Sega is going through one of those phases when it decides it wants to be Sega again — the Sega of blue skies, killer arcade cabinets, and the glorious unfulfilled promise of the Dreamcast.
Last week, the publisher released the first original Super Monkey Ball game in a decade. At the Game Awards last December, the company announced an initiative to bring some of its classic game franchises back to life, including new games in the Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and Crazy Taxi series.
That was a fan-pleasing move, though many questioned how (or, indeed, whether) Sega intended to make these games relevant for a modern audience. We now have a partial answer, as far as Crazy Taxi is concerned.
Sega is moving to staff up the development team making the new Crazy Taxi, and in a series of job adverts, the game is consistently referred to as a “large-scale online title,” “open world,” and a “massively multiplayer driving game.” The original is a tight, fast-paced arcade driving game about ferrying passengers around a city map as fast as possible.
In an ad seeking a lead game designer, Sega says the project is “aiming to become a global hit, primarily in the North American market.” Sega would prefer its new lead game designer to have experience in both “car game production” and “multiplayer action battle production.” The game is being made in Unreal Engine.
Sega also posted a recruitment video (in Japanese) featuring producer Kenji Kanno — the director of the original game — and other developers. In the video (according to VGC), the developers talk about adapting the classic Crazy Taxi gameplay for a world with multiple players set on a “theme park-like” city map. Brief work-in-progress clips from the Game Awards announcement video show multiple cabs trailing sparks as they drift around a San Francisco-style city.
The news may set off alarm bells about overreach — can a game series that last saw a home console release in 2002 really support a “global hit” in the 2020s, however much nostalgia there is for it? On the other hand, Crazy Taxi’s frantic gameplay and joyously garish style seems well suited to a bustling, competitive online world, and might even support a battle royale-style mode. The idea of a more over-the-top, arcade-coded rival to the likes of Forza Horizon — or, to put it another way, a Fortnite on wheels — doesn’t seem so crazy after all.
The new Crazy Taxi — like the reboots of Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Golden Axe, and Streets of Rage — does not yet have a release date.
