Crazy Taxi is all about people deluding themselves. While the four protagonists insist they lead a ‘crazy’ existence to try and appear more interesting to people at parties they are in actual fact the same as every other lowly cabby ferrying ungrateful patrons to the KFC while engaging them in casually racist conversations.
BD Joe may think that putting mysterious initials in front of his name (after much research I found that BD actually stands for ‘Bombastic Dinosaur’) makes him look cool but he also thinks that wearing one of those fisherman hats makes him look cool so we probably shouldn’t be trusting his fashion sense.*
Obligatory ‘none-man’ Gina thinks that referring to the money she earns as “Crazy Money” makes the fact that she never became a dentist easier to bare. She knows deep down there is nothing crazy about not being able to pay the rent because you couldn’t take a Vicar to Tower Records in under ten seconds.
The Green haired Axel hopes that if he saves up enough money he will be able to buy a shirt, more importantly he dreams of one day going back to his job of smashing punks in the face with an iron bar. (The joke is that it’s the same Axel from Streets of Rage, fallen on hard times due to the waning popularity of the scrolling beat-em-up. Actually Gina looks like a less tarty Blaze and BD Joe could be a grown up Skate. Gus is probably a Galcia turned away from his evil ways. That or Sega really like the name Axel)
Gus actually gave up on his life long ago and doesn’t believe his Taxi is all that crazy. However he keeps up the pretence to give hope to the younger crazy taxi drivers – he is based on Judd Hirsch from Independence Day.
This doesn’t mean that Crazy Taxi is a bad game though, after all Gears of War is all about a team of men pretending not to be gay and that seems to have shifted a few copies. In fact its possible to glean a fair bit of ‘enjoyment’ from Crazy Taxi as you barrel around marvelling at the product placement and trying to attain the hallowed S-Rank. (It is a known fact that Japanese people don’t understand the alphabet and so constantly place S higher than A. We can’t really complain though as we can’t even write their alphabet.)
I realise I have yet to explain how the game is played, but surely everyone knows that by now? To sum up in one sentence – “You have to go to a place get a man take him to another place and hope the time doesn’t run out.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about then go do the taxis missions on Grand Theft Auto but imagine that you couldn’t run people over because they keep diving out of the way and also the world is bright and happy instead of crime ridden and miserable.
Oh and also imagine you are listening to awful music.
Poor Sega in an attempt to grab the attention of ungrateful children decided to break from their own fantastically produced sounds to some horrible licensed tracks that always play on exactly the same loop. Blink 182? More like gang of twats. Stop moaning and make way for magical sound shower.
Therefore Crazy Taxi is a good game but it could have been a GREAT game on par with Outrun 2 - if only it hadn’t been for young peoples music. THANKS A LOT PETE WATERMAN.
Crazy Taxi gets a ‘It’s time to make some crazy money are ya ready? Here! We! Go!’ out of a ‘constantly running out of time taking that man to the baseball stadium.’
* A true story about those fisherman hats. Is that I once had an acquaintance who started wearing one of those fisherman hats all the time for no real reason. (I think he had seen a documentary about Ibiza on ITV) Anyway one day we were walking to a bus stop and these people shouted ‘fisherman’ at him. He never wore that fisherman hat again but insisted that the incident had nothing to do with it.
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