A game where everyone can enjoy their own style and gain positive energy
More than two decades after a single arcade cabinet captured the restless joy of urban motion, Sega is returning Crazy Taxi to the world—not as nostalgia, but as expansion. Creator Kenji Kanno, who once built a game around the kinetic spirit of 90s car-chase cinema rather than the conventions of racing, now brings that same philosophy to a global stage spanning five countries, multiplayer, and a proper story. The revival asks a quiet but serious question: can a game designed to make every player feel capable and rewarded still find its place in an era that has largely moved on from such generosity?
- A franchise dormant for over a decade suddenly reappears at Summer Game Fest with ambitions far beyond its arcade origins—five countries, story mode, and online multiplayer all at once.
- The tension lies in honoring a beloved original while refusing to simply recreate it; Kanno is expanding the world without abandoning the philosophy that made the first game matter.
- Multiplayer integration—something fans have wanted for decades—required specialists in networked design just to preserve the series' signature feeling of constant, personal reward.
- Side missions now stretch from pizza delivery to underwater driving to punishingly difficult story quests, pushing the game toward something closer to a lifestyle sandbox than a pure arcade sprint.
- The West Coast stage returns transformed across four times of day, signaling that even familiar ground is being rebuilt from the inside out.
Kenji Kanno appeared at Summer Game Fest with an announcement that would have seemed unlikely not long ago: Crazy Taxi, the 1999 arcade game that turned city driving into pure joy, was coming back—and going global.
The original was born from frustration. Kanno had grown tired of racing games that all felt the same, and turned instead to the car-chase energy of 90s action films for inspiration. He obsessed over ambient sound, over the texture of a living city, and built a game around a simple but radical idea: reward the player constantly, never make them feel punished, and respect however they choose to play. That philosophy became the series' foundation.
Crazy Taxi: World Tour carries that spirit into territory the arcade era never permitted. The game now spans five countries—specific locations still under wraps—and introduces, for the first time in franchise history, a full story mode built on genuine world-building. Multiplayer, long requested by fans, has been carefully integrated by developers with deep networked-game experience, preserving the series' distinctive sense of personal reward even when multiple players share the same space.
The familiar West Coast stage returns, but reshaped across four times of day—morning, afternoon, evening, and night—each altering its feel entirely. Core mechanics like the dash and drift remain, but no single playstyle is prescribed as correct.
Side activities have multiplied dramatically: pizza delivery, fishing, underwater driving, and story-linked missions so difficult Kanno joked the team would simply cheer players on. The game has grown from a speed-and-precision exercise into something designed to let each player find their own rhythm.
Closing his presentation, Kanno returned to the same modest ambition that started it all—a game where everyone can enjoy themselves in their own way and leave with positive energy. It was a humble statement for one of the year's most ambitious revivals, and it explained precisely why Crazy Taxi still has something to say.
Kenji Kanno stood at Summer Game Fest this year with news that would have felt impossible a decade ago: Sega's Crazy Taxi, the arcade game that defined a generation's commute fantasies, was coming back—and it was going global.
The original 1999 arcade cabinet arrived almost by accident. Kanno, tired of watching the industry churn out indistinguishable racing games, found himself drawn instead to the kinetic energy of car chases in movies. He spent months wrestling with how to translate that feeling into a three-dimensional city, obsessing over the ambient sounds that would make a place feel alive. The taxi came later, almost incidental to the real goal: building a game that rewarded you for trying, that made failure feel like part of the fun rather than a punishment. This philosophy—constant positive reinforcement, never making the player feel small—became the series' backbone.
Crazy Taxi: World Tour inherits that spirit but scales it in ways the arcade era never allowed. The game now spans five different countries, each with its own character and rhythm. Kanno kept the specific locations under wraps for marketing purposes, but the ambition is clear: this is not a game about one city anymore. It's about the world. For the first time in the franchise's history, there is a proper story mode, built on world-building that would have been impossible to implement in the original cabinet. Players will move through narrative, not just high scores.
Multiplayer, something fans have wanted for decades, is now fully integrated. The development team brought in people with deep experience in networked games, and they managed to preserve the series' distinctive feel—that sense of constant reward, of respecting how each player wants to drive—while letting multiple people inhabit the same space. You can play alone through the story or jump online with others.
The familiar West Coast stage returns, but it is not the same stage. Four different times of day transform it: morning light, afternoon heat, evening glow, and the particular loneliness of night driving. The core techniques—the dash, the drift—remain, but the developers have deliberately avoided prescribing a single correct way to play. Your style is valid. Your approach matters.
Beyond the core mission of ferrying passengers, the game has exploded with side activities. Pizza delivery runs sit alongside fishing expeditions. You can drive your taxi underwater. There are story-tied side missions so punishingly difficult that Kanno joked the developers would "cheer you on" while you attempted them. The game is no longer purely about speed and precision; it is about finding your own rhythm within a world designed to support it.
Kanno closed his presentation by returning to first principles: the goal was to make a game where everyone could enjoy themselves in their own way and walk away with positive energy. It was a modest statement, almost humble, from someone unveiling one of the year's most ambitious arcade revivals. But it explained everything about why Crazy Taxi mattered then and why it might matter again now.
Citas Notables
Creating a game where everyone can enjoy their own style and gain positive energy— Kenji Kanno, series creator
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why bring back Crazy Taxi now, after all these years? What changed?
The original game had something that never really went away—people still talk about it, still remember how it felt to play. But more importantly, the technology finally caught up to what Kanno originally wanted to do. He couldn't build a full story in an arcade cabinet. He couldn't let you explore five countries. Now he can.
The story mode is interesting. Arcade games don't usually have narratives. What's the story actually about?
Kanno didn't reveal that at Summer Game Fest. But the point is that the world itself becomes part of the experience. You're not just hitting high scores in a void anymore. You're moving through places that have context, character, reason.
The game lets you fish and drive underwater. That seems almost absurd for a taxi game.
That's exactly the point. The original philosophy was about respecting how players want to play. Some people want pure speed. Some people want to explore. Some people want to do something completely unexpected. The game says yes to all of it.
Multiplayer in Crazy Taxi feels like it could break the whole thing. How do you keep that positive, rewarding feeling when you're competing with other people?
They brought in people who specialize in multiplayer design. The key was not forcing competition. You can play together without it being about who's faster. The game respects individual playstyles even when you're in the same world.
Five countries is a massive scope. Do you think that risks diluting what made the original special?
Maybe. But Kanno's been thinking about this for twenty-five years. He knows what the core is. The question now is whether that core is strong enough to carry a bigger world. The fact that they kept the West Coast stage, kept the core mechanics, suggests they're not trying to reinvent—just expand.