on the gas and try to get from point A to point B as fast as possible! And ''Why?'' you may ask? Well as the name suggests you're driving a ''taxi''. Taxi drivers have to escort people around town for a price right? Yep, but this Taxi doesn't just go as slowly as the law permits while taking the longest route it can find..no...it does something different. It goes as fast as possible while taking all of the shortcuts it can find while swerving in and out of traffic(close calls with cars equal bigger tips you know) and if you even consider driving slowly you'll soon regret it because if you take too long you can't expect your passengers to stay put! They'll just jump out! And if it wasn't obvious you have to pick the people up yourself. Oh and there's an arrow pointing to where you have to go. The place where the person wants to go is covered in a green net. You also have a time limit. If you're not fast enough the game ends. There are also 3 ratings which are (from fastest to slowest) ''Speedy'', ''Normal'', and ''Slow''. The faster you go the better the tip. Yay! Go Pandas!

Graphics 7

Well what do we have here? UNDETAILED VISUALS!!!?? Kind of. The drivers look okay, but they people(for the most part) are a big rotting bowl of ugly stew. I've always preferred pretty stew so it's obvious that something like this wouldn't be to my(or most anyone’s) liking. However *holds breath and dies of suffocation, but is miraculously brought back to live by a friendly old potions master who lives in a cave on the side of Mount Sauceage) the backgrounds are pretty pretty(not unlike the stew)! It's a nice little city area that I think is supposed to be Los Angeles (or however you spell it), but it seems more like New York. There is however draw in. Oh well. Things could be worse. On the plus side graphics aren't everything. It's what's inside that counts.

Sound 9

At first I was all ''OW!!! PAIN!!! DEATH!!!! SOOOOOO LOOUUD!!'', but after a minute or so I became all ''Meh.''. I think all the pain I was in at first might have had something to do with my not being used to having 2 blaring right behind me. Anyway the complaining was followed by compliments! The speaker behind head idea works great for this game. It really gives you that ''on the street'' kind of feel. As the people shout at you for not picking them up you might actually think it's someone in the arcade yelling at you (or maybe not. Hey it's possible! Stop looking at me like that)! Then there's the music. A limited selection but what is here is good. 4 songs(2 by The Offspring and 2 by Bad Religion). Yep. Just 4. At first you probably won't think much of it, but they do fit in quite well and in time you'll get over the same old cycle starting again (what? Oh you would have done it to if you had thought of it. Come on! Oh you're such a baby.).

Control 8

A steering wheel, 2 peddles, a stick shift thingy (forward and reverse), and a start button. What did you expect? Something else? My God you're dumb. You actually thought there would be an ARCADE STICK!? Or maybe a light gun? Who am I talking 2!? Who knows. As I was saying the control is very responsive, but the peddles are a bit sensitive and the wheel has some shifty issues of it's own, but overall it works out just fine.

Replay 8.2

So you drive around, pick someone up, drop them off, pick someone else up, drop them off, and eventually time runs out. That fun can't possibly last long can it? Yes Billy it can! And it does! Yay! For some reason this unique game draws you in and makes you want to stay at the place that you've been drawn into FOREVER!!! Well maybe not that long, but it is very strangely addicting. Don't know why.

Overall Crazy taxi is a great game. Want to know why? Just read my review! Or better yet read someone else’s! There are bound to be better reviews out there!

Buy or Rent: If you own a Dreamcast, Gamecube, or (ick)PS2 buy this game. If you don't own any of these systems, but have a couple thousand dollars handy buy a Crazy Taxi Arcade machine! Sure it has one less level, but it's loud!

~ me

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/02, Updated 07/07/02