Crazy Taxi Arcadia high score?

[shmuppyLove]

You can't 1CC Crazy Taxi--there's a score barrier to see the credits, but no real ending.

Hahah yeah I know, I'm just busting jonny5's chops

Hit A-class, then bust the chops, cool guy!

I'll have to see how it is playing on the cab ... probably better than your horribad Mad Catz DC pad

[Arcatech]

Did anybody make a backup of crazytaxi.net before it went down? It had good pick up strategies. Or could there be an alternative site? The faqs on gamefaqs arent as detailed. Thx in advance.

[jonny5]

Did anybody make a backup of crazytaxi.net before it went down? It had good pick up strategies. Or could there be an alternative site? The faqs on gamefaqs arent as detailed. Thx in advance.

It still seems to work sometimes, but you can access the whole site pretty much through google cache.

[Davey]

The site was back up a couple days after jonny5 mentioned it the first time around. Looks like it's down again, though. I really need to back that up at some point.

On a side note, several weeks ago I decided to try a run using Axel, who I never really used once I started taking the game seriously. Got $83k! I wasn't expecting that, especially given how hard it is to make gains in the late game when so many locations are used up. Now to get that additional $3k to get back on the first page of the leaderboard...

[Arcatech]

That's a very impressive score! Slowdown with axel on dc is kind of lame imo.

The orange and red customers beyond the church keep sending me back. when is it safe to pick them up? Thx for the helpful replies.

Btw I picked up strat guide by prima and needless to say don't waste your money.
The author seemed mediocre at best

[Davey]

The site's back up (for now):

Code: Select all

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|    '--------'           4         .   .       |
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Choose Customer 1 when it's orange to go to the RB Station. Light-green Customer 5 always goes to the Baseball Stadium. When yellow, Customers 6 and 7 will also go to the Baseball Stadium. Customers 2, 3, and 4 should only be taken under the following conditions:

When 4 is orange, 3 is red, and 2 does not appear, choose 3 to the Heliport.

When 4 is red, 3 does not appear, and 2 is red, choose 2 to the Heliport.

Only after 2 and 3 have been chosen should you choose 4 when it's orange to the RB Station.

[Arcatech]

Tried recording a run with gus the other day. Didn't do quite as well as I wanted, but it was alright. Might try another run soon because this game is the bee's knees. enjoy

part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOVcXkU2yEg&t=261s

part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcShpLDCSPo

part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbdqcjLVkbw&t=31s

[BIL]

God this game still owns. Absolute desert island material.

[Arcatech]

God this game still owns. Absolute desert island material.

You're not lying. It's got that arcadey "just one more time and I can beat my score" type of gameplay to it. I was playing my own tunes for this run, but they weren't loud enough apparently for my crappy huawei cellphone. Blasting DNB and other random tunes from my library makes the experience a bit more fun. Don't get me wrong though, I like Offspring and Bad Religion, but listening to those same 4 songs on repeat the whole time gets to be monotonous.

[it290]

Oy vey. I can only dream of doing a run like that. Very instructional to watch though, thanks. I'm never going to memorize the pickup routes unless I decide to heavily dive into this again sometime (which is not impossible), but just seeing your timing and strategy for boosting well doubtlessly help me improve.

[mycophobia]

Tried recording a run with gus the other day. Didn't do quite as well as I wanted, but it was alright. Might try another run soon because this game is the bee's knees. enjoy

part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOVcXkU2yEg&t=261s

part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbdqcjLVkbw&t=31s

part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcShpLDCSPo

very nice run. I think 2 and 3 are swapped though

[Arcatech]

Oy vey. I can only dream of doing a run like that. Very instructional to watch though, thanks. I'm never going to memorize the pickup routes unless I decide to heavily dive into this again sometime (which is not impossible), but just seeing your timing and strategy for boosting well doubtlessly help me improve.

I hear ya bro. Memorizing the pickups is probably the hardest part of getting better at this one, but crazytaxi.net helped a lot with that. I actually went down to the library and printed off all the strategies and put it into a binder for myself.

There is also "another day" cheat to change around all the pickup locations, which I haven't even tried yet. This title almost has "infinite" replay value.

[Arcatech]

Tried recording a run with gus the other day. Didn't do quite as well as I wanted, but it was alright. Might try another run soon because this game is the bee's knees. enjoy

part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOVcXkU2yEg&t=261s

part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbdqcjLVkbw&t=31s

part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcShpLDCSPo

very nice run. I think 2 and 3 are swapped though

Good call. fixed that mess up

[GaijinPunch]

The bummer about these threads is that they remind you how many people got lives and left us.

[Arcatech]

The bummer about these threads is that they remind you how many people got lives and left us.

