The Taxi Adventure: Why I Adore Loopy Taxi

Why I Adore is a series of guest contributions on GamesIndustry.biz aimed at highlighting how game developers appreciate each other’s work. This installment was penned by Tim FitzRandolph, the solo developer known as Walaber, who recently released Parking Garage Rally Circuit, an arcade racing game where players navigate through parking structures, now available on Steam.

My college featured an entertainment center with a mini bowling alley, billiards, and several arcade game cabinets. One game, in particular, was quite enjoyable. I would engage with it once or twice per week, believing I was getting pretty good, managing to play for about 5 minutes per session.

One day, after finishing a decent round, I observed someone playing who seemed to be taking their turn. I lingered to watch them. They played for what felt like 45 minutes on a single session (in reality, it was probably closer to 10-15 minutes). I was astounded. They were executing maneuvers in the game that I had never witnessed before. A game I thought I understood quite thoroughly revealed itself to have a depth I had no clue about. Really, not just one layer, more like ten layers. I was captivated.

As you might have inferred from the article’s title, the game in question was none other than the Sega AM3 arcade classic Crazy Taxi. If you’ve played the original, you likely remember the San Francisco-like environment where the game takes place, beginning your first fare down steep streets filled with trolley cars and traffic to navigate around.

When you first play the game, it might appear like this:

The player I was observing was doing THIS:

I was amazed. Carefully watching their gameplay, they employed an interesting technique: releasing the gas pedal, shifting into reverse while coasting, then quickly shifting back to drive and pressing the pedal down a moment later. This provided a surprising burst of speed, which they then repeated rhythmically to achieve faster and faster velocities. Naturally, I began to mimic this technique and soon managed to execute it consistently, rapidly doubling my top score.

This single mechanic has likely stuck with me more than any other game mechanic I’ve encountered. On the surface, it seems quite simple, manipulating only one aspect of the vehicle: its speed.

The vehicle’s performance changes over time based on two additional parameters: acceleration and top speed. The input sequence I mentioned earlier can actually be broken down into two parts: (1) release the pedal, shift into reverse, and (2) shift into drive and accelerate. Part 2 effectively functions when the vehicle is stationary: it significantly boosts the vehicle’s acceleration, enabling players to reach their maximum speed much more quickly.

However, when players perform this action again while traveling at high speed (first executing Part 1 to ‘reset the input state’, then Part 2 to initiate the boost), something new occurs. Instead of merely increasing the acceleration (which wouldn’t be particularly helpful since the player is already at or near the vehicle’s top speed), it temporarily elevates the maximum speed of the vehicle. Here’s my artistic representation of what is happening to the vehicle’s maximum speed:

Now, here comes the part that truly lets the game live up to its title. When you perform this exact action (referred to as a ‘cutback,’ according to the developers) while at the boosted max speed, it stacks and continues to increase the vehicle’s maximum speed even further, apparently without limit.

This is the trick that allows skilled players to race down the entirety of the hill before most of the game, make other significant shortcuts, and generally just drive at breakneck speeds.

After witnessing this technique in action, I started doing some online investigation about the game, uncovering a multitude of other strategies like crazy drifts, ways to use the environment combined with drifts to come to a stop more quickly (often abruptly!) when dropping off passengers, and how the city was designed with chains of routes that you could optimize to avoid unnecessary backtracking (thus saving valuable time), allowing players to make “laps” around the city by wisely choosing the right fares in each area. If you’re intrigued, this website is an excellent place to start.

My ambition as a developer is to eventually create a game that elicits a similar reaction from players as Crazy Taxi did for me.

My entire college experience played out to the soundtrack of The Offspring’s ‘All I Want’ and Bad Religion’s ‘Ten in 2010’ from the game’s music as I balanced classes, studying, and socializing while continuously improving my high score at the Crazy Taxi cabinet. Naturally, I ended up purchasing a Sega Dreamcast along with the home version and a steering wheel to enjoy playing in my dorm.

These days, people often talk about modern video games with ‘hidden’ mechanics.