Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio to return in 'big-budget' reboots, report says
…but be prepared for aggressive monetisation.
Garish colours, The Offspring, kerrr-razehhh voices, and the vibrant final years of coin-op arcades before they went Supernova and made way for the inky emo blackness of the early 2000s. Sega's cool and comicky driving and rollerblading games Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio were symbols of this innocent time, and now it looks like they're circling back round for new outings.
According to a report by Bloomberg, new entries in the Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio series will mark the start of Sega's 'Super Game' project, which will eventually entail around four games, one of which we know will be a first-person shooter. The Crazy Taxi game is already in development, and expected to come out in the next two to three years.
But before you think that these reboots will be nostalgic trips down to the sun-softened tarmacs of Y2K, it's worth taking onboard that Sega apparently wants to monetise its games 'more aggressively,' and offer "contents and services that can create a large community." That's some serious Service Game language there, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does make one a little wary.
The original Crazy Taxi for the Dreamcast was the first time in my life I'd witnessed a game running at 60fps on a home console. I don't think I ever played the game for more than 10 minutes in one sitting, but man were they exhilarating—in large part because the game kicked off with The Offspring's 'All I Want'.
Jet Set Radio was a deeper game, but in much the same spirit—zipping on rollerblades around a colourful city to a chirpy soundtrack, tagging playgrounds, pulling stunts, and occasionally being shot at by a dude with a revolver (which always felt a bit dissonant with the game's tone).
It looks like both games are still some way off, so to get those millennial kicks you can play both the original Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio on Steam. Indie studio Team Reptile, meanwhile, is working on Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, which looks every bit the successor to Jet Set Radio.