"Maybe life is like a ride on a freeway
Dodging bullets while you're trying to find your way" -unnamed polymath

I know I'm not the only person caught unaware of how they made not only one, but TWO mainline sequels to the Crazy Taxi series. While they may not be fully souped-up reimaginings, Crazy Taxi 2 and 3 contain all of the content in the prior entry plus a little more, it's a little more apt to think of these as expansion packs. What this mercifully does is maintain the lean and mean purity of the breakout title and sprinkle in a handful more options and maps for just the right amount of variety and personalisation.

The most standout addition in these expansions for me is the jump button, it's wild how much this shakes up your approach to the West Coast you'd otherwise be nailed to the ground for. With the ability to scale buildings and a sense of mastery of the course, it's insanely satisfying to defy the will of the sat-nav and take batshit and overly-direct routes to a dropoff point. I particularly love pulling off a crazy boost and landing on top of a highrise in the middle of nowhere and finding that the developers had the foresight to put a hidden customer there as a little treat. This is kind of fucking amazing. Unfettered videogames. The moment I understand how the fuck you're supposed to pull off a Crazy Drift it's over for you all.

If ever you feel the meter calling, the PC version of the game is easily available in a simple google search. Be sure to use the CT3Tweaks fan patch that adds certain optimisations, greater framerate and resolution support. The soundtrack is kind of hilariously bad but it's all stored in the root folder as .ogg files and I'm sure it'll be no problem to customise yourself.

I didn't even know Crazy Taxi had sequels until a few months ago. If you look for the game on any current digital games distributor you're only going to find the original, and I never saw any of the others in arcades, so I assumed that Crazy Taxi was just... Crazy Taxi, that's it.

For some reason, Crazy Taxi 2 is only on Dreamcast and PSP, and this game is only available either as a shitty 2004 abandonware PC port that was never released outside of Japan and Europe, or on the original Xbox. Neither game has been re-released in about 15 years. I didn't want to bother with the apparently awful controller setup for PC, or modding in the original soundtrack, and I already had an original Xbox, so I figured I'd go with that version.

My Xbox had been sitting in an attic for at least 2 years at this point, and it had some issues. For one thing, it had a disc stuck in it; it wouldn't eject, and it wouldn't read either. It had been owned by a smoker at some point and though it was pretty clean (all things considered), what little debris was inside the drive had settled and clung tight to the optic, and it was stuck in place. After some cleaning the disc would read, but it still wouldn't come out without manually hitting the lever inside, so it also needed a new drive belt for the eject mechanism. The component video also had a bad Pr cable, though I'd wanted an S-video cable to use it on my CRT anyway so that wasn't a huge loss.

It didn't really impact the ability to play games, so I didn't think much of it at first, but the system also immediately powered on as soon as it was plugged in, and the power button didn't do anything at all; the only way to turn it off was to remove the plug. What this indicates is likely that a trace in the corner of the board has been broken by corrosion, and the source of that corrosion is the capacitor for the system's clock. Almost every original Xbox has this issue.

So the only way to play what is arguably the definitive version of one of the most iconic late arcade releases from one of the biggest video game publishers can only be played by either settling for a bad version that you'll have to fix yourself, or by using a machine that's basically shitting itself to death, which you will also have to fix yourself.

I say "definitive version" because the Crazy Taxi sequels aren't really "different" games, they don't have alternative content, they have new content. Each new game still contained the maps and drivers from the old games, while adding new mechanics. Crazy Taxi 3 has Crazy Taxi 1 and 2 in it, it should have rendered previous games obsolete, it should have become the standard, and yet it's been almost completely forgotten outside of a tiny number of hardcore fans.

The main additions that the sequels made in terms of gameplay, aside from the new levels, is the ability to jump and the option to pick up groups instead of just single passengers. Jumping naturally allows for both more movement altogether as well as some crafty shortcuts. Picking up groups introduces a greater deal of risk/reward: groups offer much higher fares, but you won't get any of the money unless you make it to every stop. If you fail, you not only lose out on the money, you've also lost a lot more time than if you had picked up a single person.

Why hasn't this game had a modern release? Maybe it's because of its nature as an Xbox exclusive. Maybe it's because of the licensed music from major rock acts. Maybe it's all of the product placement. Maybe it's because after three different versions of Crazy Taxi, critics at the time had gotten bored of it. Checking Metacritic, Craxy Taxi 2 and the PS2 port of the original were the only versions that were received particularly well around the time this game released.

Whatever the case, it's bizarre that a genuinely good installment from a major series has been relegated to more or less the same fate as shovelware.

i found out RECENTLY that the third installment wasnt just in original Xbox cryostasis like a handful of other titles darts my eyes angrily over at jet set radio's sexy ass

So naturally I lunged on the opportunity to play it!! I have no idea why this is so Out Of The Way to really get your hands on to play. The first crazy taxi was a smash hit and i knew this even before getting to play the games recently this year for the first time, so what the hell? whys the second And third one not supported... like at All
Could it be that SEGA simply felt "oh theyre similar enough i dont think anyone cares"
because thatd be like..

thinks really hard

atleast the eighth stupidest thing theyve ever thought
crazy taxi 3 high roller boasts the same experience you can expect from the past two games but I actually think I like this one more than the second but slightly less than the simplicity of the first and hearing The Offspring each time I start that bullshit up
which is basically a splitting hairs way of saying I think this is a near perfect trilogy of games and i like each entry for reasons so marginally different theyre not even really worth bringing up in review

especially when crazy taxi 3 lets you use.. EVEEEEERYONE
new drivers and old! you even get a mission mode/campaign thing accompanying the quickplay stuff youuve come to anticipate, but this one especially kicks ass six ways to space and back because get this

you can JUMP in this one. you can J U M P, you can even combine the crazy boost/dash with it for some good shortcutting
though this does favor some situations better than otherssss...

you cant just completely trivialize these maps with this ability(thank god)
but you can get some run saving shit done hohhhhhhhhhh and there's a handful of areas tht can act like ramps
this is both helped and hurt by the physics engine allowing for you to just tip over cars or shove them now instead of more often than not feeling almost like youo slapped into a brick wall or something oblong and hard for a moment before they just kept driving and you kept going
its weird

But yeah I love this game i dont got too much to say on it because with all due fairness it IS just crazy taxi again but that formula is already so good that they didnt even fumble with this one in any way shape or form apart from the PC version not including some of the most classic songs, and thats not even really the GAME'S fault thats more whatever shitlord was running the show when this was hot off the press' fault
i g et these games came out really close to one another but cmonnnn
why is this treated like a dirty little secret
its really good </3

Absolutely fantastic and as good as it could possible be for this type of gameplay.

Pros:
dumbly fun gameplay
interesting style
short but fantastic

Cons:
the original soundtrack for the pc version is terrible but is easily changed, just drop in the ogg files in the music folder.
The game's engine tends to lag if on the more difficult to render parts, even on PC.

9/10