| Introduction
Crazy Taxi set arcades alight in the late 1990's
and for quite some time it was one of the best reasons
to own a SEGA Dreamcast. The mission based driving game
which involved picking up passengers and dropping them
off at their desired destination was strangely addictive
and I can recall times early in its life when there
was always a long line of people waiting to play. Since
then, Crazy Taxi has been ported to pretty much every
platform, resulting in almost perfect conversions in
every case, so when the game was announced for the GBA,
fingers were crossed. It's here now and it's neither
the 'top-down' affair that we'd all feared nor is it
the watered down version that others had expected.
GamePlay
The main thrust of Crazy Taxi is to earn as much
money as possible in a working day. The 'day' in question
lasts somewhere in the region of two minutes but picking
up passengers and hitting the bonuses scattered about
the cities can extend this.
Enticing a possible fare into your cab simply involves
you stopping by anyone who wants a ride, they give you
a destination and you're off. Getting a well paid fare
and even a tip is all about getting your passenger to
their desired destination quickly and safely, so hitting
too many objects along the way may result in your fare
bailing on you with a mouthful of abuse. Get them there
within the time limit and you'll not only be paid the
full fare but the remaining seconds will be converted
into a tip.
The trick is to keep on the move and to pick up as
many fares as possible within your working day, remembering
that while the short fares are safer the longer journeys
pay a great deal more.
The other section of Crazy Taxi is the mini game
section or Crazy Box as it's referred to in the game.
These are focused challenges and are great fun if you've
had a little too much of being screamed at by irate
passengers after crashing into one too many cars.
They include Crazy Rush where you must pick up four
separate customers and drop them off at different areas
before the timer counts down and Crazy Zigzag where
you have to negotiate an almost impossible course surrounded
by water and the self explanatory, Crazy Jump. There
are some challenges which appeared in the Dreamcast
version that are absent from this section but the fact
that the developers have included anything in addition
to the main game is a real plus.
Control
Simple, effective and responsive although some frame
rate issues don't always make it feel like that. This
is a shame as one of the aspects that always made Crazy
Taxi such a pleasure to play was the fact that when
you accelerated, braked and steered the car, you felt
an immediate connection with the game that meant you
spent more time actually enjoying the game than learning
a complicated button layout. There are other moves such
as the Crazy Drift and Crazy Boost but as you'll only
require these for the more advanced gaming and mini
games there's more than enough time to get to grips
with them.
Graphics
This is what it all boils down to and although the
visuals have their obvious drawbacks, they’re not all
that bad. The 3D engine for example is really quite
competent and the buildings have a variety of textures
making everything very nice to look at indeed. As expected,
your taxi and the various other vehicles that drive
around the roads are sprite based with enough frames
of animation to make them appear as if they're three
dimensional objects.
The problem is the frame rate. This is a game that
was famed for the relentless pace you could race around
the city but here the whole thing occasionally chugs
along. For Crazy Taxi to work, you'd really have to
be pulling off a rate of at least 30 frames a second
but instead the whole game becomes dangerously slow
with busier sections turning into more of 'flick book'
than a full blown game. If you can get past this and
alter your gaming approach, then you're likely to have
a pleasurable experience but gamers who've witnessed
Stuntman, V-Rally 3 and the soon to be released Top
Gear Rally, may be disappointed.
Sound & Music
Driving fast always requires a pumping soundtrack
and Crazy Taxi doesn't disappoint with some of the best
music you're likely to hear in a driving around and
picking up passengers type game. Seriously though, it
really is excellent and the huge numbers of voice samples
that accompany it make for a great sounding title and
definitely one that needs to be played with the volume
cranked up.
Final Comments
Crazy Taxi has everything and the developers appear
to have omitted absolutely none of the features that
made the arcade original such an addictive pastime,
which as admirable as this may initially appear, is
also fraught with problems. The main one is that the
GBA isn't quite up to the challenge of running such
an ambitious title and you can almost hear the poor
little unit creaking under the weight of the monumental
task at hand. This results in a frame rate that just
can't keep up with the amount of on-screen happening,
causing constant frustration especially when you enter
a crowded area.
If you can forgive this occasional irritation then
there's a reasonably entertaining game for you but unlike
Super Monkey Ball Jr., the whole thing is constantly
at odds with the hardware limitations.
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