In Crazy Taxi, time is money, and only the craziest cabbies come out victorious. Remastered for digital download with HD 720p graphics and Surround Sound soundtrack, leaderboards and trophy awards. Two Game Modes – Arcade Mode and Original Mode for a variety of gameplay, and 16 Mini Games to hone your taxi driving skills. 8/10 (155 votes) - Download Crazy Taxi Free. The Windows version of Crazy Taxi brings back the classic SEGA game in which we'll have to transport passengers through streets full of impossible traffic. The former hit on arcade machines and video consoles of the likes of the SEGA Dreamcast, the. Crazy Taxi is still a fun, exciting game, but fans of Crazy Taxi who already own the Dreamcast release don't really need to bother with the PlayStation 2 version. In Crazy Taxi, time is money, and only the Craziest Cabbies come out victorious. Hey hey, come on over and have some fun with Crrrrrazy Taxi! Barrel through traffic packed streets, hurdle off parking garages, and Crazy Combo your way to Crazy Money in a wild frantic race to scare up the most fares. Directed by Kenji Kanno. With Bryan Burton-Lewis, Kent Frick, Lisle Wilkerson, Thomas King. An arcade game where you drive a taxi cab through a virtual San Francisco.
Crazy taxi's should have been an easy one.Developed by the masters of arcade gaming in the heart of Sega HQ, polished to a high sheen and bursting with charisma, it had the best of everything. Where most games come into the world stunted and unsightly, with some bits missing and other bits dropping off every five minutes, here was a very pretty and good game with the rare courage to be different. In time, it will be seen as a classic, a one of a kind, a bona fide masterpiece. But in the meantime, meaning right now, when it's just a bit too old to be new, but not quite old enough to be retro, it's considered horribly outdated and unplayable. A freak, a relic. At least by some.
This is the sad reality of the life of a videogame. That however great a game Crazy Taxi was when it first appeared three years ago, and great it most certainly was, it's likely to be rejected now that it's finally made it to PC just because it's been round the block a few times. (And because there are a couple of nearidentical sequels kicking around somewhere.) And I'd just like to say that this is sick and wrong, and not much different from tying a kitten in a sack full of rocks and throwing it in a creek. Or something equally nasty.
Help The Aged
In Crazy Taxi, time is money, and only the craziest cabbies come out victorious. Remastered for digital download with HD 720p graphics and Surround Sound soundtrack, leaderboards and trophy awards. Two Game Modes – Arcade Mode and Original Mode for a variety of gameplay, and 16 Mini Games to hone your taxi driving skills. 8/10 (155 votes) - Download Crazy Taxi Free. The Windows version of Crazy Taxi brings back the classic SEGA game in which we'll have to transport passengers through streets full of impossible traffic. The former hit on arcade machines and video consoles of the likes of the SEGA Dreamcast, the. Crazy Taxi is still a fun, exciting game, but fans of Crazy Taxi who already own the Dreamcast release don't really need to bother with the PlayStation 2 version. In Crazy Taxi, time is money, and only the Craziest Cabbies come out victorious. Hey hey, come on over and have some fun with Crrrrrazy Taxi! Barrel through traffic packed streets, hurdle off parking garages, and Crazy Combo your way to Crazy Money in a wild frantic race to scare up the most fares. Directed by Kenji Kanno. With Bryan Burton-Lewis, Kent Frick, Lisle Wilkerson, Thomas King. An arcade game where you drive a taxi cab through a virtual San Francisco.
Crazy taxi's should have been an easy one.Developed by the masters of arcade gaming in the heart of Sega HQ, polished to a high sheen and bursting with charisma, it had the best of everything. Where most games come into the world stunted and unsightly, with some bits missing and other bits dropping off every five minutes, here was a very pretty and good game with the rare courage to be different. In time, it will be seen as a classic, a one of a kind, a bona fide masterpiece. But in the meantime, meaning right now, when it's just a bit too old to be new, but not quite old enough to be retro, it's considered horribly outdated and unplayable. A freak, a relic. At least by some.
This is the sad reality of the life of a videogame. That however great a game Crazy Taxi was when it first appeared three years ago, and great it most certainly was, it's likely to be rejected now that it's finally made it to PC just because it's been round the block a few times. (And because there are a couple of nearidentical sequels kicking around somewhere.) And I'd just like to say that this is sick and wrong, and not much different from tying a kitten in a sack full of rocks and throwing it in a creek. Or something equally nasty.
