Crazy Taxi’s creator explains why it’s the right time to bring back Sega’s classic
Sega’s Crazy Taxi revival, World Tour, adds story, night races, and absurd mini-games
20 years since the last full entry, Crazy Taxi producer Kenji Kanno feels that now is the ideal time to bring the series back.
In an energetic behind-closed-doors presentation at Summer Game Fest, the Sega veteran shows us Crazy Taxi: World Tour, the modern take on the iconic arcade and Dreamcast game. With its blue skies, green-haired protagonist, and thumping Offspring soundtrack, it’s impossible not to feel pleased that the series has been given another chance – and that’s by design.
“A lot of what’s in the news nowadays makes you feel not very excited to live in the world,” Kanno tells the room of assembled media. “So, I feel personally that I want to have this new Crazy Taxi out there to maybe help people smile and have fun.
“One of the reasons [we’re bringing Craxy Taxi back] is because Sega is trying to revive our legacy IPs. As for my personal feelings, for me, Crazy Taxi is a game that you can play and have all these positive emotions and positive feelings, without anything negative in the game. With how the world is right now, I think it’s the perfect time to bring it back.”
The positive sentiment around the revival’s SGF reveal was swiftly dampened for some by a Steam disclosure revealing that the game used generative AI during its development. However, Konno later claimed that everything in World Tour would be original and that AI was briefly used as an ideation tool. Our own meeting with the designer took place before the news broke, so we weren’t able to quiz him further.
My overriding feeling, watching Konno drift around corners in World Tour’s familiar yet hugely glowed-up version of San Francisco, was pleasant surprise at its authenticity to the original game. Crazy Taxi is a classic, and even though it’s older than a larger chunk of our readers, many will recognize its iconic yellow arcade cabinet, which is still popular in many bars and amusement venues today.
Bringing the arcade driving game back in 2026 surely attracted the nostrils of any lurking live service monsters, but what I was shown at Summer Game Fest looked staunchly authentic to the original, with driver Axel picking up passengers and smashing through local cafés and post boxes to get them to their destination as fast as possible.
Konno says we’re only seeing part of the new experience at this stage, which he demonstrates by pulling up a world map, switching the time of day to night, and teleporting to an entirely different race mission, where his yellow cab competes in a traditional dash through town against an opponent in a sports car. There’s even the hint of an overarching story here, with Axel chatting and interacting with the customers he collects.
Q&A: Kenji Kanno
What’s the meaning of the ‘World Tour’ name?
We wanted to deliver the experience of visiting various countries and locations around the world. Not just like one location that expands, but you actually fly to different locations in different countries and drive a taxi there.
Why return to the arcade-style gameplay? Did you consider other genres?
Even within the development team, the staff said they wanted to recreate the original Crazy Taxi in a new form. Myself, I wanted Axel to be faithfully recreated, but the other development staff were saying the same thing, that they wanted to the old Crazy Taxi to be refreshed. Taking into consideration their sentiment, I think it’s likely what a lot of people want.
We only showed a little bit today. When you play it, I think you might think it feels like 1999 Crazy Taxi, but there’s something different about it. I think you can really feel the evolution in the gameplay once you get your hands on it.
Offspring and Bad Religion are back for the soundtrack. Will there be others?
I can’t say them right now, because they might get mad at me if I say them. But I believe your expectations will never be betrayed, and you might even be surprised.
“The basis for this Crazy Taxi World Tour is that originally Crazy Taxi was just a game at the arcades, so you couldn’t really expand much,” Konno explains. “But now with this new Crazy Taxi, we are able to expand the world of Crazy Taxi even further, flesh out the backgrounds of the characters, and give them more backstory and lore as well.
“We were able to recreate the original 3D taxi map of West Coast and really pay attention to recreating that old Crazy Taxi feel while also making it fit with the new generation of gamers. Although the controls may be a little bit different from the original Crazy Taxi, you can still play the game the same way.”
As Konno flame-wheels across a town square, he explains that players can unlock special skills and abilities this time, such as drifts and boosts, and each of the game’s different world maps (which Sega isn’t revealing just yet) will be littered with special activities, alongside the traditional taxi gameplay.
That includes special missions, which are basically bonkers mini-games straight out of the Like A Dragon series. One such encounter sees Kanno collecting a pizza chef character balancing a 15ft stack of pizza boxes, which you must deliver across the map. Another character, a fisherman, initiates a mini-game in which you must accelerate as fast as possible down a pier to cast off, then reverse backward to reel in your catch (which, inevitably, is a SUV-sized shark).
“We have a bunch of other different mini games and a lot of variety you can enjoy in Crazy Taxi as well,” Konno says. “The cities that you drive around in Crazy Taxi: World Tour feel alive and that people actually live in there, and I think this really sets it apart from other driving or racing games.”
Kanno says the main focus of World Tour will be the single-player experience, which will have players exploring multiple locations worldwide and progressing through a main story. However, as its debut trailer hints, there will be a multiplayer experience.
“Even in 1999, a lot of players were saying, ‘hey, I want to play this game with my friends’. But at that time, we had technological limitations,” Konno says. “But here in 2026, we have staff members in the development team who are very experienced with multiplayer games. So, we were able to make that area out for this time. The main focus is still single-player, but multiplayer is still there for those hardcore players or end-game players who want to spend more time.”
I, and other attendees, left the Summer Game Fest meeting in good spirits about what we’d seen, which I imagine gave Konno some small sense of reassurance that he’s headed in the right direction.
