[Gamers' Day 2007] Let's Make Some Ca-raaazy Money!
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!
Published: May 17, 2007
Few games have a strangle hold on the addiction and pleasure centers of our brain like the original arcade Crazy Taxi. Even as the Dreamcast was getting arcade-perfect ports at home, we were venturing out into the few remaining Bay Area arcades to drop some coin and continue to perfect our Crazy Dashes and Crazy Stops in that eternal pursuit of the never-ending string of fares.
Part of it might be that we'd just moved the office down to San Francisco (which is where the first game takes place), but we'd like to think that Hitmaker's quarter muncher represents the apex of SEGA's arcade proficiency, and it wasn't until we finally did pick up the Dreamcast version with all its little extras (ditto for the sequel a bit later), that we got truly hooked.
Alas, it's been years since we even thought of the game, but as we grabbed a stool and ran through the impressively clean streets of San Francisco with Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars while SEGA's adorably awesome Jennie Sue gave us the poop on what was new, all those old feelings came back. Crazy Drifts around corners, insane Crazy Through dashes next to cars, all of it works on the PSP, with controls that are perfectly responsive (though we never did manage to get our Crazy Dash going properly).
So what's new? Let's start with what you'll get when you plunk down the cash for the game. All of the content from the past two games has been crammed onto the UMD (that means both arcade and Dreamcast version maps for the games), plus Ad-Hoc Wi-Fi play, natch, allowing for both co-op and competitive play (you can actually slam into the other guy and steal his fare).
Also added is support for simple drag and drop custom soundtracks. Dump the straight MP3s onto the memory stick (no crappy conversion programs) and go. Since the soundtrack this time around will be different (SEGA is apparently still ironing out all the kinks on that), all it takes is finding the originals, ripping them and dropping them onto your Memory Stick. Hmmm... wonder if any of those CD stores in Japantown still have the soundtracks... And why do we all want to listen to Offspring and Bad Religion while eating KFC all of the sudden?
Awww, dammit.
Part of it might be that we'd just moved the office down to San Francisco (which is where the first game takes place), but we'd like to think that Hitmaker's quarter muncher represents the apex of SEGA's arcade proficiency, and it wasn't until we finally did pick up the Dreamcast version with all its little extras (ditto for the sequel a bit later), that we got truly hooked.
Alas, it's been years since we even thought of the game, but as we grabbed a stool and ran through the impressively clean streets of San Francisco with Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars while SEGA's adorably awesome Jennie Sue gave us the poop on what was new, all those old feelings came back. Crazy Drifts around corners, insane Crazy Through dashes next to cars, all of it works on the PSP, with controls that are perfectly responsive (though we never did manage to get our Crazy Dash going properly).
So what's new? Let's start with what you'll get when you plunk down the cash for the game. All of the content from the past two games has been crammed onto the UMD (that means both arcade and Dreamcast version maps for the games), plus Ad-Hoc Wi-Fi play, natch, allowing for both co-op and competitive play (you can actually slam into the other guy and steal his fare).
Also added is support for simple drag and drop custom soundtracks. Dump the straight MP3s onto the memory stick (no crappy conversion programs) and go. Since the soundtrack this time around will be different (SEGA is apparently still ironing out all the kinks on that), all it takes is finding the originals, ripping them and dropping them onto your Memory Stick. Hmmm... wonder if any of those CD stores in Japantown still have the soundtracks... And why do we all want to listen to Offspring and Bad Religion while eating KFC all of the sudden?
Awww, dammit.