Help The Aged
Now that I've got that off my chest, a bit in the way of explanation. If you hadn't already guessed, I'm of the belief that Crazy Taxi, in both its arcade and Dreamcast incarnations, was an excellent game. Hitmaker (one of Sega's leading development teams) stumbled upon a hugely satisfying game dynamic when it came up with the idea of no-holds-barred cab driving, and somehow managed to present it in such a way that the arcade simplicity of the concept was preserved, yet with enough gameplay nuances in tow to assure longevity.
What's more, the PC version you're looking at now is a first-rate, rigorously faithful conversion of the Dreamcast original, probably one of the best console-to-PC ports we've ever seen. While it may be taking the piss somewhat that the game has taken this long to get to PC, it remains just as playable now as it ever was. Call me a sucker, but for this reason I'm willing to overlook, for the most part, how old the game is and what other platforms it's appeared on, and concentrate on the virtues of what is, to my mind, a classic piece of arcade gameplay.
In A Nutshell...
But before we launch into a discussion of the game's various merits, it's probably worth describing what the hell Crazy Taxi is all about, just in case one or two of you are yet to sample the delights of extreme taxicab action. Luckily, and like all the best arcade games, it's very straightforward.
The aim of the game is to rack up as much money as possible by ferrying passengers from place to place around one of the game's two cities before the clock runs down. That's it. There's no road rules, no cops, no floating power-ups or hidden coins to collect. Just you and your cab and a city full of waiting passengers.
Or at least that's the taxi part of it. The crazy part is another story altogether. Aside from the insane physics that see you bouncing around the roads and flying through the air like a Virtua Tennis ball, these are no ordinary passengers. For some reason, every one of them is in a tremendous hurry to get somewhere. They're also either extremely lazy or crippled, as their destinations are often less than 50 yards down the road (but may be up to a kilometre away). What's more, they clearly have far too much spending-cash on their hands, as they tend to shower you with it every time you do something right. Narrowly avoid another car (or bus, train, truck, tram, etc) and the coins come flying (this being known as the 'crazy through'). Jump off a ramp or hill (the 'crazy jump') and it's another payday. Better yet, there are a couple of swift key combinations that allow you to pull off turbo boosts and power-slides (the 'crazy dash' and 'crazy drift', respectively), which not only make progress through the streets that much quicker, but may induce your mentally imbalanced and bone idle customer to reward you even more generously.
Cabbies On Crack
While it is possible to pick up and play Crazy Taxi without knowing any of this, playing the game without using the special moves is a bit like playing Street Fighter II without knowing how to throw a fireball (and don't even think about playing without a half-decent gamepad). It's all about rapidly executed crazy dashes and perfectly timed slides, shaving those all-important seconds off your transit time and spiralling your tips into triple figures. And this is where the game's enormous replayability comes from. Aside from the drive to beat your high-score (or better yet, that of your mate, who, ideally, is sitting next to you and taking turns as you play) it's simply the need to become a better, crazier driver. There's always room for improvement, whether it's in your knowledge of the cities and their many short cuts, or your skill at stopping right at the feet of every passenger, thwarting any possible delay as they scurry over to your cab. Plus, the more crazy drifts, crazy throughs and crazy jumps you can combo together without crashing into anything, the higher your tips become. And once you've got a handle on all of this, you can enjoy that other great arcade pleasure - showing off.While this addictive, mesmerising need to perfect your skills clearly succeeded in making Crazy Taxi a rather good arcade game, the whole thing works much better in the comfort of your own home. The learning curve of the game easily outlasts the occasional interactions of arcade play, where only those willing to sacrifice bucket-loads of loose change were able to master the game's true subtleties.
That said, the game is still much better enjoyed as a social experience, where one-upmanship, mockery and disparagement are given their due consideration. But there's no reason you can't all huddle around your household PC and pretend you own the arcade - a few cigarette burns in your keyboard casing and you'll never know the difference.
The Knowledge
A great deal of longevity also arises simply from the size and complexity of the game's two cities. The first of these, as featured in the original arcade game, is the more straightforward of the two. comprising a long loop with some San Fran style hills, a simple low-rise shopping district and a more problematic downtown area. It's all pretty straightforward, with a few easily located shortcuts and plenty of obvious landmarks.
The second, or 'original' city (introduced in the Dreamcast version) is a very different proposition. Near identical streets are joined at fiendish and confusing angles, roads cross over and under each other, circuitous byways and large city blocks ensure that a single wrong turn can result in a long and costly detour... There's even a bloody big bay area to negotiate on one side of town. The upshot is that you can no longer rely on the guide arrow and your indifferent knowledge of the streets to get by. Clever use of shortcuts such as train tracks, underground tunnels and highway overpasses is essential. You even have to jump over entire city blocks now and again to be truly efficient.At first, much of this is frustrating, especially when you realise that the big green arrow guiding you to your destination is giving you a major bum-steer, but it highlights the fact that this is no longer just a ten minute arcade investment. And once your initial anger subsides, getting your passengers there in record time becomes much more satisfying.