Don't be a debby downer man /s. At least with the way the internet works, They might come back to ye olde shmup forum eventually.

Some of the old members probably listened to the unwise words from guile:

[Davey]

Love to see people are still playing this game. I can't really see myself ever getting back into it at this point, but I'd still list it in my top 5 all-time favorites. Although it is 2019 now, maybe time to revisit my potential recording options. I'm no world record holder and surely rusty as hell right now, but could be of use to somebody.

As for memorizing customers, it's hard for me to say how much work that really is. I played quite a lot before finding out that was even a thing, so I had a good general feel for most of the customers and locations already before coming across crazytaxi.net. I picked up on some patterns passively, but didn't know it was so strict, predictable, and had been reverse engineered. So I wasn't really starting from scratch, and fully memorizing wasn't TOO bad.

The funny thing was my reaction to discovering that. Since my scores were starting to plateau, finding out that was a thing was pretty exciting, like there was this whole other dimension to the game ready for me to explore and exploit to make big strides in improving. But if you told me upfront that that was something you had to do to play the game at a high level, that would have been a huge turnoff, maybe enough to keep me from playing in the first place. From what I remember, it's not really an important skill until you're hitting at least $30k consistently.

The bummer about these threads is that they remind you how many people got lives and left us.

If only. I just moved on to other nerdy endeavors. I still lurk here and there but rarely bother posting. Once every year or two I look at my post history and kinda surprise myself at what I deemed post-worthy... "I broke 8 months of silence for that?"

[Davey]

Oh, and here's another thing. I stumbled upon this blast from the past a few weekends ago when backing up files from my computer: a lengthy email reply from the guy that runs crazytaxi.net. For context, I think this was when I was stuck in the $50k-$60k range. Lines starting with > were my questions to him.

>1) How important are tips in getting huge scores? It seems to me
>that tips are usually a VERY small portion of my fares, mostly
>because I'm not adventurous enough to try fancy drifts and such.
>Maybe that's part of my problem, I don't know.

There are two schools of thought for getting high scores in Crazy Taxi...

A] The first is to continually concentrate on picking up and dropping off
customers in the shortest times possible to earn Speedy deliveries and
"stock up" on as many extra seconds as you can. Earning points from tips is
mainly limited to passing cars on straightaways, nothing flashy; most of
the time you want to play it safe so you don't get slowed down or turned
around. This method is best done with Gina's cab, as it has the fastest
acceleration/deceleration in the game, which makes it easier to stop on a
dime for customer pick-ups. The only problem is that you have to be very
good at doing Limiter Cuts, as the speed bursts she gets from them wear off
quicker due to the faster deceleration.

B] The second is to try to extend long combos whenever possible to build
up the Tip Multiplier in order to earn lots of extra money that way.
Obviously, you still have to be good at dropping off customers with Speedy
ratings, but you'll use the extra time to do Crazy Drifts at every corner
you can get away with it without contacting another vehicle (and resetting
the Tip Multiplier). You'll also want to Crazy Drift into the destination
zones to earn even more money whenever you still have a combo going. Gus's
cab is the best for this approach; its heavy weight means you'll slide
further and build up the Tip Multiplier amounts that much more. Better yet,
when you have enough time, Crazy Drift the side of your cab into a wall
inside the destination area to stick there for even more money when you
have the extra time to do so. This is the way I play. Generally, if I
haven't gotten a long combo string going by the time I'm halfway to the
destination (or the string has been broken) I abort building up the Tip
Multiplier and just go for time instead.



>2) How often do you use Crazy Drifts? I seem to rarely use
>them... once again, maybe this can account for my "good but not
>great" scores. I think I might be wasting a lot of time on
>turning around after picking up customers (I just use the Crazy
>Turn).

|

If you're playing the Tip Multiplier way... ALMOST ALL THE TIME!!! While
picking up customers so you can aim towards their destinations beforehand,
to earn extra money when you reach most street corners, and to earn extra
points whenever the destination zone is backed by a wall.

If you choose the Build Up Game Time way, around 40%.

In terms of picking up customers quickly, stopping within their circles is
only half the battle. To avoid wasting precious seconds, you'll often want
to Braking Crazy Drift (so your cab keeps going straight during the skid)
towards the customer and Crazy Tailspin it so that you're facing the
direction the customer wants to go when you stop and they get in. That way
you can buffer a Crazy Dash in before the customer entry animation stops
and immediately go into Limiter Cuts once the Crazy Dash speed burst starts
to subside. (If you're not sure which direction the customer is likely to
go, hedge your bets by Crazy Drifting/Tailspinning the cab so you can
easily drive off in either direction.) This combined with recognizing
customer patterns so you know (or at least have a good idea) of where each
customer will go is probably the single most important thing you can do to
increase your total amount of game time and final score after you've
learned to Limiter Cut. (Imagine how much time you'll save if your cab is
_always_ pointed in the right direction...)



