Submission #4322: solarplex's GC Crazy Taxi in 05:53.18

Crazy Taxi is an open world racing video game developed by Hitmaker (Sega AM3) and published by Sega. The main objective of the game is to pick up customers and take them to their chosen destination as quickly as possible.

My goal was to reach $20,000(as fast as possible) while running out the clock as best I could. The game ends once the timer reaches zero. In theory, a TAS of Arcade Mode could run forever because if you reach the destinations with speedy bonus, you are given more time that is unnecessary.

I played Crazy Taxi with Arcade Rules starting with the lowest amount of time possible to start with and max difficulties on traffic and time(I was actually hoping that the streets would be more packed than they were!). In the beginning of this TAS, I had a lot of hard time remembering old skills from when I had played Crazy Taxi on my GameCube long long ago. One reason for this TAS being hard in the beginning was trying to figure out a combination of buttons to Crazy Dash, which if you have never played before is where you can see me accelerating very quickly and sometimes even jumping.

Other than learning Crazy Dash and Drifting all over again, the basic concept of the game was very simple. Pick up customers as fast as possible, try as close to as many vehicles as possible, and try to pick up the next best customer. To Reach Rank 1 on a new game, just earn $8,000. To Reach Crazy License, it's $20,000. On a game where you've unlocked the bike cart, Rank 1 is a lot harder to earn(You'd have to get over $85,000 or more).

The main money-makers are drifting and crazy throughs. Crazy Jumps are too short to make much. Drifting can increment very quickly as detailed below in Wall Drifting. Crazy Throughs are when you pass close by other cars and trucks. If you look at the cash bonus animation there is bronze silver and gold. I thought it was random at first but your distance from other cars and trucks determines if you get silver of gold bonuses, obviously gold bonuses are better. On the freeways where I get huge combos that can be attributed to all the trucks and oil tankers, they dish out 2 bonuses each (buses only give one bonus). I got lucky with RNG and had loads of trucks on the way back to the baseball stadium.

Here is the only glitch in the game that I used. Basically if you are drifting and you hit a building or an immobile object, your car will go up onto its side and the game thinks you are continuously drifting. You can stay in the position for a pretty long time if you use a good combination of driving forward and backwards.

I wanted to save this until the end because it can be quite boring to watch someone do this trick for a long period of time, which is why I kept it only to get the last $3,000 to get me right above $20,000.

At the very end of the movie, where it looks like I am just wasting time drifting, I am. I attempted to make entertaining by getting the 100$ to push me into $20,000 and doing a little jump drift. The last 3 seconds had to be run down to the very, very last frame before I would get a Time's Up screen, this way the game finishes a little quicker than if I had dropped off the customer and ran around for 3 seconds(In testing, it saved 725 frames).

Etch, the real Crazy Taxi expert!

Zanoab, STBM, Warepire, Hegyak, thommy3, Phallosvogel, Ilari, Cooljay, Patashu, ALAKTORN, XkyRauh, niamek, jlun2, got4n, arandomgameTASer, Scepheo, Zarmakuizz, Spikestuff, andypanther, alec_kermit, and anyone else who helped in the thread and on IRC!

feos: Synced, judging...

feos: Awesome run, accepting to Moons.

Fog: Processing...