The Dreamcast had many innovative and original games, and Crazy Taxi stands out as the best of the lot, to the extent that I can still happily boot the game up for a quick drive through its perfect blue skies recreation of San Francisco. In fact, I even fired it up just ahead of getting a first hands-on of the long overdue series reboot, Crazy Taxi: World Tour at Gamescom 2026. Perhaps that was a mistake, as it only helped drive home everything about the new game that felt wrong to me.
After the original announcement looked like a case of deja vu by being set once again in the West Coast, World Tour's Gamescom demo at least delivers on the sub-title's premise by taking you to another part of the world. Rather apt for Gamescom, I get to drive around a map based on Germany, complete with a gothic cathedral, colourful market square, and wind turbines. And even though this reboot is supposed to be an open-world, it actually stays true to the original game's layout, which is actually shaped like a circuit.
But the problem comes once you start driving.
In the original Crazy Taxi, your cab doesn't control like other cars in racing games, it uses a simple gear shift where D is for driving and R is for reversing. Those D and R gears are still present in the game's UI on the bottom right of the screen but they might as well not be because you don't change them anymore, with the cab just going into reverse after you've held down brake and come to a stop, similar to how driving controls are implemented in other games with driving elements.
Instead, tricks like Crazy Boosts and Crazy Drifts have been simplified to just pressing a dedicated button. In the case of boosting or coming to a quick stop, you just press B together with the trigger for accelerating or brake respectively.
The new Nitro Boost that's a staple of other arcade racers I don't mind so much, as it does require charging up a gauge, which fills faster when performing skillful manouvres like passing cars very closely or drifting fills it up faster. In any case you'll find that you can't use it that regularly and some challenges there's a limit to how many Nitro Boosts you can use in order to get the highest 'Crazy' rating, so Crazy Boosts remain an important skill to use instead if you want to keep going fast.
Obviously, the story campaign also means a different pacing as you're not constantly under the clock like the original arcade game but can drive around freely and stop at NPCs for a variety of missions.
There's a bit of goofy charm to it on a surreal level to the Yakuza games, though in Crazy Taxi's context I can't help but think back to the passenger characters you just understood from looking at them for a second - the pregnant lady who needs to get to the hospital, the reverend who needs to get to the church, the guy with flowers trying to get to his date at the lighthouse - without needing to listen to their life story.
Outside of the story missions, you can also pick up any other passenger, which then has you entering a kind of mini arcade mode where you do have a timer to get as many fares as you can. It's however a cheap imitation as there's no bonus that extends the timer and you're even allowed to just drop off your last passengers when the timer has run out.
Another vital element is the soundtrack, and those iconic songs from The Offspring and Bad Religion return, something that had blighted later ports that replaced the music with completely different bands. An important detail is that these tracks are the shortened edits that the original game had, which ensures you'll get to hear a few of them even if your shift is very brief, something post-Dreamcast ports overlooked, while later ports replaced the soundtrack altogether.
But these only songs only kick in when a mission starts. I think I understand the intent behind it, but surely the soundtrack should still feel kick-ass crazy rather than just bland filler?
Maybe these are just very nitpicky 'old man yells at cloud' details to get bummed out about, and perhaps the new multiplayer mode, which is getting a closed network test very soon, might be able to redeem things. But having clocked countless hours on the Dreamcast game, Crazy Taxi: World Tour simply doesn't have the fundamental feel of Crazy Taxi for me. It's like driving a car with a stick then being given an automatic and being expected to have the same experience. It just isn't.
Crazy Taxi: World Tour releases for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2 in 2027.
