Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller on Xbox proves the series had more gas in the tank

destructoid.com:

Crazy Taxi is like a wonderful time capsule. It captures the best part of the ‘00s in perfect stasis: the part that was basically still the late ‘90s. It was a time when we celebrated the identity of being an asshole. Consumerism was both rampant and celebrated. Wait, that all makes it sound awful. Maybe it was, but in kind of a funny way. And although the developers probably didn’t intend it to be, Crazy Taxi encapsulates all of it.

My first experience with the series was Crazy Taxi on the GameCube. Acclaim ported the Sega arcade title right when Nintendo’s first disc-based console was fresh on the shelves. There wasn’t a lot to play at the time, so I wound up playing everything. I have some great memories of playing Crazy Taxi with my mother. One of my favorite arcade experiences was playing the game on an actual sit-down cabinet. I think I got an A Rank. I was rusty.

It’s weird that modern ports of Crazy Taxi are so hard to come by. You can get it on PC, but it doesn’t have the licensed music or the rampant product placement, which actually takes from the experience. The most definitive way to play the games still seems to be back on Xbox with Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller.

While the concept of Crazy Taxi is arcade as heck, only the first Crazy Taxi was truly designed for the format. Crazy Taxi 2 remains exclusive to Dreamcast, and while Crazy Taxi 3 would make it to the arcade, it was first developed for Xbox.

Rather than just be a straight sequel, Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller is more like a definitive edition of the trilogy. New to it is the Glitter Oasis city based off Las Vegas, but it also includes the West Coast area from Crazy Taxi and Small Apple from Crazy Taxi 2. Missing are the console exclusive level from the