Insert Coin – Crazy Taxi

We’re all…responsible people, right? I mean, most of us have a K53 driver’s license that promotes reckless checking of your blind spots that cause a terrible amount of accidents when applied in real life, and even those of you who bought your license drive reasonably decently. But sometimes, you just want to let loose.

Screw the rules, let’s drive on the sidewalk! Stop street my massive fat ass! Red light robots can eat my dust! Usually, games that offer such freedom, also offer some consequences to go along with it. But then there’s Crazy Taxi. A video game which not only encouraged reckless driving, but rewarded you for it.

First released in arcades way back in 1999, the objective was simple. Pick up a passenger, and drop them off as quickly as possible, road rules be damned. It was essentially the forerunner to my own upcoming game, South African Taxi Simulator 2017. In stores soon kids! To get your client to their drop-off point in time, required quick thinking, reflexes and an absolute lack of morality.

And man oh man, did it work. Crazy Taxi was tremendous amounts of tense fun, as you’d barrel your way through town while keeping an eye on the clock. Many a token was swallowed by Crazy Taxi stands before it shifted onto the Sega Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 consoles, living a long life on even more hardware in the years to come.

But those original arcade stands, were works of art.

The first stand was a standard sit-down cabinet, decked in neon green and checkerboard patterns. And it was alright. But the subsequent stands, were so, so much better. The upright version was a simpler setup, but one that popped magnificently thanks to it being coated in a generous amount of taxi yellow paint that also featured a meaty sound system which blasted out tunes from The Offspring and Bad Religion.

Generation X, at its finest.

Last Updated: March 15, 2016