Crazy/Beautiful
The other reason Crazy Taxi is such a pleasure to play is the sheer exuberance of the whole thing. The graphics, while fairly unsophisticated, are bursting with colour and vitality. Silly voices add a measure of humour, and ridiculous jumps and bumps ensure that you never start to take things too seriously. In short, it looks and sounds like (and is) a fun game.
For some people these very elements will be a turn-off, suggesting, as they do, a shallow experience and one unsuited to the PC platform (see Dave's Second Opinion boxout for starters). In some ways this is fair enough - whatever floats your boat and all that. And there's no denying that this is indeed light entertainment, making few demands on your grey matter. But anyone willing to embrace Crazy Taxi's upbeat arcade aesthetic will find an incredibly gratifying game beneath, one founded on pure, distilled gameplay values and good old-fashioned insanity.It is three-years-old, and a console game at heart, but Crazy Taxi is also a brilliant game. And that's what matters, right?
Used Car Salesmen
It's a glaringly obvious point, and one already stated, but the fact remains that Crazy Taxi is a three-year-old game that many of us have already enjoyed in various arcade and console incarnations. And although this is, by and large, a high fidelity conversion (something we should be grateful for given the slapdash jobs we usually get), it's a bit sad that no one thought it worthwhile to add any extra material to the game. A few extra city blocks, a few new destinations and customers, even some new shortcuts would have been nice. Indeed, having recently played a demo of Crazy Taxi 3 on Xbox, we've realised how much the mere addition of turbo flames on your back wheels can enhance your driving satisfaction.
Even better, what if the developers had spent a few months putting together a level editor for the game so that the PC community could get to work making their own cities and towns? Before long we could have been ferrying passengers to and fro in every major city in the free world! Or maybe that's a bit too much to ask...
| Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Hitmaker |
| Publisher(s) | Sega |
| Series | Crazy Taxi |
| Platform(s) | Xbox Microsoft Windows |
| Release | Xbox
|
| Genre(s) | Racing, action |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller is the third video game in the Crazy Taxi series, and was released for the Xbox (not compatible with Xbox 360) and Microsoft Windows, with also an arcade release under the name Crazy Taxi: High Roller for the Chihiro game board. It expands on the previous two games with additional locations, taxis and other features. It received a 69/100 score at review aggregator Metacritic indicating mixed or average reviews.
Gameplay[edit]
Crazy Taxi 3 is a score attack game. The player controls one of several taxi drivers in a fictional city, looking for fares and then taking them to their destination in the fastest time possible. The player must perform this while time still remains on an overall gameplay clock. Passengers looking for rides are indicated by an overhead marker that is colored to represent the distance to their intended destination. The color marker ranges from red indicating short trips, to yellow for intermediate distances, and to green indicating long ones. When a passenger is picked up, the player is awarded additional time on the countdown time. Furthermore, a second countdown timer is started, representing how quickly the passenger needs to be at their destination. While a passenger is in the taxi, a large green arrow is shown on the player's HUD that points in the general direction of the passenger's destination to help guide the player through the map.
The player can use special 'crazy stunt' moves such as drifts, jumps, and near-misses, and consecutive combos of these, to earn extra money from the passenger during the trip. If the destination is reached in time, the player is paid based on distance driven with a possible time bonus based on how quickly the destination was reached. If the passenger's countdown strikes zero, he/she will exit the taxi without paying and the player will be required to look for another fare. The game continues in this mode as long as time remains on the main clock. Once the clock reaches zero, the game is over, and the player is ranked and rated based on the total earned.
The player character is able to pick up a party of passengers, each having a different destination. The number of passengers in the car multiplies the tip bonuses earned from stunt driving, while the total fare can only be earned once the last passenger is dropped off in time. The game also features a set of mini-games. Crazy Taxi 3 inherits the tradition of mini-games from the Crazy Taxi series. Crazy X consists of three levels, each testing a different criteria of skills e.g. Steering, use of Crazy Dash, Crazy Drift etc. By completing all of level 1, maps of the locations are available on the menu which includes all the destinations and short-cuts. Completing level 2 will provide the player with three more different types of vehicle to ride on: Stroller, Bike and Carriage. Completing level 3 will allow the player to use any cabbie in any map. Prior to each game session, the player can pick one of several drivers and their associated cars; each car/driver has slightly different performance relating to factors such as speed and turning, that impact the game.[2]
The game consists of three locations, West Coast from Crazy Taxi, Small Apple from Crazy Taxi 2, now set at night, and Glitter Oasis which is a new location for Crazy Taxi 3. Stages are improved graphically and are tightened and updated for full use of the gameplay elements.
