Passenger: "Hello, I’d like to go to KFC"
Cab driver: "It’s party time!"

VARRRRRROOOOMMMMM Its CRAAAAAZZZZZYYY TAAAAXXXXXXIIII! The craziest driving game is here on the Dreamcast and if you liked the arcade game…this is for you. Pick up passengers and drive them to their destination in the allotted time without hitting too much and earn your fare.

There are 4 drivers to choose from, each car has it’s advantages and disadvantages. The fastest car is BB Joe, and this is my choice for racing down the roads at top speeds.

After first loading up Crazy Taxi, the first thing you’ll notice is the amazing graphics, the city is very large and every detail has been recreated to show how powerful the Sega Dreamcast can be. The city is alive with cars and people everywhere, you can run over mail boxes, benches, phone booths and just about anything that isn’t a solid wall! There’s nothing like driving through the park and seeing all the people dive out of your way and screaming at you! When you go off a jump, sparks will fly, cars you ram into will flip over…an average day for a taxi driver.

There is the Arcade city which everyone has seen in the arcade, and also a new city which isn’t as nice as the Arcade town. I found myself playing the Arcade track more than the new Original track that Sega threw in for free. The music is great with Bad religion and ????, but there are only four songs and they do get a little repetitive after a while of playing.

The control is great, take a turn left and your car instant responses…no need to worry about spinning out, after all…it’s a crazy taxi your driving! Power slides are easily done by pressing and holding REVERSE and DRIVE (in that order) while turning left or right. Even if you can’t power slide in any other racing game, you’ll be able to pull it off easily in this game! Another thing to note is if your used to the arcade version, you’ll never go back…it is extremely easy to do any move such as the Crazy Dash (to jump start your car from a complete stop).

The game runs at a nice 60FPS which makes the game look amazing, highly detailed while you drive by familiar places like Pizza Hut and KFC. There are even traffic jams you have to avoid where there are loads of cars just occupying all the lanes (that’s why they made sidewalks). The only problem was the occasional slowdown, I had no clue what was going on as this is a console system and things should be capped. The slow down occurred while flying off certain ledges when there was lots of action below or running into a huge amount of crates…seems that the DC couldn’t take processing all this information. This slowdown happened very rarely and only lasts about a second or two.

The mini games are interesting, and if you manage to complete them all, you get the crazy taxi bike which any character can drive…um…bike.

While the game is only one player, you and your friend’s will enjoy taking turns and watching how your friend’s crash into everything trying to get to the destination! This game is a definite hit!

Gameplay

Graphics

Sound

Overall