Crazy Taxi: World Tour captures arcade magic of the original
James Whitfield
3 min read
Sega's long-awaited Crazy Taxi revival appears to have successfully bottled the anarchic energy that made the original a Dreamcast standout. A recent hands-on session with Crazy Taxi: World Tour at Gamescom revealed a game that honors its 1999 predecessor while thoughtfully expanding its core mechanics.
The core appeal remains unchanged: ferry passengers across a bustling map in a souped-up yellow taxi, chaining together tricks and drifts to multiply your earnings against the clock. Protagonist Axel returns with his signature green hair and Hawaiian shirt, accompanied by the original soundtrack featuring The Offspring and Bad Religion. The game's visual and sonic identity deliberately evokes the late-90s skate-punk aesthetic that defined Sega's Dreamcast library.
The taxi itself handles with the same exaggerated agility players will remember. Three core abilities drive the action: Crazy Dash for speed boosts, Crazy Stop for sudden braking, and Crazy Drift for whipping around corners with reckless abandon. The drift mechanic in particular preserves the series' chaotic, tongue-in-cheek spirit, allowing players to fling their vehicle into wild turns and slippery maneuvers with a shoulder button press. The Gamescom demo showcased the Crazy Rush mode, which mirrors the original's sandbox-style solo taxi missions, with multiplayer and a closed beta planned for the future.
The newly revealed Germany map demonstrates how World Tour expands the formula without sacrificing accessibility. The demo began at an airport, where players immediately navigate between jumbo jets and baggage carts before progressing to a picturesque tourist town featuring clock towers, pastel houses, and cobbled streets. Further afield lie a pumpkin festival, winding mountain roads, a secluded lodge, and a hilltop castle. The environments feel lively without impeding momentum, with destructible elements like market stalls, restaurant tables, and rubbish bins reacting to your presence and adding environmental impact.
Mini-games have been woven directly into the maps, introducing new distractions without disrupting the taut arcade loop. Checkpoint time attacks can be initiated by passing through gates, while a collection of Odd Jobs—challenge-based passenger missions—build on the core driving in unexpected ways. One mission involves picking up a man in a squirrel suit and using Crazy Stop to launch him as far as possible. Another tasks players with helping a city worker clean up debris by smashing through bins and boxes while she vacuums up the resulting trash. These diversions maintain the series' irreverent tone while offering meaningful variety.
The demo's standout moment came late in the session, when a passenger named Pierre requested an urgent airport run. What appeared to be a straightforward job transformed into a high-speed chase through the countryside, complete with nitro bombs and pursuits across fields and hills, ultimately culminating in a race to catch a departing plane. The sequence exemplified the game's balance of silliness and genuine excitement—the exact formula that defined the original.
World Tour's visual presentation follows the series' established aesthetic: colorful and occasionally bland, but enlivened by environmental variety and a sense of controlled chaos. Streets feel populated without overwhelming the player, and the constant destruction of environmental objects creates a satisfying sense of impact as you navigate each location.
The revival does arrive amid controversy surrounding the game's use of generative AI, a topic that has shadowed its announcement. However, the hands-on experience suggests that World Tour succeeds in its primary goal: delivering the arcade thrills and anarchic spirit that made the original memorable while introducing smart expansions that feel organic rather than forced. For fans of the series, the game appears poised to deliver exactly what they've been waiting for since the Dreamcast era.
