First, lets explore those sharp, well designed visuals. Remember Sega's popular skateboarding arcade title, Top Skater? Well the same design/development team created Crazy Taxi, as is evident by the character and general graphical design. If you have played the NAOMI arcade version of CT, you know exactly what to expect. The framerate speeds along at 60fps, only with the very occasional bout of slowdown. Both huge cities (arcade city plus the new one), are alive with throngs of cars and brave pedestrians. Although they aren't extremely detailed, I was impressed by the sheer number of individual moving objects whizzing by simultaneously. The original city, roughly based on San Francisco, is chock full of hills, jumps, narrow streets and insane hairpin turns. The newer Dreamcast exclusive city, while reusing many of the stores and objects found in the original city, is equally impressive. The layout of the new city is more wide open, and appears to have a greater variation of hilly areas, along with extras such as trains that cut you off at the most inconvenient times. Both cities contain plenty of hidden shortcuts and passageways, and in order to make it from point A to point B as quickly as possible, it is imperative to search them all out.

As compared to the arcade original, the only noticeable difference I have come across is the slightly lower resolution ground textures. The game has some niggling little problems with pop up and occasional bits of slowdown, though it is no different than what was found in the arcade version. It would have been nice to see those issues cleared up for the home port, but it is certainly not much of an issue.

Crazy Taxi is definitely a pick up and play type of game. The goal is as simple as can be; Choose a taxi driver, cruise the city, pick up passengers and whisk them to their desired location as quickly as possible. Of course, time is the only real enemy in Crazy Taxi. You begin with a set amount of time (in Arcade mode), which ticks down as you work. Driving "crazy" and making the trip in a short amount of time is preferred, because it will earn you extra tips, money and time.

The control scheme is simple- analog or digital pad to steer; R and L triggers to accelerate and brake; A and B to shift from Drive to Reverse. The game actually has a fair number of special techniques, such as the Crazy Drift, Crazy Dash and Crazy Drift Stop for example. These techniques are performed by using the shift buttons in combination with acceleration and brake buttons, and are primarily used to rack up points and make navigating the city traffic easier.

Crazy Taxi is one of those few games that has the perfect soundtrack. Even if you don't like the bands (The Offspring and Bad Religion), you have to admit that the songs suit the game to a T. When playing, the music appears to be perfectly in sync with the on-screen action. The voice samples found in CT are hilarious to say the least. Drive right towards a crowd of people, and listen to them scream, curse you out, all while diving for safety. The passengers are absolutely the best though. They constantly scream at you, give directions, and even issue compliments upon performing a good manoeuver.

Besides the new city, Sega added a decent amount of extras to Crazy Taxi. Both Arcade Mode (original city) and Original Mode (new city) give you the option to play with the arcade time limit, or additional 3, 5, and 10 minute jobs. Those who want to just cruise the cities, will certainly appreciate the latter three. The other interesting addition to the Dreamcast version, are the olympic style mini games contained in the Crazy Box mode. The main purpose of the mini games is to teach the various special techinques such as the Crazy Dash, and Crazy Drift as mentioned above. Some of the games are short and not especially exciting, but others such as Crazy Bowling are a lot of fun, as well as challenging. The game keeps track of all your high scores, and new more difficult events are unlocked upon completion of the easier ones.