Here are some other important things that helped me increase my scores...


Do your best to never _ever_ go backwards across the highway! To maximize
the amount of money you can earn in a game, you want to go
counter-clockwise around the course as many times as you can. The game
gives you more trips across the Tennis Courts/University stretch of road
than it does across the much longer highway between the Baseball Stadium
and the Police Station. This is why it's a _killer_ to be sent backwards
from the Downtown area across the highway. You'll either have to use up one
of the all-important customers at that end to get back or drive across the
highway passengerless. The only dark-green customer in the Downtown area
that will _always_ send you forwards is the one you jump to via the ramp.
The three in the center of the Downtown area _may_ send you forward if you
choose them correctly, but even then they're still percentage-based
customers. Any other dark-green customer there will _definitely_ send you
backwards across the highway.


Go for the "percentage customers" near the beginning of the game. Once you
know customer colors/patterns like the back of your hand, you'll want to
check on the ones that often send you backwards early on so that if they
don't pan out there are still plenty of other "good" ones to choose from.
The most important ones to go for are:

~ The three orange customers near the Heliport that may take you to the
Baseball Stadium when orange when chosen correctly.

~ The three yellow customers near the "exit" of the Commercial District
that may take you to the Fire Station when chosen correctly.

~ The three dark-green customers in the center of the Downtown area that
may take you to Lookout Tower when chosen correctly.


Some areas are "customer rich" while others empty out quickly. West Side
Beach is a customer rich area, you'll never run out of nearby customers to
pick up there. However, the KFC/Tower Records area is a common destination
that _does_ run out of customers quickly when you can do enough laps around
the course before your game ends. You can be proactive to prevent this from
becoming a big problem late in the game by driving up the hills towards the
Heliport to see if those customers are orange for a RB Station trip after
making a Church dropoff, and driving passengerless to pick up the ones near
the Church after making KFC/Tower Records dropoffs... Another area that
runs out quickly is the Tennis Courts; you may often want to take the left
road to the University even when there _are_ good customers there. The idea
is to save the more stable customers for later in the game and eliminate
the tougher ones early on so you don't waste a lot of time driving around
looking for a "good" customer when time's running low (or be forced to
choose one that wants to go backwards just so you can continue playing).



>3) About how much game time do you have around the $20K and $30K
>marks? I sometimes dip into the 40's and 50's here (I have about
>100 - 120 on a "good" game). Based on time suggestions for
>getting $100K (over 400 seconds remaining at $60K), I start to
>wonder... do you actually keep building time bit by bit up to $60K
>or so?

It's hard to say. Since I play for tips, I try to build up as much time as
possible for the first 1.5 to 2 laps around the track unless a great
money-making combo opportunity presents itself since the game rewards you
with extra time to make dropoffs at the very beginning. After that, I
always try to have a minimum of 150 seconds of (empty cab) game time (I've
been playing for a _very_ long time). When I have less than that, I drive
carefully and try to build up more game time. When I have more, I try to
build more combos through careful driving and Crazy Drifts. Each time I
drop off a customer, I'm happy if I have around 18 or 19 seconds remaining
on the customer clock, but later in the game times of 13-16 seconds are
probably more common. The important thing is never to let the passengerless
game time drop below 40 seconds or else it gets really difficult to build
it back up again.



One last thing. Even when sitdown arcade machines have identical settings,
you sometimes still find you can do better on one machine than you can
another. On certain CT cabinets, I have a hard time getting my score up
into the 80's myself...



Hope this helps! Good luck!

tedster

[it290]

Awesome tips! Thanks for that. I clearly need to do some studyin' to improve my scores at this game.

[Arcatech]

Thats cool helpful info, thanks for sharing here. But ya, if you ever get the itch to play this again, record it if you can. Its fun seeing other peeps try their hand at this classic. I recorded another run a few days ago but the cellphone had some issues and it didn't record all of it. Oh well

[Obiwanshinobi]

Controller-wise, what little I played on Dreamcast, I'd found playing it with a DualShock (original grey one) via adapter most enjoyable. Only digital gas & brake this way, but I just don't seem to like holding a DC controller. Granted, I haven't tried playing Crazy Taxi with my 3D Pad (another adapter allows me to use Saturn peripherals), which is way more pleasing to handle than DC pad.

[Davey]

So this thread getting necro'd rekindled my interest, been playing on and off for the last few weeks. I thought that'd be enough to shake off the rust, but man, I'm still struggling. No idea how I ever got $83k. I was young and gave a shit, I guess.

