All I Want - The Offspring

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This time I want to talk about the game series Crazy Taxi 3 (High Roller). For short, in this post, I will refer to it as "CT3", the abbreviation.

The game was published by SEGA which was also a legendary figure in many players' memory. If you are interested in the metadata of this game, I am too lazy to rephrase it but you can look at the encyclopedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Taxi_3:_High_Roller. It is surprising to me that the game's rating is worse than its predecessors.

Thoughts

Many of us agree boys particularly love three types of video games: cars (racing), guns (shooting) and balls (sports) (editor's note: in Chinese media). For me, I have an unbreakable nexus with "cars". Out of all the {singleplayer|multiplayer} games I had played in my childhood, racing games were the most (if there is a chance, I also would like to write a post recalling them), and real-time strategy games, represented by Red Alert, and which is no longer as popular today, were the second. Well anyways, I found this title (CT3) on some fine day, and I didn't know how. Luckily I liked this game very much, and I still like it today when I revisit my memories many years after.

It was more than ten years ago when I was an elementary school kid who was just a novice in using the personal computer (Right, I knew Crazy Taxi via PC. Was that too late?). I used our family's computer to watch TV, "surf on the Internet", and very importantly, looking for video games from all the places. There was almost no awareness of copyrights, their laws or related knowledge in Chinese web communities at that time, so it was always possible for me to find materials somewhere (editor's note: pirated games). Funny thing. I can remember when I was searching for resources for "Crazy Taxi 3" the game, I, many times, ended up with results related to the action movie called "Taxi 3" instead, which put me in a lot of frustration.

But in terms of today, I still haven't checked out that movie. Can someone who watched it send me an email letting me know if it is good?

It was not always easy to find the appropriate resources. In the beginning, I was only able to find the "trail" version of the game, in which there was only one course/map (Glitter Oasis) and only one mode (play for 3 minutes) - which was not enough for me to discover things, at all! I had very good luck and found the game download for the complete version after this error. Despite this success, my playing experience was still affected somehow.

It was probably due to the oldness of our computer (which came with a big CRT display, with a big butt) that in the game, effects looked like what is in the image above. In another word, effects could not be displayed on my PC (The image was a reproduction by me using Windows Paint according to my memory. I made that when preparing this post). The image below is the original look:

One can see that there actually should be fire behind the wheels. Hehe. I was too young at that moment and I could not distinguish them (OK as long as I thought my game was fun).

Thoughts 2

In mid-August, 2020, in order to prepare for my new blog article, I again found the resources of the PC version of the game and cleared it. I also kept some representing screenshots when I was playing the game, for example, the two pictures above.

Yes, right. I have wanted to draft this blog post since late August last year. This is because it had been a very long time since my last blog post. Since I was extremely lazy, I procrastinated stuff and in the end, I just started writing it on a day in February.

Game

In this game, the player will be driving a taxi (cab) that is amphibious and moreover can go into the sky. The mission is to continuously look for clients and carry them to destinations, and finally earn cash. When transporting the passengers, the driver can use "Crazy" stunts to reduce the transporting time as well as to earn extra tips from the passengers. When the player accepts a passenger, they will gain some game time. After the transportation is completed, the player can get some credits together with some more game time for the current round (if the player fails to carry the passengers to their destinations, they will jump off the car). When the timer on the top left goes to zero, the game round finishes.

In the image, the green zone is the passenger's destination. I had to reach that zone within 26 seconds, otherwise the passenger would become angry and leave my vehicle.

And this is the mainstream game content within the CT series (of course other modes exist). One can see this is kind of traditional in arcades - as long as the player can feel their Adrenaline and be happy.

Why did I enjoy CT3? I concluded some reasons for my young self:

• There are open maps that are not small. In fact, the above taxi-playing was not my favourite one (because it was too intense). I rather liked to wander around the city while driving the cab and discover some boundaries of the course that were impossible to cross over. My style of playing games originated from that point.
• Not only do the cab stunts look nice and shiny, but also they give players good responsiveness (after players hit the skills). When I was playing it, I could clearly feel what I did in the game and what my skills caused. In some other words, the playing was immersive, pleasant and crazy.
• This is an old game! At that early moment, I was able to run it smoothly using our low-end also-old PC and had fun. The visual effects were not too bad (except the while fire).

For these kinds of games, the first reason here described me the best. I know this is not universal; some players prefer the appearance of badges which display on the top of the screen when they kill an opponent in FPS games, so they do not really care about how beautiful the map is laid out and decorated, and so we cannot have empathy with each other...

