Crazy Taxi, Zombie Revenge + Samba De Amigo

Crazy Taxi

A true arcade machine classic of the late 90s, Crazy Taxi is set on the sunny American coast and follows the daily life of taxi drivers. The open world game involved picking up customers and delivering them to their destination ASAP.

If they arrived at their destination in the set time they would pay their fare and rate you based how fast the journey was. However, if they hadn’t been delivered to their destination on time – the customer jumped out without paying. The player would have had to stop in a specified zone at the required destination.

Extra money could be earned by performing stunts (such as near missed with other cars and obstacles). The player was directed to the destination by an arrow pointing in the general direction. Not accounting for obstacles, the player could have got lost easily or add a significant amount of time to the journey.

Although other games modes appeared in the console ports of the hit game, the arcade rules allocated the player an initial 1 minute of game play that could have been extended by collecting bonuses and through speedy deliveries. Overall, the player could choose between four drivers and their respective taxis. These were:

• Axel

Seen as the well-rounded choice of character/taxi as the cab performs generically well in all areas. The only cons noted for this choice was the light weight car (that made collisions dangerous as the player would bounce off track) and the wide width (making it difficult to cut through traffic).

• D. Joe

This characters taxi was seen as the fastest, though the wide nature of the cab makes it difficult to navigate traffic.

• Gena

Gena’s taxi was the fastest to accelerate/decelerate which added an advantage to the player. The lightweight nature of the cab was a negative as put the player off track if the car hit an obstacle.

• Gus

Praised for thin width, Gus’s taxi could easily weave through traffic. Though the cab did have the slowest acceleration/deceleration of the others available.

The arcade version of the game was originally released in a sit-down cabinet, though a stand-up was later made available.

Product placement and marketing was rife within the game, with bands such as The Offspring and Bad Religion providing the soundtrack. Locations in the game featured the likes of Pizza Hut, Tower Records, Fila Sportswear, Levi’s and KFC.

Zombie Revenge

Zombie Revenge, or initially known as Blood Bullet: The House of the Dead Side Story, was a spin-off to the popular House of the Dead series of games.

The game followed Stick Breitling, Linda Rotta and Rikiya Busujima as they are sent into an unnamed town to rid the town of Zombies and confront their leader Zed. With the player having chosen one of the 3 players – they would kill attacking Zombies using weapons such as guns and their hands.

Leading up to the outbreak, the US government and the military had combined forces to utilise the dead. Zombies created were referred to as UDS’s (Undead Soldiers). Zed released the zombies as he despised all of the human race and planned to turn them into the undead. In the later levels of the game, he turns into a mutant zombie who acts as a boss character.

Samba De Amigo

Sega’s ever-popular rhythm game developed by The Sonic Team, Samba De Amigo, gave the player a pair of maracas to shake in time with the music on screen.

A monkey named Amigo would show the player where to shake the maracas (high, middle or low) to the beat of the music. Occasionally, special moves or poses would appear for the player to complete. If the player was doing well, the crowd in the background would grow larger. Alternatively, if they weren’t doing as well the crowd would slowly get smaller until only Amiga was standing on stage with a sad face.

In the original arcade version there would be either 2 or 3 rounds, depending how the game was set. Each round featured 3 songs and an additional bonus stage could be unlocked if the player did well. On the arcade cabinet, two red maracas were provided as controllers, which were tracked by magnetic sensors.

The list of songs featured in the original arcade game were: