Crazy Taxi (DC) vs. The Simpsons: Rode Rage (GCN)
Well, here I go again: another article based upon my recent addiction to Simpsons game spoofs. But, hey, what do you want? If I play a game, I’m gonna write about it. And it seems that, as of late, the games I play the most are the Simpsons ones. So here we go, again, with another Versus Mode based upon a Simpsons parody. This time, the parody is of Crazy Taxi for the Sega Dreamcast. Oh — by the way — at the end of this article, there is a poll for the special New Year’s Versus Mode in January… look around down their for details.
(Please keep in mind that while there is a version of Crazy Taxi on Nintendo GameCube, I am pitting Road Rage against the original Sega Dreamcast version.)
Crazy Taxi is a pretty good game for Dreamcast. It’s a game in which you drive a taxi (you can play as one of various drivers). As the taxi driver, you are given a certain amount of time to pick someone up, and then another amount of time in which to deliver the person to their destination. You are then paid with money and additional time depending on how fast you delivered the person to their destination. Using the money, you can buy new characters/vehicles and levels. And, of course, sometimes you will be offered bonuses as a result of things you do. For example, one bonus objective may be to destroy at least seven objects. Another might be to run over four people. Or of course, they don’t all have to be destructive; one could be as simple as avoiding at least three traffic jams. These bonuses also earn you money and time.
The Simpson’s version, Road Rage, is almost (once again) exactly the same thing as that which it is parodying, with levels that appear in Springfield, and with more than a dozen Simpsons characters and their respective cars. Just yank out the Crazy Taxi cab drivers and put in their place everything from Homer in the Simpson’s Sedan to Lisa and the Electaurus to Professor Frank in the Hovercar (my personal favorite). You pick up lots of different characters, drop them off at logs of different locations (everything from the Kwik-e-Mart to the Elementary School) and get paid based on speed. Of course, it includes the regular slew of funny comments that also appear in Hit and Run as you drive around and hit things. One thing to notice, though, when they made these games (Hit and Run and Road Rage), they used the same comments (a few differences here and there) and most of the same cars. Not very creative, but destroying things in the Simpsons cars for points and money is still loads of fun.
I guess that now I have to pick a winner. I’m a sucker for comedy, but Crazy Taxi is equally as funny as Road Rage, so it isn’t going to be as easy this time. As I said, the vehicles and comments in Road Rage were slightly uncreative, because I just recently finished playing Hit and Run. This time, for the sake of originality, the winner is going to be Crazy Taxi for the Dreamcast.
Winner: Crazy Taxi (DC)
A quick note to Versus Mode readers:
This is your opportunity to (help) decide the next head-to-head Versus Mode category. For the New Year’s issue of GameCola, I will be doing a special head-to-head Versus Mode. This is where I pit as many games as I can think of in a given category or genre against each other, and pick an overall winner, as well as some sub-category winners. Below is a small poll in which you can vote for the category/genre of your choice. Or, if you so choose, you can do a write-in, which will not show up in the poll, but may still win. So make your votes, and maybe you’ll end up happy!
(Please note: If you cannot see the poll [as many students at Rutgers University are unable to], you can e-mail your ideal Versus Mode topic to: kleacock@gamecola.net. You can choose from either Role-Playing games, First-Person Shooters, Text-Based games, Side-Scrollers, Classic Atari-ish games, Mario games, or a genre of your choosing.)
