Super Taxi Driver

Set across six distinct, maze-like cities, Super Taxi Driver tasks players with picking up and dropping off passengers as one of three unique drivers, each with their own customized taxi. Gameplay involves navigating to destinations shown with addresses and highlighted corners, with the timer and passenger satisfaction determining earned bonuses and time carried over to the next stage. The game features arcade-like driving physics and requires quick reflexes to manage the timer while adhering to passenger preferences for speed or safety.

Super Taxi Driver: Review

Introduction

In the crowded arcade-racing landscape of 2000, where SEGA’s Crazy Taxi dominated arcades and consoles with its high-octane, rule-breaking taxi missions, Super Taxi Driver emerged from the shadows of budget development. Developed by the Italian studio Microforum Italia S.p.A. and the small KingCabTeam, and published by Aludra Software and Hemming AG, this Windows CD-ROM title positioned itself as a PC alternative to SEGA’s phenomenon. Yet, beneath its neon-lit exterior lies a fascinating paradox: a game with surprisingly robust driving physics crippled by baffling design oversights and technical limitations. This review deconstructs Super Taxi Driver not merely as a Crazy Taxi clone, but as a microcosm of early 2000s indie ambition—exploring its creation, mechanics, artistic flaws, and enduring, if accidental, legacy.

Development History & Context

Super Taxi Driver emerged from a modest development ecosystem. The core team was lean—17 individuals credited across programming, graphics, music, and voice acting—with Federico Tollemeto handling both coding and graphics, and John Wong serving as project manager and programmer. The budget constraints are palpable; the game’s own documentation and reviews hint at a rushed timeline, with critical features like bonus cars remaining broken. The developers, operating under the KingCabTeam banner, clearly aimed to capitalize on the Crazy Taxi craze, but with a fraction of SEGA’s resources. Technologically, the game was a product of its era: requiring a Pentium II 266MHz, 64MB RAM, and a 3D accelerator, it leveraged Direct3D for rendering. However, the team’s limitations are evident in the primitive textures, short draw distance, and reliance on simple polygonal structures. Released in November 2000 for Windows, Super Taxi Driver arrived as PC gamers were embracing arcade-style racers like Driver (1999) and anticipating the PC port of Crazy Taxi (which never materialized at the time). This created a niche for a budget alternative, though the game’s execution ultimately failed to fill it meaningfully.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

Super Taxi Driver eschews traditional narrative in favor of a pure arcade loop. Players select one of three taxi drivers—each with a customized cab—but these characters lack backstory, personality, or distinct voices beyond their visual design. The plot is non-existent: the goal is simply to accumulate fares in a relentless time-based struggle. Passengers are anonymous, reduced to voiceless sprites with a stated preference for either “safe” or “wild” rides—a mechanic that proves entirely non-functional. Their dialogue, recorded by a single actor (Daniel Aberin), is infamously amateurish. Male and female characters are voiced identically, with lines like “To the corner of 5th and Main!” delivered in a flat, repetitive tone that becomes unintentionally comedic. This lack of character depth underscores the game’s thematic shallowness. While it implies a chaotic urban environment where “all road rules and regulations cease to apply,” it never explores the consequences of this anarchy. The theme is purely one of arcade escapism—ignoring traffic lights, speeding recklessly, and prioritizing speed over safety—without the narrative context or satirical edge that might elevate it. Ultimately, the narrative vacuum reflects the game’s budget origins: a framework for driving mechanics, not storytelling.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The core gameplay loop is a simplified version of Crazy Taxi’s formula. Players navigate six maze-like cities, picking up and dropping off four predetermined passengers per stage. Each fare displays an address, distance, and a highlighted destination marker, with a top-screen arrow dictating the route. Success depends on speed and “passenger satisfaction,” but the latter is opaque and broken. The timer is the central antagonist: remaining seconds carry over between stages, and the game ends when it expires.

Driving Mechanics: A surprising highlight. The physics are intentionally exaggerated but feel natural. Cars rock back and forth during acceleration/braking, and the rear end skids wildly during drifts, creating a sense of kinetic chaos. The driver’s one-handed steering and dangling arm animations add personality, making even simple maneuvers visually engaging. This arcade feel, while simplistic, is more competent than many budget racers.

