A speedrunner played Crazy Taxi with a live band to avoid copyright issues
Awesome Games Done Quick included a unique Crazy Taxi run with a real band playing the soundtrack
A speedrunner used a live band to get around copyright issues while attempting a Crazy Taxi run.
Near the end of this year’s Awesome Games Done Quick, speedrunner chuckles825 took on the Crazy Box mode in Crazy Taxi, which consists of 16 smaller timed challenges.
While Crazy Taxi is well known for its soundtrack, which includes music by The Offspring and Bad Religion, it would have essentially been impossible to stream the game at Awesome Games Done Quick without triggering a DMCA takedown for copyrighted music.
To get around this, the player put together a band called Limiter Cut, who accompanied the action with covers of the songs from the game.
As chuckles825 played through each of the 16 Crazy Box challenges, the band rotated through the songs, stopping at the end of each challenge to play the menu music as in the real game.
Following the performance, guitarist 2dos took to Reddit to explain how the idea came about, explaining that the game hadn’t been attempted at Games Done Quick for a decade and the organisation had turned down numerous submissions over the years for copyright reasons.
“[Chuckles and I] had submitted Crazy Taxi several times over the years without success after our AGDQ 2015 run,” he explained. We would have needed to mute the soundtrack if it did get in during those times for licensing reasons.”
Because the band had been newly-formed, and because its members were from different parts of the US, each member practised on their own until they were able to meet at Summer Games Done Quick 2024, where they recorded their submission video.
“We then continued to practice online once we found out the run got in, and finally practiced again in person at AGDQ 2025 for the few days leading up to the run,” 2dos said.
Asked if there were any plans to bring the back for future Games Done Quick events, 2dos replied that it was a possibility, citing the Tony Hawk series as a potential contender.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. There are similar runs that could be executed this way (Crazy Taxi 2, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, etc) that could potentially be submitted by us.
“But I hope GDQ gets fresh ideas too. I really hope we inspired other folks to come up with unique submissions in the future.”
