Article by Iain Key
Welcome to part 2 of my short series about the Crazy Taxi 1 video game from the Sega Corporation.
In part 1 I talked the gameplay of Crazy Taxi 1 and how it changed car driving games. In this article I will discuss the games development and marketing and how Sega introduced in-game product placement a then-new and somewhat controversial addition to computer games.
Developing and Marketing Crazy Taxi 1
Hitmaker developed the arcade version of Crazy Taxi 1 at a variation from the other arcade games of the period. The cabinet version of Crazy Taxi ran on hardware from Sega Naomi and was originally a sit-down machine. Later, an upright machine was released. The game was made available for Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo GameCube, PS2, and Microsoft Windows over the next couple of years. On June 1, 2010, the South Korean game rating board revealed that Crazy Taxi 1 would soon be released on the Xbox Live Arcade. This information, as well as the fact that it was one of a number of Dreamcast games that would be made available for the PlayStation Network in the Fall of 2010, was officially released by Sega on June 10, 2010. These new game ports originally had an aspect ratio of 4:3, meaning when played on widescreen monitors, the game would be played between two blue bars. It was revealed in October 2010 that a widescreen version of the game would be implemented that would be a Dreamcast version featuring the game’s original arcade level. On November 23, 2010, the game was released for the PlayStation Network, and its release for the XBox Live occurred the next day.
In 2001, Sega received the 6,200,138th U.S. Patent for moving direction as an indication of method, method of game display, and drive-simulating and game apparatus. The 138th patent’s mechanics compared the arcade cabinet to previous Sega arcade games (L.A. Riders and Harley-Davidson, both released in 1997) but made sure to note Crazy Taxi 1′s unique pedestrian avoidance feature and arrow compass system. Read more
