Sega’s Crazy Taxi reboot is a ‘massively multiplayer driving game’

Sega‘s in-development Crazy Taxi reboot is a “massively multiplayer driving game”, a new recruitment video has revealed.

The new Crazy Taxi is being developed by Sega’s Sapporo Studio, which was established in December 2021 and helps with the development of various Sega games.

In a new recruitment video published in Japanese, producer Kenji Kanno – who was the director of the original Crazy Taxi game – and other members of the development team share new details on the reboot.

According to the video, the development team is currently testing adapting the classic Crazy Taxi gameplay – which has players transporting passengers to destinations as fast as possible – into a game world with multiple players.

The rebooted Crazy Taxi will take place in a large, realistic city based on the United States’ west coast, with a ‘theme park-like’ map, according to the video.

Job listings offer further details, describing the new Crazy Taxi as “a new major online title” with an open world, and “massively multiplayer driving game” elements. According to the listings, Crazy Taxi is being built in Unreal Engine.

Sega announced at The Game Awards last December that it was developing new entries in the Jet Set Radio, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Shinobi and Crazy Taxi series.

The original Crazy Taxi enjoyed some success as an arcade game in 1999 but became far more popular when a home version was released for the Dreamcast in 2000, ultimately becoming the third best-selling game on the console in the US.

The game has seen several sequels and spin-offs, but the last entirely new main entry in the series was Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller, which was released 22 years ago as an Xbox exclusive.