Courses

The game has three courses to play the cab mode. These courses differ significantly in styles, but they generally represent what it looks like in the '90's in the states (including muscle cars). Because of the lens called childhood memory, I am based. I would like to stick to my thoughts that these courses are good, and I do not want to mind the negative reviews from various gaming websites. Let us take a look.

West Coast

With San Francisco, CA being its origin, you can see palms, shorelines and the city's steepest and hilliest streets in a Mediterranean climate setting. West Coast is a city course so you can also see tall buildings if you drive sufficiently far from the start. It is also the only course of all three that is during the day. Remark: by using the jump stunt, the player is able to roll their cab incredibly high, even landing on the rooftops of the buildings beside the streets. This is very fun.

The layout of this course is linear. As a result, some strange passengers will want the driver to drive around the course with a timer. Also because of the layout, this course is the easiest overall of all three available courses. I only had the ability to see the credit screen while playing in this course.

As a fact, this course was a remake of the course called "Arcade" seen in the preceding game Crazy Taxi. Based on Arcade, West Coast added many areas (or shortcuts?) that used to be unavailable in the earlier version. For example, in the earlier game, the seashore near the main street ended abruptly in some wall with forest textures, a.k.a. the boundary of the map, because of which I could only slide near the wall but was unable to get past. In the renewed course, thanks to the newly-opened areas, I could see the extended shoreline and the back of the seaside buildings therein. My desire to discover the edges of the map was fulfilled a little.

Glitter Oasis

You can tell from its name; this course does not give you cool sea wind or fresh morning airs, instead, it is more like a, you know, "glitter" and sleepless night. The origin of this course is Las Vegas, NV.

The lightful downtown and the deserted suburbs within the same course rendered a very remarkable contrast for me. The player's starting point is the centre of the course and also the central downtown. And here you will see many imitations according to the sightseeing destinations in the real-life (similar for other games - if you see some landmarks of LV on the net, you can also see the same beauties in the game - but CT3 came before many of them). The layout of the central part of the course is simple enough as it only has one very wide main street with landscapes on both of its sides. Additionally, there are bridges with escalators over crossroads so you can drive onto the ramps and jump very far (the scene appeared in one of the game's trailers). The music that comes with the game does for the occasion (for example in the PC version, Jungle Man - Robot Girl), or say, is flirtatious.

Things become different if one drives out of the town. The canyon, rivers, mountain roads and the darkness which are different from the town, will dominate the player and give them a fresh new but kind of unfriendly driving experience. As new players are not familiar with the course and the destinations, they will end up doing circles around the mountain, or even worse - they can fall down from the mountain and then they need some efforts to climb up the ramps get back.

I used to try escaping the map by jumping around a short wall on the dam. I failed.

Small Apple

The course corresponds to New York, NV in real life and is also set at night. As a result, the lights from the buildings and cars are also dazzling enough to make my eyes disfunction. The course features a dense forest of skyscrapers, a large amount of crossroads (also the rooftops that can be reached via jumping used to avoid detours), and the "Central Park" (a forest at the centre of the course) that caused a lot of trouble to me when maneuvering the cab within it.

This course is the most difficult one of all three. It is not a linear one but is laid out like a chessboard. If the player does not know the course well, then it will be certainly a nightmare when they hastily attempt accepting passengers in the city. Sometimes the straight line distance of a passenger's destination and the pickup point is very short, but it requires the driver to go around the buildings so the actual distance is longer, thus creating some requirements to the player about their abilities to plan routes ahead and use shortcuts appropriately. The best example that shows this is the minigame level S-S, where memorizing the course is a bottom line to complete the level in the lowest standard (difficulty).

However, there does not seem to be any other special things to mention about this course, like its real-life counterpart NY, which people find boring. Also another thing - this course is a remake of the same-named course seen in its predecessor, Crazy Taxi 2.

The various destinations in the game are also interesting. Besides those large-scaled ones like Hoover Dam, Central Park, etc., there are also Gap, Burger Kings, KFC, Pizza Hut restaurants and so on that can be found in real life scattered around each course. Not sure whether the game studio had to pay license fees to them, but they enhance players' immersion.

Besides the layout stuff, each course also has four playable drivers (so 12 in total) with their unique cars and voices. It is worth mentioning that in each group, there are at least one black driver and one female driver.

