Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Highly addictive"

If there is any killer app worth talking about on the Dreamcast, Crazy Taxi undoubtedly proves that even an arcade game in the late 90s can make the difference in selling a video game system.The thing is, Crazy Taxi is just so damn addictive. And married with the luxurious visuals, only possible on the Dreamcast, it is a sure fire hit.

So taking it from the top, this Crazy Taxi looks delicious. The game runs at a shockingly smooth and speedy rate with very little slowdown, lots of detail and only just a bit of pop-up. The cars themselves look great and the world itself feels just as expansive and huge as it did in the arcade. What makes the game even sweeter is that it runs on a VGA monitor, just to crank the resolution to it's highest as well as supporting the 60Hz option in PAL territories.

As for the sound, while it uses music that really has a mixed reception as far as like and dislike are concerned, the use of the pop rock like Offspring works well with the atmosphere presented in Crazy Taxi. There isn't much variation in music, but it makes for a nice change from the otherwise generic soundtrack.Then again though, it would've been intriguing to see what the Sega in-house teams could've done instead. As far as voice acting is bothered, there really isn't much to say besides it is OK. There is a little mistranslation and poor dialogue and choice in voices, but since they'll not be heard so often, it isn't much of a deal.

Finally getting the gameplay, Crazy Taxi revolves around you racing customers to their destination as fast as possible in the set time limit to try and see how much money you can earn. It is a simple concept, but works greatly for that very reason. If the challenge is a little too tough, the game can be adjusted to play for a longer time period and also using a different set of rules. The main differences this version of Crazy Taxi has from the other on arcade is that this version contains an extra city and a few mini-games to play to best your driving skills and unlock secrets.

These are nice little bonuses to the already excellent Dreamcast conversion and help make the game a little more lengthy since the actual lifespan of the game is a little short. Obviously, since Crazy Taxi is an arcade game, it relies more so on replaying the game and improving your score when you only have a few minutes of spare time compared to an RPG that is very time consuming and over 10 hours in play. However even with all the advantages already stated in Crazy Taxi, there are just a few minor quirks in the game itself that stop it from being the very best.

For starters, the controls are kind of weird. The joystick feels just a tad too sensitive when controlling the car and the driving itself when reversing and accelerating has to be changed in an unusual way, relying on the player to switch it manually as opposed to the computer doing it automatically. This is a little annoying, but not too much of a problem. Also, the game lacks any real multiplayer or Sega Net support. This again drains at the eventual lifespan of Crazy Taxi since it could've taken advantage of downloadable content in the form of new vehicles, characters, cars, etc.

Besides these light failures though, Crazy Taxi is by all means the best arcade experience to be found on Dreamcast. It isn't very expensive to find and isn't that hard to get into either. It supports many of the extra devices now found commonly on the DC, such as the vibration pack and VGA adaptor, but sadly lacks in any real reason to keep playing other than score tracking. But forget the problems, just try it out at the very least.