Crazy Taxi: Catch a Ride
A 3D racer on a 2D handheld. Does it work?
Tags: Crazy Taxi: Catch a Ride Categories: GBA Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Sep 18th, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Crazy Taxi: Catch a Ride (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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When Crazy Taxi hit the arcades, and later the Sega Dreamcast, everyone loved it.
And for good reason. The game was fast, fun, loaded with humor and you could ALMOST run people down if you were in a psycho mood. Among early 128-bit era games, it was pretty darn fun.
Yet why Sega, with the help of THQ, decided to attempt the game on GBA is beyond me. From the moment the gameplay starts, you can tell there are going to be problems. The root of the problem is that Sega/THQ are trying to pull off a 3D game on a 2D platform. The results are some of the ugliest graphics and wonky controls you’re likely to find outside of the bargin bins of old thrift stores in rural middle America … places where SuperNES is still considered cutting-edge gaming technology.
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First, the graphics are confusing. Nothing is sharp or detailed enough and the polygons Sega manages to push through the GBA are large and awkward-looking, to say nothing of the simplistic textures. In all honesty, you’re better off trying to play the game by remembering what the Dreamcast game looked like than you are trying to interpret what you’re seeing on the screen.
With far fewer controls than the Dreamcast controller, the port to GBA leaves the gamer being able to accelerate and stop, as well as steer with the left D-pad. The upshot is the controls do not offer enough smoothness or responsiveness to pull off the required gameplay necessary to do well in the game. I suppose with an endless supply of time, the graphics and controls could be learned functionally enough to succeed, but really, isn’t life too short for all that bother? Especially when there are far nicer GBA games available.
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Crazy Taxi: Catch A Ride captures a flavor of the original arcade/Dreamcast game, but only enough to make you want to seek out an arcade that still has the game on-hand, or perhaps dig that ol’ Dreamcast out of mothballs for another go.
[You could also pick up Crazy Taxi 3 for the Xbox, which has the first two Crazy Taxi games that were made for the Dreamcast, in addition to the Xbox only CT3 - Ed.]
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Musically, the developers didn’t try very hard to make the transition to GBA’s sound capabilities a particularly smooth or appealing one. The voice work is also far too sparse and low-quality to do justice to the original.
Sega is capable of far better than Crazy Taxi: Catch a Ride. So is GBA. Spare yourself the money and headaches and “just walk on by” Crazy Taxi: Catch a Ride.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
- The game powers up when you turn your GBA on - It is Crazy Taxi |
2.4 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Everything else after power-up is unpleasant - Crazy Taxi horribly ported |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| A perfect example of why one should never attempt to pull off a 3D game on a 2D platform. | |
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Tags: Crazy Taxi: Catch a Ride
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Sep 18th, 2003 and is filed under GBA Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
