Crazy taxi arcade free download

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. 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.

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. 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. That said, the game is still much better enjoyed as a social experience, where one-upmanship, mockery and disparagement are given their due consideration.

The first of these, as featured in the original arcade game, is the more straightforward of the two. 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 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. 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. In some ways this is fair enough - whatever floats your boat and all that. 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. A few extra city blocks, a few new destinations and customers, even some new shortcuts would have been nice.

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! Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets. Until then, unscrupulous minicab drivers will continue to aggressively hawk their services, proceed to take you home via the Watford gap, and then have the temerity to charge you three times the agreed fare.

It may not be the most obvious subject for a game, but Crazy Taxi is about as far removed as it's possible to be from the depressing world of pine air freshener, Magic FM, and the stench of other people's sick.

In fact it's quite a cheery take on the lot of the cab driver, insanely so, as the name suggests. Peruse the surrounding screenshots, and you will find nothing but bold, bright colours, blue skies and smiling faces.

Not your average PC game then, you might be thinking, and you'd be absolutely right. If you've been living in your PC bunker for the last few years, let's bring you up to speed. A big hit in the arcades, Sega's Crazy Taxi was an obvious choice to appear on the Dreamcast, and did so to critical and commercial acclaim well, as commercial as you can be on a console owned by about eight people.

There was a Crazy Taxi 2, but it's the original that we are concerned with here. It's being converted to the PC by the same outfit that brought us Virtua Tennis, a game that shares a similar history: from arcade hit to Dreamcast classic to PC footnote in the space of a couple of years.

Crazy Taxi may have had the Dreamcast brigade drooling into their bibs back in the day, but why on Earth would a discerning PC gamer want to play a two-year-old console game? Rather than posing aggressive rhetorical questions, let's ask the game's producer, Strangelite's Danny Rawles. So is the notoriously snobbish PC community going to be interested? It's an ageless classic that still looks great and plays brilliantly - even in today's market.

We can't argue with that, but is there anything that can be done to improve upon the - admittedly excellent Dreamcast visuals? Our aim is to create a faithful conversion of the DC original and as such, for the majority of players, the game will look identical to the Dreamcast version.

But for those with higher specification PCs, they can benefit from higher resolutions and increased draw distances. Other than that, it's exactly the same game, and one that sees you take the wheel of that big yellow car in the pictures. Cruising round one of two fictional cities in the titular taxi, the idea is to take passengers to their intended destination in the quickest possible time, something of a breath of fresh air literally for anyone who regularly uses cabs in London.

A fairly simplistic concept, but there is more to it than that, such as the fact that tips can be earned by driving flamboyantly, or to be more accurate, dangerously. Weaving through an impossible gap will yield a squeal of delight from your passenger, and an extra couple of dollars in your arse pocket.

Yes, if it wasn't already blatantly obvious, the game is of course set in America. As such, crass commercialism is rife, and a number of major brand name outlets provide some of the destinations. Although the general direction is hinted at by a great big arrow at the top of the screen, the cabbie's proverbial knowledge will come in handy, and being able to recognise areas and find your way around town will be invaluable.

Each city comes replete with a working traffic system, with none of the ambient drivers in the least bit bothered that you are in a hurry. As well as the two cities, a host of challenges are available, such as bursting balloons and even knocking down bowling pins, another parallel with Virtua Tennis.

The emphasis is clearly on 'fun', and Crazy Taxi could well prove a welcome departure from the goblin-ridden nonsense that traditionally pervades the PC. The game's producer certainly thinks so: "Absolutely. Not only are these games fun to play but they are also fun to develop and produce. Crazy Taxi is one of those rare games that offers instant pick-up-and-play gratification. The game is insanely fast and fun to play and I strongly believe PC gamers will enjoy the 'adrenaline rush' gameplay that our console cousins have always raved about.

It may have escaped your notice, but the PC is also privy to another high-profile console conversion of a driving game. Both games are great in their own right but they are different enough to stand out on their own and not get in each other's way. In the happy-go-lucky world of Crazy Taxi, potential hit-and-run victims show amazing reflexes and athleticism, and prove impossible to mow down, something that may prove anathema to blood-crazed PC gamers.

According to Rawles, this is something PC gamers need to get over. The best Taxi players will try not to hit any objects at all because the whole premise of the game is about speed. Fair enough.

Midtown Madness employed a similar system of pedestrians leaping out of the way, and that proved popular enough. Is there a direct comparison with that game? It could almost be classed as a genre-defining game Of course it could. Whatever it is, it's certainly not a simulation, and while it may technically be classified as a driving game, it has more in common with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater than it does with the latest Formula One title.

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. In Crazy Taxi, time is money, and only the Craziest Cabbies come out victorious. Total War Napoleon Definitive Edition. You take on the role of one of four cabbies, racing against an overall time clock to pick up and drop off as many passengers as possible.

The various moves involve rolling your thumb across the drive and reverse buttons, which can quickly cause severe pain — but the kind of pain you can live with, because pulling off the moves is so much fun. Total War Attila. The gameplay is untouched from the Dreamcast original and has all of the modes, including Crazy Box completing specific challenges and both the Arcade and Original cities. While playing, I was brought back to my younger days, when gaming was better because SEGA was still giving hope that new and creative titles were going to put a Dreamcast in every home.

There are dozens of eager passengers on the street waiting for a ride, all of them color-coded to denote the distance from their destination. The more moves you string together and the faster you get them there, the more cash you earn.

And cash is what you need to be a world-class cab driver. This is an old school arcade game, the kind designed for eating quarters. I love Dreamcast games, but poor Crazy Taxi is starting to show its age.

Midnight Paradise. The music was a big part of what made Crazy Taxi special. The mix of songs from The Offspring and Bad Religion were as memorable and important as pulling off Crazy Drifts and finding new shortcuts. As a taxi driver, your goal is to earn as much money as you can. Seems simple right? In Crazy Taxi Classic, your goal is to earn as much money as you can. To do that, you pick up passengers and then bring them to their destination. There will be an arrow above that will give you directions on whether to turn left, right, or go straight.

This means that you need to make sure you drop the client to their destination before the timer runs out. You also earn additional money from the passenger whenever you do exhibitions like jumping, driving on top of rails, and so on.

Crazy Taxi Classic features several game modes for you to enjoy. After that, you will use the remaining time you have to pick up another client. After that, a new time will be given and then bring the new passenger to the destination.