Picture Source : Gamespot
Back in the days when Dreamcast (a console from Sega) is still up and running in the market, a lot of good games were ported to it. One of them is Crazy Taxi. This game is really insane and it’s really good as a stress reliever. My favourite is still Crazy Taxi and Crazy Taxi 2. This game was ported to many consoles including the PC. However, the feeling just doesn’t seem the same.

For those who are not familiar with the game, Crazy Taxi is about game where you play as a cab/taxi driver. You drive around Big Apple picking up customers who are waving at you by the road side. Each customer will have a certain color ring. Red means the distance is close, yellow means moderate and green means the destination is far. The moment you pick up a customer, a timer starts. The amount of time given is depending on the distance. The best part of this game? You have no restriction on how you drive. Your main objective is to get your customer to their destination as fast as you can.

When I first played Crazy Taxi, I was instantly hooked onto it. I played it almost everyday and every chance I get, even up to the extend that I need to be dragged away from the TV to eat my lunch or dinner. The amount of speed and destruction you can do is just mind blowing. In terms of destruction, you definitely can’t compare it to today’s game. Back then, ramming any car you see, it’s just pure fun!

Crazy Taxi 2 is the sequel to Crazy Taxi. They added more mechanisms such as a jump function which really helps to jump over obstacles. Overall it still plays the same like the original Crazy Taxi, insane speed (for a taxi) and pure fun. Oh yes, another new feature is that you can now take up to maximum of 4 customers (as opposed to 1 for the orignal) . However you can’t randomly pick any 4. It’s only available to customers who has the blue ring.

Other than the usual taxi driving, mini games are included as well. In here you have to finish certain objectives in order to pass it. Upon completion you will unlock some extra stuff such as new “car”.

As mentioned above, Crazy Taxi was ported to Gamecube, PS2 and PC. I’m not really sure how the other console versions hold out but the PC version is definitely a very bad port. Lag was the main problem as opposed to the DC version which was running at smooth framerates with minimal hiccups. As most game reviewers mentioned, you definitely need to play this game on the DC to experience its full glory.

To sweeten up things, Crazy Taxi Fare Wars is coming to the PSP. Base on what I read, it’s sort of a combination of both Crazy Taxi and Crazy Taxi 2 under one package. It also includes co-op and multiplayer mode. Hope the sense of speed isn’t decreased for this version. Running it at 30 fps per second is gonna be bad.

So are you ready to make some ccccrrrraaaaaazzy money?

Let me see, I think I completed this game more than 20 times? Or perhaps it was more than that I don’t know but all I know is that, I seriously love this game. The gameplay, the actions, the music, the stages, they were fantastic for it’s time.

I almost didn’t had the chance to play this game back in 1993. My uncle bought the game cartridge but it couldn’t run due to different regions. The 16 bit my uncle owned was a Japanese set while the game was meant for a US set. Luckily after a few days, he bought a converter which enabled us to change regions by adjusting some switches. That’s when the fun begins.

A Brief Introduction
This game plays similarly to Contra, a side scrolling shooter. You go through stage by stage killing enemies and bosses as well as picking up power-ups to further increase your firepower. One good thing about this game is that, it’s not as punishing as contra where one hit kills. Here you will have HP (health points) which will deplete according the type of damage you get. You character can also perform various attacks such as jump kick, slides and throw

Gunstar Heroes uses a different system where you can choose different combination of power-ups base on your preferences and the character you choose. Altogether there are two characters and four types of power-ups :- Force, Lighting, Fire and Chaser. The two characters are called Red and Blue, or more specifically, Free-Shot and Fixed-Shot. The two have their own distinct differences where you can run and shoot as Free-Shot while as Fixed-Shot, you are able to aim at 8 directions while standing still. I myself personally prefer to use Free-Shot as most of the time I’m playing solo. Using Fixed-Shot would be too tedious. As for the power-ups, you can combine 2 different types to create a more powerful weapon. I leave it up to Wiki to explain them further.

The Reason Why I Like This Game
What makes Gunstar Heroes a huge phenomenon back in the 16 bit days was the gameplay. The moment you step into the game, infinite number of foes will come rushing to you like mad cows. You can say it was pretty amazing for the 16 bit to be able to handle that amount of madness with very minimal hiccups. Believe me, its pretty hard to survive without someone using free-shot with the homing laser (Laser + Chaser power-up) especially on higher difficulty levels. I tried using Fixed-Shot but it always ended up with drastic results when playing solo. Best and easiest combination would be Laser Chaser with Double Chaser.

The music and boss fights is another thing which makes the game very memorable. I don’t know how to describe it but it just gives you that sense of tension when you are going through the stages. Like in stage 5, the music literally gives you the feeling of “I want to destroy you all!” which also fits in the story after an incident happened. As for the boss fights, most of them are pretty simple once you catch their weakness but they can still post a threat on Hard Mode. My favourite boss is Seven Force, where you literally fight through seven different types of form in one sitting. It was truly a test of endurance back then.

This is no doubt one of the best games you can play on the Sega 16 Bit. To make things even sweeter, I heard that the game is out for purchase on Wii’s Virtual Console. So Wii gamers, do give this a game a try if you haven’t play it before. You wouldn’t regret it.

For the past few days, I kept thinking about the past … what I did, how my life was when the original gameboy, SNES and Genesis were dominating the console world. Growing up in the late 80′s and born into a family whose uncle and cousin are hardcore gamers, it’s no surprise that I turn out to be a gamer myself.

As a kid, I wasn’t really interested in RPG genres. Few reasons is because the sets that my uncle owned are Famicon and Sega 16bit, which are Japan sets. Second is because .. well … I’m just too freaking lazy to read those wordings appeared (LOL!). “Start” button is always my best friend cause thats how you skip through all the “boring” stuff and cut to the chase.

Nearly half of my life was dedicated to BTU (Beat-Them-Up) and VS (Versus) games, literally ranging from Golden Axe, Streets of Rage to Final Fight as well as Rushing Beat series. VS games for me at the time were Street Fighter, Street Fighter and more Street Fighter. I didn’t manage to get my hands on King of Fighters until the year 1996. Tekken was a whole lot different experience for me but I will talk about that later. For now, it’s the 16 bit era.

I played those BTU games a lot with my uncle, my cousin and sometimes my sis. Regardless of how many times we finish it, we would play it over and over again. Its pretty weird … considering that we have a lot better games nowadays but not many actually make me repeat the game like .. more than 10 times? To date the games which I replayed the most is Metal Gear Solid series and Fatal Frame series, and that is because my girlfriend loves to watch me play it (just shows how lucky I feel I am to have a girl who is interested in games as much as I do *heh*)

As the years go by, BTU games are slowly dying … in fact its pretty rare to see a game company that comes out with such genre anymore. First Person Shooters, Role Playing Game, Adventure, MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) RPG practically ruled the gaming world now. Even so, once in a while I will load up those games and replay them just for nostalgia sake. There will always be a place in my gaming world for BTU games.