Forget Call of Duty, Real Men Need the Retro Love: Crazy Taxi

Now, you may think that taxi driving isn't the craziest of professions. Sure, they'll have the occasional drunken celebrity spilling all of their sordid sexy secrets (and flashing their undercrackers/lack of undercrackers when disembarking), but that's not every day. How about Crazy Homicide Detective? Those guys see all kinds of shit.

Until that's a thing that exists, this little slice of madcap arcade drive-ery will have to suffice. Buckle up, gentlemen, and we'll take a look.

Sega's Crazy Taxi hit arcades in 1999, and was ported to their rather-sexy-yet-doomed Dreamcast the next year. For the uninitiated, it plays a little like a (mostly) law-abiding Grand Theft Auto, a freeroaming romp around a large city map in your cab. The objective, shockingly, is to ferry passengers to their destination post haste. Much like the last taxi we were in. Never were less effs given about the speed limit.

Anywho, the craziness comes in when you go for some stunts mid-journey. Bonus points are awarded for jumps, narrowly avoiding other vehicles, and all kinds of reckless shenanigans. Along the way, a huge mofo of a green arrow will guide you to your goal. Presumably that's what passed for a satnav in 1999. It's effective, in any case.

In the original arcade edition (the rather spangly machine you see on the right; image via primetimeamusements), you had one minute to play. Time extensions would be awarded for getting your charges to where they were going in one piece. Screwing up or dawdling would see you thrusting more of your cashtacular into this hungry bastard's money-hole, as was the case with... every darn arcade machine ever. As was also the case, the fleeting experience was good, chaotic fun while it lasted.

The Dreamcast port brought us some extra options, such as Crazy Box mode. This was a collection of odd little taxi-flavored minigames. Crazy Drift, Crazy Dash, Crazy Attack and more await. We don't know how much crazy is too damn much, but we're probably perilously close right here.

Most importantly, Crazy Taxi was hugely successful and influential. It has since appeared on everything from the GameCube to smartphones, and is still going strong fifteen years later. Who wouldn't want to pay another visit to its suntastic faux California?