Originally developed and released by Sega in January 2000 for the Dreamcast, 23 months later Crazy Taxi has found it’s way onto the GameCube courtesy of Acclaim. Acclaim realized that Crazy Taxi would still find a big audience on the GameCube despite a previous PS2 port, and thus began work on the port early enough to have it ready for the GameCube launch. For the most part the greatness of Crazy Taxi arrives intact on GameCube, but the platform switch has brought about a few problems.

Luckily, none of those problems lie in the gameplay. The greatness of Crazy Taxi’s gameplay has arrived completely intact. In Crazy Taxi, the gamer takes control of one of four different taxi drivers and then proceeds to pick up people and deliver them to their destinations. The objective is to pick up and deliver as many of them as possible within the allotted time limit. If you deliver them to their destination quickly, you’ll get bonus time added to your time limit. If you drive really well (sliding around corners, avoiding collisions, jumping ramps, etc.), you can also earn extra fare for the trip.

All of this sounds very simple, and the basic gameplay mechanics really are. However, there is a lot of hidden strategy that veteran players will be able to exploit. In order to deliver citizens to their destinations as quickly as possible, you’ll need to fully explore the city and discover numerous shortcuts. Each of the two cities (the original arcade one plus the level created for the Dreamcast) is very large, and offers a number of different shortcuts (including going over buildings in some cases) you can exploit.

In addition to just driving around and trying to earn as much money as possible, there is also a game mode called Crazy Box. This mode consists of nine different mini-games, each featuring a different challenge for you to beat. Each mini-game is very different, and each presents a nice challenge that will push even the most hardcore of crazy drivers. However, this doesn’t change the fact that the core game is still pretty short and lacking in replay value. Once you explore both cities (which while large, are still finite), the game is basically over. There are only so many times you can pick up the same people over and over before it gets tiring, regardless of how fun it is. The Crazy Box mode helps some, but again it only offers nine little mini-games.

Graphic-wise, the GameCube version of Crazy Taxi falters even more than the PS2 version did. On the PS2 it was barely passable, but here it’s simply unacceptable. It looks almost identical to the Dreamcast version, and that’s really the problem. With far superior hardware and plenty of time to clean the game up (it doesn’t take long to do a straight port to the GameCube), it’s should look a lot better than the Dreamcast or PS2 versions. Blurry textures and tons of pop-up are everywhere to be found, and the pop-up is particularly bad because it seems to be even more prevalent then it was on the DC or PS2. The reasoning for this is beyond me, although it’s probably due to it being a port of a port (the PS2 version). When put aside games like Star Wars Rogue Leader and Wave Race: Blue Storm, it’s horrendous. On the plus side, this port does eliminate the slowdown problems that plagued earlier versions, as it runs at a crisp 60fps at all times.

Both Offspring and Bad Religion provide the music in Crazy Taxi, and on the whole it sounds really good. It’s the high-energy type of stuff you would expect in a game like this, and it fits the action really well. Character voices, on the other hand, are a mixed bag. Some of them sound really good and match up to the character onscreen, but others sound terribly grating and don’t match at all.