Crazy Taxi for GameCube 9 / 10

CRAZY TAXI (GameCube)

Perhaps the most popular game ever released for the Sega DreamCast console is CRAZY TAXI. You play the role of a crazed taxi driver, driving a convertible taxi around the streets of a city. You pick up fares and drive them to their destination; the faster you do so the more points you can earn. The game hams it up with lots of cartoonish car crashes, spectacular leaps, and impossible physics. It's the kind of game that makes you laugh out loud, and is great to play with friends.

Acclaim has the rights to port CRAZY TAXI to other systems, and have done so with first the Sony PS2 and now the Nintendo GameCube.

Recently I stopped by a video store to see what GameCube discs they had to rent. The only game they had for GameCube that I haven't already played (I own Rogue Leader and WaveRace, and have rented Luigi's Mansion) was CRAZY TAXI. I recently read that CRAZY TAXI rated only a 4.9 (out of 10) from one online review site and a 6.7 from another site.

I was a bit reluctant to rent the game for my GameCube but I decided what the heck and rented it for $4. I am glad I decided to ignore the reviews. Let me tell you - this game is a blast! When I took my GameCube with CRAZY TAXI to a friend's house, we were playing CRAXY TAXI for six hours straight, laughing at each other's driving and having a lot of fun with it. I enjoyed the game so much I decided to buy a copy to keep.

These reviews both gave CRAZY TAXI low scores, not because it's a bad game, but because it's a direct port of the DreamCast version, with no new tracks, no new cars, etc. and no real improvements in the graphics or sound.

But what they didn't really empathize in their reviews is that CRAZY TAXI was considered an excellent game on the DreamCast when it came out a couple of years ago. On the Dreamcast this game was rated a 8.7 by one critic and a 9.6 (!) by another. It's almost exactly the same game now on a new system, yet CRAZY TAXI now has a much, much lower rating. Does it really seem that fair to grade essentially the same game lower because of modest improvements in the technology since January 2000?

I guess this just goes to show you that you can't always trust the 'experts'. If you don't own a copy already for another console, I urge you to give CRAZY TAXI a try - at least rent it to see if you like it!
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