There are some franchises that need practically no introduction. Crazy Taxi is definitely one of them.
All it takes is hearing the opening notes of that familiar music and seeing a taxi driver preparing to blast through traffic as if traffic laws never existed, and you immediately know what you're in for. With Crazy Taxi: World Tour, SEGA is now trying to bring that feeling back, but this time it doesn't simply want to repeat what we played on the Dreamcast. The idea is to expand the familiar formula with a larger world, additional activities, exploration, and new systems that are supposed to work alongside the classic taxi chaos.
At Gamescom 2026, we had the chance to get behind the wheel of the new Crazy Taxi and take a few trips around the city, and our first impression was pretty clear – this isn't simply an attempt to rely on nostalgia and bring back old players.
The basic idea is still incredibly simple. Pick up a passenger, take them where they want to go, and try to get there as quickly as possible. If you happen to break a few dozen traffic laws along the way, drive through half the city in the wrong lane, and pull off a move that would have your driver's license revoked on the spot, even better.
That simplicity was one of the biggest charms of the original games.
More City, More Freedom, More Chaos
World Tour now wants to expand that formula into something closer to an open-world experience. The demo we played at Gamescom took place on a Germany-inspired map, giving us the opportunity to explore the surroundings and get a feel for the larger space instead of being limited exclusively to classic arcade-style driving.
And that's where an interesting difference from the original starts to appear.
On one hand, you have the freedom to explore the city and decide what you want to do. On the other, the moment you pick up a passenger, everything turns back into what we loved about Crazy Taxi. Suddenly, it doesn't matter nearly as much where you are or how nice the route looks. All that matters is how quickly you can reach your destination. Traffic becomes an obstacle. Every intersection becomes a potential shortcut. And the road between you and your destination becomes something any normal taxi driver would probably try to avoid.
That contrast could end up being one of World Tour's biggest strengths. Exploration gives the game a broader structure, while the taxi missions bring back the immediacy that made Crazy Taxi so easy to understand. You sit down, pick up a passenger, and drive as if someone just told you the planet will explode if you don't get there in time.
Driving Is Still at the Heart of Everything
The most important question for any new Crazy Taxi is, of course, how the driving itself feels.
Thankfully, this is exactly where World Tour seems to be on the right track. The classic formula is still the foundation, while new mechanics such as Crazy Drift, Crazy Boost, and Crazy Stop add more options for controlling your car and finding your own shortcuts.
That means the city isn't simply a space you drive through from point A to point B. The environment becomes something you have to read on the fly. If you spot a street that lets you cut across the route, there's little reason not to use it. If there's a line of cars blocking your path, waiting for traffic to clear simply isn't an option.
How Much Can We Change Before It Stops Being Crazy Taxi?
That's the question that kept coming back to us while playing.
The original games were built around immediacy. You didn't need a huge world, a complicated progression system, or dozens of menus. You got a passenger, checked where they needed to go, and immediately hit the road. World Tour clearly wants to offer more than that.
A larger map and additional activities could be an excellent way to expand the formula and make it more relevant to modern players, but at the same time, there is a risk of losing what made Crazy Taxi special. If we end up spending too much time between rides dealing with systems that have nothing to do with actually being a taxi driver, it's easy to imagine a situation where the game becomes an open-world title with Crazy Taxi elements rather than a proper Crazy Taxi set in a larger world.
That's why the final version will have a fairly difficult task ahead of it. It will need to find the right balance between the freedom offered by its larger structure and the chaos we expect the moment we get behind the wheel. Based on the Gamescom demo, however, the foundation is definitely there.
New Tricks for an Old-School Ride
The new driving mechanics are particularly important because they could give the game more room for experimentation. Crazy Drift allows for more aggressive cornering, Crazy Boost provides an extra burst of speed, while Crazy Stop can come in handy when you need to suddenly change the situation.
None of these mechanics are revolutionary on their own. But Crazy Taxi was never a series trying to reinvent driving physics. Its strength comes from the way simple mechanics combine to create chaos.
When you have a passenger desperately waiting to reach their destination, a car blocking your path, and only a few seconds to spare, the last thing you want to do is think about how some complicated mechanic works. You just hit the gas. And hope for the best.
The Music Has to Be Part of the Madness
Of course, it's impossible to talk about Crazy Taxi without talking about the music.
The soundtrack has always been a huge part of the series’ identity, and World Tour continues to embrace the punk-rock energy that fits the way the game plays perfectly. The music isn't just background noise here. It's practically an extra boost.
When fast driving, chaotic traffic, a passenger yelling directions, and music that makes you want to drive even faster all come together, it's incredibly easy to rediscover the feeling that once made you spend far more time behind the wheel than you originally planned.
And that's probably the best compliment the new Crazy Taxi can receive.
Being Nostalgic Isn't Enough
The biggest challenge for Crazy Taxi: World Tour won't be satisfying people who remember the original. That's probably the easy part. Throw in the familiar music, recognizable chaos, and a few references to the old games, and nostalgia will do the rest.
The much harder task will be convincing a new generation of players that this kind of arcade driving still has a place in modern gaming.
Modern games often want to be huge, complex, and packed with content. Crazy Taxi, at its core, is the complete opposite. Its philosophy is simple: you have a passenger, you have a destination, and you don't have time for nonsense. World Tour is trying to preserve that simplicity while also giving us a much larger world. Whether that works will ultimately depend on the final balance.
Crazy Taxi Is Back
After our session at Gamescom, we came away fairly optimistic about Crazy Taxi: World Tour. There is definitely potential here, especially if the larger world manages to complement the classic formula instead of overwhelming it.
The most important thing is that driving still needs to remain at the center of everything. Everything else can be an addition, but the moment every ride stops feeling like a little race against the clock, Crazy Taxi starts to lose what makes it special. For now, however, there's no reason to panic. World Tour looks like it knows what it wants to be. It just needs to prove how well it can combine its new structure with the old-school madness. Because when we think of Crazy Taxi, we don't think about carefully following the GPS. We think about one piece of advice:
YA YA YA YA YA – GAS IT TO THE FLOOR!
