Sega’s upcoming reboot of ‘90s arcade classic Crazy Taxi will be a “triple-A” game, according to the head of one of the Japanese studios working on the driving game’s return.
Crazy Taxi was among the slew of Sega games revealed to be making a comeback during a rapid-fire trailer shown at the Geoff Awards in December, alongside the likes of Streets of Rage, Golden Axe and Jet Set Radio.
While Crazy Taxi has seen – like all series with at least a crumb of public recognition – a more recent mobile game spin-off, the franchise’s last original PC entry was Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller, released 20 years ago. Really though, I’d wager that most people only really remember the first entry – even if its PC port excised the iconic Offspring and Bad Religion-dominated soundtrack of the arcade and console releases for a new playlist.
With only a few scant seconds of gameplay glimpsed during that initial teaser, indicating some kind of multiple element and the ability to hop into other vehicles including sports cars and police cars, we don’t yet know exactly what form the Crazy Taxi reboot will take. Comments made by the president of Sega’s Sapporo Studio, which are working on the game, might give us plenty to speculate about in the meanwhile, at least.
Speaking to Japan Times for a profile of the relatively fledgling studio, who were established in the Hokkaido prefecture capital only a couple of years back at the end of 2021, Takaya Segawa said that the team were “participating in the development of Triple-A titles, including Crazy Taxi”. (Thanks, Eurogamer.) While Sega Sapporo aren’t leading development – Segawa clarified that the team are contributing and don’t have any independent projects of their own just yet – they are collaborating with the likes of Sega’s Tokyo and international studios.
The use of “triple-A” here should be taken with a mountain of salt, of course, given the way that major developers like to chuck the letter A at their games like I chuck sriracha sauce at a pile of chips: without restraint, despite inevitably knowing the heat it will deliver.
Still, it’s perhaps an interesting sign of what a modern-day Crazy Taxi might be like, especially taken alongside the news that fellow turn-of-the-century DreamCast favourite Jet Set Radio will be rebooted as a fully open-world game in the vein of pretty much every triple-A game that comes out nowadays.
The snatches of Crazy Taxi seen during that reveal – again, all we’ve seen so far – certainly look sharp, but “triple-A” implies far beyond visual fidelity. Could it end up being another open-world game with missions to take on beyond “go here”, collectibles to find and, uh, car-park towers to “climb”? Maybe it’ll go the Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild route and require you to mark your own destinations on a map rather than conveniently laying out the best route for you. Who knows, maybe we’ll be racing around in a shared online world where we can leave our cars to gather resources, emote at passing drivers (middle finger and “wanker” motion unlocked via Road Rage battle pass) and question whether we really needed so much world to explore anyway.
