Crazy Taxi

The Dreamcast, Sega's final plea for world peace, was home to the greatest arcade ports of all time: Marvel vs Capcom 2, Ikaruga, Cosmic Smash, Soul Calibur, and many other games that remind me we're in hell and games will never be this good again. But of course, there's the Big One, the game that everyone remembers, even people with only the slightest familiarity with the Dreamcast, even a Vice Presidential hopeful, that game being Crazy Taxi.

Crazy Taxi is a game that I enjoy tremendously. It is also a game that I should be annoyed by, and should not want in my collection. You're a taxi driver who needs to take passengers where they need to go. But because your taxi is Crazy, you get extra fare money for driving recklessly, weaving around oncoming traffic and doing sweet jumps. The whole time, there's a clock ticking down, and the ends when it hits zero. Now, you can add time to the clock by picking up passengers and getting to destinations quickly, but it's never enough, and your time will end. It's what makes Crazy Taxi so fun and addicting. This is a perfectly-paced arcade game designed to be played in short bursts, getting as many points as you can before time runs out, like a PC-Engine caravan shooter without the shooting. Crazy Taxi gives you that "One More Game" urge, because you have to have a better run than your last one before you go to bed, and bedtime was two hours ago. The Dreamcast port adds a new map to drive around in, and some extra mini-games where you do stunts, but it is still ultimately this exciting little experience you'll want to throw in when you're in the mood for a game, but don't feel like putting in the commitment for Shenmue.

The thing about Crazy Taxi, the thing that should make me hate it, is that it is loaded with two things: obnoxious product placement, and music that I do not care for, to put it mildly. Let me start with the music, because I need to talk about this game's soundtrack. It contains four songs from two bands, Bad Religion and The Offspring. I'm pretty ambivalent about Bad Religion. I don't feel strongly about them one way or another. But The Offspring? Oh my fucking god, there are two situations where I will ever willingly listen to The Offspring:

1. When I'm playing Crazy Taxi.
2. If I have a loaded gun pointed to my head.

I hate The Offspring. What a fucking terrible band! The year before Crazy Taxi came out, these motherfuckers committed an audio war crime with the release of their album Americana, inflicting us all with an all-timer contender for worst song ever made, "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)." For what felt like an eternity, you could not escape from that fucking song. It was everywhere: MTV, the radio, you name it. It was even used as a bumper for the ad breaks on Channel 1, the news network we had to watch when we were in school. And when enough time had passed, and you thought you were safe from uno dos tres quatro cinco cinco seis, here comes "Weird" Al Yankovich with his new parody album, which includes the song, "Pretty Fly (For A Rabbi)," and HERE WE GO AGAIN.

There's a little more to Crazy Taxi than flying around the streets to the sounds of an ill-fitting Offspring song about generational abuse that, much like how my cab veers in and out of busy traffic, veers in and out of victim-blaming single mothers. Crazy Taxi has a ton of flagrant, obnoxious product placement. You pick up a fare: "take me to Kentucky Fried Chicken!" "Take me to Tower Records!" "Take me to The Original Levi's®️ Store!" Real human beings went into a recording booth and were paid money to say, "Take me to The Original Levi's®️ Store!" The kind of eye-rolling cringe that's like an unironic  Mattel and Mars Bar Quick Energy Chocobot Hour. Unlike the Chocobots, I cannot put down this entertaining Sega product, despite my dislike of being advertised to. You can argue that this was done to make the city you drive around in more "real," except that there's nothing particularly real about Crazy Taxi; this isn't exactly a Yakuza game, which is set in a real city with real businesses.

Over the years, Crazy Taxi has been re-released. Versions without the advertisements and a new soundtrack. Fundamentally, it's the same game. Yet, it is always a lesser experience than the original. Why is it that I need to play the version of Crazy Taxi with the senseless ads and music that I hate? A part of me worries that I'm afflicted by a horrible condition that has plagued society for far too long: Irony. Sega games of this era were such genuine, well-meaning creations, and I would feel guilty if I could only enjoy one of these games because it was lame. I've been wracking my brain for longer than I'd like to admit, trying to figure out exactly why I only care about the version of Crazy Taxi with the ads and the music I hate.

But maybe it isn't irony? Crazy Taxi is an incredibly fun game, with a personality reminiscent of an awkward pre-adolescent. You know, listening to music on the radio, which means that it must be good because it's on the radio, even though it isn't actually any good. Focusing on brand names as a way of forging your own identity; maybe you'll become popular if you show up to school wearing a hot new pair of Original Levi's®️. You haven't quite found yourself yet. You're not quite the moody Mall Goth that listens to music your parents hate. You haven't replaced your closet with an all-black wardrobe. You're finding your place in the world. Crazy Taxi feels like the digital equivalent of that, and maybe that's why it has managed to stick with me and so many others in a way that goes beyond, "here is a fun game where you drive fast."