Maneuver

Arrow keys for driving and turning, space for jumping, D gear and R gear for shifting are everything. The game is also fun when playing with the keyboard instead of joysticks. Since CT3 is an arcade-like game, most of the playing consists of invoking skills (stunts) that are highlighting to give players excitement. The stunts not only look good visually but also give real benefits in transporting passengers.

Some stunts that are used often or not often include:

• Crazy Jump - press space to jump.
• Boost/Burst (? not confident enough) - (almost) hit D gear and throttle at the same time. The car will speed up with fire appearing beneath its rear wheels.
• Crazy Dash - when starting at rest, hit R gear, then hit D gear and throttle at the same time. The car will speed up more, and the fire will be longer.
• Crazy Drift - push D gear, R gear and direction key (optionally with throttle). The car will start drifting radially around a point.

Based on these, there are additionally "hybrid stunts" for some specific cases:

• Limiter Cut - use Crazy Dash, change to R gear, wait for half a second and then use Crazy Dash again, repeat. The car's speed will keep increasing.
• Crazy Back Dash - use Crazy Dash when reversing so the car quickly goes back. Used when you hit the wall and need to reverse.
• Crazy Stop - when moving, use Crazy Dash in reverse (hit R gear and throttle). This can stop the car immediately.
• Drift Stop - use Crazy Drift while decelerating so that the car faces another direction when it fully stops.
• Drift Hop - Jump while executing Crazy Drift. The car can reach higher destinations parallel to the road.

 

 

Many things in CT3 have the word "Crazy" prefixed in their names. For example, when the player starts a new game, the narrator will say:

Let's go make some crazy money.

Where craa~~~zy is pronounced overly long.

When I was playing the game, I used Crazy Dash and Crazy Stop the most, in which the former is used for accelerating and starting, the latter for accurately stopping beside the customers. Nevertheless, all players have to constantly shift between D gear and R gear while driving to obtain maximum speed, and at the same time, the viewers can watch the satisfying fire show. But one should be careful not to shift gears too quickly otherwise they will execute drift stunts instead.

Despite being an old game, CT3 does a good job in physics. For example, the cab can spin thanks to its rear wheels when the player starts the cab, because of excessive engine power (that is why the dash stunts are needed). There is also good physical responsiveness when objects (like crates and telephones booths) are smashed, that is, the objects flying away (almost forming a almost-destructive environment).

Given that the cabs being quick and the courses being open, can players hit pedestrians? I have tried and experimented and the answer is a no. In CT3, the player is not able to hit any people, including passengers standing by the road on the land and those "standing" underneath the sea awaiting pickups (!). No matter how quick is the player, they cannot hit the people whose reaction is so maximum that they can jump away in minimal time, and even though sometimes bug to go across the wall. In playing GTA series, I would feel somehow guilty oftentimes when running over passers-by. I do not have to worry about it when playing CT3.

When you want to pick up a passenger, you had better not to crash into them, but stop precisely next to them. If you do not do so, they will jump away and then slowly approach your cab when you come to a full stop, which will waste a lot of time. Meanwhile, you can hear the passengers complaining about you.

The players will still crash into road traffics anyways - because the NPC cars do not avoid players. This can result in a speed loss, so it is better for the player to avoid the traffic (otherwise the game becomes less challenging for this part).

In conclusion, CT3 gives players enough excitement and pleasure thanks to its setting that allows them to drive crazily and care-free. Well, it also makes the player feel exhausted because of its fast paces.

minigames

Except shuttling in the three urban courses, CT3 also has "Crazy X" mode (used to be called "Crazy Box" in earlier games) where there are 25 mini-games that test the understanding of the player to the game. The player has to beat fundamental levels in order to advance to more difficult levels. In each of the games, the course is different, for example, the image above whose course look very fantastic (P.S. that mini-game consist of many moving and floating platforms which the player need to get through using appropriate jumping to get to the destination. It is not very hard).

The player is able to select any one driver (and their cab) from the twelve to play these mini-games. The key to most of the games is to use certain stunt skills suitably. For example the first level (1-A):

The goal of this game is to jump farther than 400m after the ramp. The key here is to use Crazy Dash to accelerate while on the ramp, and then use Crazy Jump on the while leaving it. It is worth mentioning that the cab can still be accelerated even though it is in the air. So normally the real score by an experienced player is an awful lot more than just 400 meters (which is a minimal requirement). In the end, the player's score is divided into levels: "Great record", "Awesome record", "Mental record", "Loco Record" and "Crazy Record".

