Crazy Taxi Now Picking Up Passengers On Android

The Sega Dreamcast might have spelled the end of the company's console aspirations, but there were a few gems on that system. Perhaps the best known title was Crazy Taxi. The game dropped on iOS a while back, but now you can relive the glory days of the Dreamcast on your Android device. Yes, Crazy Taxi is in Google Play, and it's just $4.99.

The basic premise of Crazy Taxi is based around just driving a taxi and picking up passengers, but it's not as boring as it sounds. In fact, it's crazy. Your car can burn rubber as you rush passengers from one location to another along the most insane route possible with the aid of some well-placed ramps. The faster you go, the more crazy money you make.

The Android port of Crazy Taxi can be operated with either touch or tilt controls. The touch controls seem slightly more responsive and they make it easier to trigger a drift. Just double-tap one of the arrows, and the car will slide around turns without issue. The drive and reverse buttons are a good size as well. Double-tapping the drive button gives you a little speed boost too.

This is a console game, and even being from the year 2000, it's still a bigger world than many modern mobile games have. The developers smartly built in a few different game modes to make the gameplay better for a mobile device. You can play for 3, 5, or 10 minutes at a time, picking up as many fares as you can in that time. For a more intense experience, arcade mode gives you a 50 second timer to start with. Then, each person you pick up adds a bit more time. You just keep going until you're out.

The graphics in Crazy Taxi are reasonably good. It looks like a Dreamcast game, which admittedly isn't as nice as most of us remember. Still, the animations are clean, and the game has a distinct style. The slight aliasing on edges is the biggest issue, but it's not even very noticeable when you're driving.

This version of the game also includes the original soundtrack, which is awesome. There's a lot of rock and punk from the 90s blaring over the radio as you weave through the streets, and that's pretty enjoyable. $5 might seem like a lot for a mobile game, but Crazy Taxi is worth it.