Crazy Taxi

Crazy Taxi is an arcade driving game developed by Sega's Hitmaker division and released in arcades in 1999, then ported to the Dreamcast in 2000 and later to other platforms. The player takes the wheel of a taxi in a bright, open American city and races to pick up fares and deliver them to their destinations as fast and as recklessly as possible, earning money for speed, near-misses, and daring driving while the clock ticks down. The game is built around an exaggerated sense of momentum, with jumps, boosts, and traffic to weave through, and a scoring system that rewards aggression over caution. It is remembered for two things in particular: a licensed punk soundtrack featuring The Offspring and Bad Religion, and destinations built from real American chain stores, including Pizza Hut, KFC, and Tower Records, which turned the map into a kind of high-speed advertisement and, unintentionally, one of the most honest snapshots of American consumer culture in any game. Crazy Taxi was a major arcade and Dreamcast hit and spawned a series of sequels and spin-offs. That this loud, product-saturated joyride through an idealised American city was made by Sega in Japan is, by the standards of this catalogue, entirely expected.