Looking back at: Crazy Taxi (1999)

How a lengthy traffic jam inspired the creation of one of Sega’s most beloved arcade classics!

Making its arcade debut 22 years ago this month, followed a year later with a port to the Dreamcast, Sega’s Crazy Taxi is a iconic title fondly remembered by countless gamers for its frantic city-spanning gameplay and memorable soundtrack …Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

The game was developed by Sega’s internal Sega AM3 studio; a team that would briefly go by the name of Sega Software R&D Dept #3 in 1999. The team had been responsible for many classic arcade titles including Cyber Troopers Virtual-On, Manx TT Superbike and Sega Rally Championship. Not long after the Dreamcast home console release of Crazy Taxi, this team, following a vast Sega restructure, would later re-emerge as Hitmaker; a then-new Sega studio that retained many of the original AM3 staff.

Crazy Taxi tasks the player, after selecting one of four unique drivers, with picking up passengers and taking them to a variety of destinations, in an effort to make the most money within a given time limit. Extra cash can be earned by performing a range of stunts and time bonuses are awarded following speedy deliveries. In addition to the original arcade stage, the Dreamcast port also introduced a new second playable area as well as a selection of minigames.

Both the arcade and Dreamcast versions of Crazy Taxi were co-produced and directed by Kenji Kanno. A Sega AM3 member since 1993, Kanno had previously directed several Sega arcade projects including the 1994 Jurassic Park Sega rail-shooter arcade title, as well as the 1997 Sega Skateboarding release, Top Skater; a game often regarded as a stylistic predecessor to Crazy Taxi.

Before the development of Crazy Taxi, Kanno believed that many arcade racing games available at the time were too similar in their approach, and yearned to create a new style of driving game; a game that had the energy of a car chase. The idea for Crazy Taxi eventually came to him when he found himself caught in a lengthy traffic jam. Stuck behind an endless queue of vehicles, he envisioned being able to jump over the central reservation and speed off in the opposite direction. The director explored this idea for several months with little success until a colleague jokingly suggested driving a taxi, and the idea stuck. After reworking his pitch and submitting it to his superiors, Kanno was assigned a team of 12 programmers and artists to help him in creating the game.

Kanno was initially against a home console conversion of Crazy Taxi and believed that any such project would not be able to faithfully recreate the original arcade release, almost certainly requiring a degree of downgrading and compromise due to hardware limitations. However, after being informed by his superiors that the game would in fact be ported to the Dreamcast, Kanno and his team immediately set to work exploring how best to utilise this hardware.

The original arcade release of Crazy Taxi had been developed for Sega’s NAOMI arcade board; a platform with which the Dreamcast shared much of its architecture, such as its Hitachi SH-4 CPU. While this led to a relatively smooth porting process, the Dreamcast had less on-board memory than its arcade counterpart, which presented a challenge when it came to rendering the game’s large open stages. To overcome this limitation, and to maintain the game’s large open play area, the development team employed a technique whereby level data was streamed during play.

Crazy Taxi is notable for its now-iconic soundtrack, which features several tracks from bands including Bad Religion and The Offspring, and its use of real-life brands with many of the in-game passengers requesting to be taken to branches of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Tower Records as well as Levi’s and FILA stores. Reportedly due to licensing difficulties, most of these brands and original music tracks would be absent from later ports of the game, such as the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network versions.

Upon release, the Dreamcast port of Crazy Taxi received praise for its addictive gameplay, striking visuals and level of challenge. Official UK Dreamcast magazine described the title as “a top arcade game that’s even more amazing at home!” Following the Dreamcast version, the game received further ports to numerous platforms including the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360 and Windows, with the most recent iteration launching on iOS and Android in 2017.

The game’s success not only led to the release of several sequels and spin-offs, with the most recent instalment, Crazy Taxi: Fare Rush, releasing in 2014 for mobile devices, but also several rumoured attempts to adapt the game for the big screen.

What are your memories of Crazy Taxi? Did you first play the game in the arcade or home console? Were you a fan of any of its sequels? Do you feel the game would benefit from a reboot/remake?