In addition to the games that teach players skills or test their understanding, there are funny games such as the one where the player uses the cab to hit a giant baseball to perform a home run, the one where the cab is so magnetic that all the cars in the field automatically come and hit the player, and the one where the player has to go through the hurricane to reach the customer's destination:

Of course, the wind must lift some objects and throw them at the player.

There are also extremely difficult levels that test the player's endurance to accept repetitive failures. For example, one level requires the player to smash all the bowls using Crazy Drift:

For me, this was an awful level.

The last three games in Crazy X are the final trails. In these three levels, the player will return to the three courses seen in the mainstream mode. In 3-A, the player has to drive around West Coast in less than 4 minutes; in 3-B, the players will transport 50 customers in order within 9 minutes in Glitter Oasis; In S-S, they will need to rely on their knowledge about Small Apple to transport 35 customers within 6 minutes and without hints.

It usually will not take more than a morning of playing time to beat all these levels (including failed attempts). After finishing the challenges, not only can the player gain more understanding of the controlling, but also additional bonuses that can be used in the mainstream mode can be received:

• Unlock the maps of the three courses and new modes
• Unlock a tricycle, a carouse and a baby stroller (which are cabs as well) in addition to the 12 already-there cars
• Ability to play as any driver in any course (the player could only use the fixed 4 drivers in each course before this)

 

 

Then, CT3 can be considered cleared. After this, the player can choose to use the above bonuses to continue playing the normal mode, or to stick with Crazy X and refresh leaderboards. Please revisit the game when you feel bored.

End

For me, CT3 was an awesome game when I was too young to know any fancy things. It had exciting gameplay and courses that are interesting to discover. The controlling is also good, especially the stunts. It makes the player forget about time when playing. If you happen to have played this game too, probably we will have similar game memories.

And finally, a very important part that I missed - is the soundtrack that comes with the game. In CT series, players will hear the albums from The Offspring and Bad Religion, which are really, really awesome. For me, I knew these bands from the game. Well, I think probably every player who has played this game will remember the music that plays at the beginning of the game:

Ok. Ya ya ya ya ya!

And this is the song that I listed at the beginning of this blog post.

After I played this game, I touched many racing games, and I also did not forget my curiosity (desire to discover) and why I started. Well, I tried triggering geographical bugs in all kinds of games. But at the beginning I did not know what the boundary of a game map was meant; I just asked: "why can't I go further from here?"

I realized later that the boundaries were just air walls set there because the game dev team was not able to make more contents.

Utilizing bugs does not sound like proper gaming behaviour, but at least this was why I started playing games - I wanted to discover and I would feel unhappy if someone blocked me from doing so. So, readers, I hope we can remember why we started. At the same time, do not forget those treasured memories from our childhood.

Bonus: Crazy Taxi

I have mentioned this first game in the series several times in this article. Actually, CT was more popular than CT3 which this post mainly talks about, and received more attention from its publisher SEGA. Crazy Taxi is also an arcade game and has a PC version. It was available on smartphones in 2013 (and I was able to play the game on Android. After that, more mobiles games under the brand of CT were released by SEGA, who continued to try to squeeze out some values from this well-known IP) and then went on Steam as well.

Most ways of playing in CT3 originated from CT (except jumping), including stunts. However, the visual effects of CT are not as fancy as CT3. It has two courses: except West Coast (called Arcade), there is also Original which is also very interesting (for example the super big concrete wall in the middle of the town - an obvious trace of the dev's laziness). The railway and the highway in Original were very remarkable to me.

"5EXY515" means "Sexy Sis".

Do you find anything from the images? It is that the main game contents did not change at all from CT to CT3. However, I still hope CT3 can come to mobiles one day.

Bonus: Crazy Taxi 2

This one did not come to the PC, unfortunately. Although this game was also earlier than CT3, it was based on SEGA platforms so I was not able to see it closely. I instead played it for the first time on PSP3000 - many years after I played these other two.

On PSP, the game is called "Crazy Taxi: Fare War", where CT and CT2 are bundled together.

Since it was a portable console, I did not bother taking screenshots - and I rather just photoed this way. CT2 also has two courses: Small Apple and Around Apple, and both of which are during the day (in CT3, the remade Small Apple became a night map). Crazy Jump was first introduced in this game.

The music in the trailer of CT2 was Walla Walla by The Offspring. Because CT2 had a day-mode Small Apple in contrast to the one in CT3, I was interested in it for very long until I got a PSP which then made me satisfied. I would say the reason why I purchased a PSP was this.