Development[edit]
Hitmaker had tried to develop an on-line version of Crazy Taxi, to be called Crazy Taxi Next exclusively for the Xbox, which, besides multiplayer game modes, would have included night and day cycles, each with a different set of passengers and destinations, while reusing and graphically updating the maps from Crazy Taxi and Crazy Taxi 2. Ultimately, both multiplayer and day/night cycles were dropped and work on Crazy Taxi Next was transferred to Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller, which included some of the nighttime driving concepts suggested by Next. In 2003, High Roller was ported to the arcade via the Xbox-based Chihiro system board. Some versions of this game allow the player to actually win money back from the machine. These versions also include a non-paying version of the game with different difficulty levels. The soundtrack for Crazy Taxi 3 features four bands, The Offspring, Bad Religion, Pivit, and Silverbullit. Additional songs for menus and credits are provided by The Offspring, Bad Religion, Pivit, Methods of Mayhem and Brian Setzer. It was released for the Xbox and Microsoft Windows,[3] with also an arcade release under the name Crazy Taxi: High Roller for the Chihiro game board.
Reception[edit]
| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | 69/100[4] |
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| AllGame | [5] |
| Edge | 6/10[6] |
| EGM | 8.33/10[7] |
| Eurogamer | 4/10[8] |
| Famitsu | 32/40[9] |
| Game Informer | 8.5/10[10] |
| GamePro | [11] |
| GameRevolution | C[12] |
| GameSpot | 6.9/10[13] |
| GameSpy | [14] |
| GameZone | 8.7/10[15] |
| IGN | 6.5/10[16] |
| OXM (US) | 8/10[17] |
| Entertainment Weekly | C+[18] |
| Maxim | 6/10[19] |
The Xbox version received 'average' reviews according to video game review aggregatorMetacritic.[4] In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 32 out of 40.[9]
Crazy Taxi Game
References[edit]
- ^http://www.gamefaqs.com/xbox/558595-crazy-taxi-3-high-roller/data
- ^'Crazy Taxi'. EA Games. Archived from the original on 2010-01-03. Retrieved 2010-01-12.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'Release Information for Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller'. MobyGames. Retrieved 2010-01-20.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^ ab'Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller for Xbox Reviews'. Metacritic. Retrieved October 13, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Marriott, Scott Alan. 'Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller - Review'. AllGame. Archived from the original on November 16, 2014. Retrieved November 16, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Edge staff (October 2002). 'Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller'. Edge (115).
- ^EGM staff (August 2002). 'Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller'. Electronic Gaming Monthly (157): 132.
- ^Reed, Kristan (December 31, 2002). 'Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller'. Eurogamer. Retrieved October 13, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^ ab'Xbox - クレイジータクシー3 ハイローラー'. Famitsu. 915: 105. June 30, 2006.
- ^'Crazy Taxi 3 [High Roller]'. Game Informer (112): 85. August 2002. Archived from the original on October 25, 2003. Retrieved October 13, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Dan Elektro (July 22, 2002). 'Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller Review for Xbox on GamePro.com'. GamePro. Archived from the original on February 14, 2005. Retrieved October 13, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Liu, Johnny (July 2002). 'Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller Review'. Game Revolution. Retrieved October 13, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Park, Andrew (July 23, 2002). 'Crazy Taxi 3 Review'. GameSpot. Retrieved October 13, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Hodgson, David SJ (July 22, 2002). 'GameSpy: Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller (Xbox)'. GameSpy. Archived from the original on December 26, 2005. Retrieved October 13, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Bedigian, Louis (August 14, 2002). 'Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller Review - Xbox'. GameZone. Archived from the original on January 1, 2009. Retrieved October 13, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Goldstein, Hilary (July 22, 2002). 'Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller Review'. IGN. Retrieved October 13, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^'Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller'. Official Xbox Magazine: 91. September 2002.
- ^Brooks, Mark (September 6, 2002). 'CRAZY TAXI 3: HIGH ROLLER Review'. Entertainment Weekly (670): 89. Retrieved April 18, 2016.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^Boyce, Ryan (July 26, 2002). 'Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller'. Maxim. Archived from the original on August 5, 2002. Retrieved October 24, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
External links[edit]
- Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller at MobyGames
Crazy Taxi Gameplay
