Crazy Taxi - The More Insanely You Drive The Better

Crazy Taxi is a late 90′s arcade game that later became a console classic and has now landed on the iOS platform as an iPhone and iPad Games application. This whacky taxi game originated in the arcade back in 1999 before flourishing onto consoles, and much to my pleasure it’s been ported to the iOS platform as an Universal app working on both the iPhone and iPad. While I never played this in the arcade nor on the console, I had an absolute blast playing this crazy taxi time-management game on my iPad. Any game that gives you more points for doing nutty stuff like driving into oncoming traffic, getting “air” from jumps, or earning combo points from drifting is my kind of game. Crazy Taxi played fantastically on the iPad (3rd generation), minus a few graphical anomalies.

The object is to pick 1 of 4 characteristically real taxi drivers, then pick up your fares (customers) and drop them off as quickly as possible. There are no laws or rules, except those of gravity and physics, and as already mentioned, the zanier you drive the more yellow points you will see added into the fare total, which is your score. At the end of the game your selected driver earns a license based on how well you did: like the letter grades of A,B,C,D,F — and you will see a rank. There are a variety of game modes like Arcade, Arcade Rules, Work for 3 Minutes, Work for 10 Minutes, and of course the Crazy Box levels or mini-games. Crazy Box is just that, they are a series of challenges, events, levels, whatever you want to call them that you first must complete to unlock the next, then you can replay them. Unfortunately, I have some work to do here. I completed the downhill ski-like jump, which was crazy as well as the Combo 10, but am stuck on the 3rd challenge or 1-3, which requires you to pick up a bunch of dudes and drop them off before time — I am close, but no cigar as of yet.

From my experience, Crazy Taxi is a lot of fun to play. The graphic anomalies were brief and never interrupted the gameplay to the point that I needed to quit or that the game locked up on me — they were just brief periods of expected port glitches. Don’t be shy to see what you can drive on: like roofs, water, people (don’t worry no blood, gore or death in this game). There are also lots of hidden ways to earn extra cash from launching your cab on jumps on the sides of roads, in parks, and on large steps — so experiment and you will find that almost the whole game board is playable. This game is priced at $4.99 and works on the iPhone and iPad, which is a bit pricey. If you cannot afford to buy now, you can always hold off until the upcoming iTunes App Store sales for Halloween, Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and of course — Christmas. However, if you cannot wait that long, I would splurge because the amount of gameplay for the spend is worth it in my opinion. Be sure to watch the Crazy Taxi iPad App Video Review for a look at how this game plays on the iPad.