Critical Flaws:
– Linear Design: With only four passengers and a mandatory sequence, the game lacks Crazy Taxi’s open-ended fare selection. Players cannot choose between long or short jobs, reducing exploration to a “waypoint race.”
– Collision Detection: Horrifically broken. While traffic collisions bring the car to a halt, environmental collisions are worse. Cities are built from square tiles; tiles with buildings or trees are surrounded by invisible barriers, blocking passage even when ample space exists between objects. This forces players to decipher tile geometry instead of finding organic shortcuts.
– Passenger Preferences: A documented feature that doesn’t function. Some passengers supposedly “prefer wild rides,” yet ratings are unpredictable. A perfect run may yield the worst rating, while a chaotic journey might earn the best, with no clear feedback on what drives satisfaction.
– Bonus Cars: A broken promise. Every three stages, the high score table displays “Bonus Car,” but no new vehicles are ever unlocked. The selection screen remains limited to the initial three cabs, and high scores fail to track the actual cab used, rendering progression illusory.

UI and Controls: Keyboard and steering wheel support is functional but basic. The interface lacks features like a reverse gear (noted by GameStar), and the minimalist HUD provides only essential information.

World-Building, Art & Sound

Setting and Atmosphere: Six cities form the game’s world, each with a distinct visual style (e.g., industrial, residential). Yet, the tile-based design makes them feel repetitive and artificial. Cities are “maze-like” but lack density—with only four pedestrians per stage, urban life feels sparse. The absence of police chases or dynamic traffic undermines the promised “chaos.”

Art Direction: Textures are “unsophisticated” and low-resolution, with buildings and trees appearing as simple extruded polygons. The short draw distance hides pop-in but doesn’t compensate for the bland aesthetic. Cities lack landmarks or unique landmarks, relying on generic layouts. The visual direction prioritizes functionality over flair, resulting in a sterile, forgettable environment.

Sound Design:
– Music: A single 4-minute track repeats endlessly, becoming grating quickly. Unused music tracks in the installation directory suggest unfulfilled potential.
– Sound Effects and Voice: The voice acting is the game’s most infamous feature. All passengers (men and women) are voiced by Daniel Aberin, creating a “cheesy” and monotonous experience. Sound effects (engine revs, crashes) are functional but unremarkable, contributing to an atmosphere of amateurish charm rather than immersion.

Reception & Legacy

Super Taxi Driver was met with near-universal critical disdain upon release. MobyGames aggregates a damning 21% average critic score (7 reviews), with German publications leading the condemnation:
– PC Joker (19%): Called it “geschenkt wäre noch zu teuer” (a gift would still be too expensive), citing the “miserable collision detection” and “abgrundtief hässliche” (abysmally ugly) graphics.
– GameStar (18%): Criticized the lack of a reverse gear and performance issues, noting the game “braucht einen schnellen Rechner” (needs a fast PC).
– Absolute Games (10%): Bemoaned the lack of investment, asking: “Was it so hard to find an artist or buy a cheap clipart library?”

Player reception was marginally better, with a 2.9/5 average (5 ratings on MobyGames). One player review acknowledged it was “good for half an hour of fun,” highlighting its transient appeal. Commercially, the game was bundled in the Doppel-Action Pack (2001) with Conflict Zone, suggesting it struggled as a standalone title. Its legacy is one of infamy: it is remembered as a textbook example of a failed Crazy Taxi clone, with its broken features (bonus cars, passenger preferences) becoming retro-memes. However, its driving physics are occasionally cited in niche discussions as a “diamond in the rough,” and it retains a cult following for its accidental charm. A sequel, Super Taxi Driver: The Original, appeared in 2007 for J2ME, but the series never gained traction.

Conclusion

Super Taxi Driver stands as a poignant artifact of early 2000s PC gaming—a game with a spark of excellence buried under mountains of mediocrity. Its driving mechanics are genuinely fun, offering a surprisingly satisfying arcade feel that belies its budget origins. Yet, the game is undone by self-inflicted wounds: linear design, broken collision detection, nonfunctional systems, and a lack of progression. It feels less like a finished product and more like a “well-meant attempt” rushed to market by a publisher eager to capitalize on Crazy Taxi‘s success.

In the pantheon of video game history, Super Taxi Driver occupies a curious space: it is neither a classic nor a complete failure. Instead, it serves as a cautionary tale about ambition constrained by resources, and a reminder that even a great core mechanic cannot salvage a game marred by poor execution. For retro enthusiasts, it offers a fleeting glimpse of chaotic fun and a study in flawed design. For everyone else, it remains a relic—a cautionary benchmark for what happens when a promising idea is let down by its own ambition.