Anyway, I now have a PC capable of running the game and recording, and here's my best run since getting back to it:
https://youtu.be/mRlJXdtKHPU

Not sure if that's of any value to anybody, but I remember there being a lack of good videos when I was really into this game.

Now that I've mostly re-memorized the customers, I kind of want to keep at it while that data's in my brain, but realistically I'm either going to have 0 or 1 good runs on any given day, and even the "good" ones won't be improvements every time obviously.

Playing on a PS4 pad doesn't result in a callus like playing on a DC pad did. That's something, I guess.

[Davey]

Here's today's run, switched to Gena. $9k improvement over yesterday despite some truly awful moments. I did have a much stronger start than I've usually had since getting back at it, though. "Start" being $30k and prior.

https://youtu.be/uByFpbGMvaI

In hindsight, it's surprising that my high score from the DC days was low to mid $60s considering I got $66k this run despite numerous awful things happening.

Bad luck oddity of the run: didn't pick up the old lady by the telephone booth at the baseball stadium until near the end, right at $60k. She refused to cooperate. Normally I like to pick her up as early as possible to allow for crashing into that booth. For that same reason, I kinda hate all the red customers downtown that hang out in the drop off zone; they have a huge circle and an optimal pickup requires positioning yourself properly, usually at odds with dashing there and stopping as fast as possible.

[it290]

On the PS4 pad (or the DC, I guess), do you guys use analog or digital to steer? I tend to find the tapatapa digital style controls better for this sort of game, but idk if I'm Doing It Wrong.

[Davey]

I've always used analog, but I'm not sure how much it matters. I assume pressing a direction on the D-pad equates to turning the steering wheel as far as it'll go. But you'll definitely lose some precision in any case.

Factors I'm considering:
1.) How often I only push the stick part way. I definitely do that when weaving through traffic on long, straight parts or fixing my angle on the big hills. At high speeds, one little tap can make a big difference. I'd think analog wins there, but a quick tap on the D-pad might move in a small enough increment, I don't know. But this game also has a lot more hard turns than conventional racing games where analog vs. digital wouldn't matter or could even favor digital just slightly. I'll try to be more cognizant of what I'm actually doing next run.
2.) Characters with more sensitive handling should be affected more in theory.

My hunch is that analog is a little better than digital but personal preference/comfort is probably more important.

[Arcatech]

Those are some bad ass runs davey. Thats cool you can consistently keep the timer at 125+. I'm usually hovering around 100 on good days . I didn't realize you can slingshot the cab through the freeway siderails. Thats pretty cool, I'll have to try that next time.

Is that emulator fairly responsive? I've never tried dabbling in dc emulation before.

[Davey]

Sadly the most promising recent run was that Axel one I botched. I think I got the timer up in the 180s, but things fell apart. I think I barely managed to hit 200 in the XBLA version when I was playing that a lot.

I don't think there's really a secret to it, just a matter of practice and gradually getting better. I think the gains come from a variety of places:
- Limiter cutting consistently. After a while this is just muscle memory.
- Learning the customers. In the macro sense, it keeps you moving "forward" and helps spread your pickups throughout the map. In the micro sense, knowing which way you need to face before you pick up a customer is huge.
- Remembering which customers you picked up. The biggest example for me is the group of three customers at the Bus Terminal that go to the Tennis Court. Sometimes if I go long stretches without going to the Bus Terminal I forget which of those are remaining. This can go wrong in two ways: either I go for a Tennis Court customer that isn't there anymore, or I prematurely pick up the signal customers. Sometimes mid run I also try to remember if I picked up the two roof customers yet, although I don't think I've ever actually messed that up. But it'd be really bad if you did.
- Learning to tailspin. This lets you orient yourself in the right direction much faster when picking up customers.
- Getting better at avoiding collisions. I'm still kinda bad at this. But being able to maneuver your way out of a bad situation is important too, which I'm better at. Trying not to panic when bad shit happens (which it will), eh, I'm inconsistent there.
- Getting close to customers without scaring them away. One micro-optimization I've been using is to slightly tailspin towards them. They seem to fear the front of the cab much more than the back. I don't know much of a difference this really makes, but if I'm picking up over 100 customers per run, shaving half a second (just to make up a number) would add up to a lot of extra time over the course of the run.
- Downtown routes. I'm pretty sure the ideal path to Sky Bank and CT Hospital is on the outside, but the arrow doesn't make this obvious. I used to try to go through the middle and I'm pretty sure that's slower and more collision prone. I haven't actually checked it, but I feel like I add more seconds to the clock when I go to those two instead of the other downtown locations, leading me to believe that path is a pseudo-shortcut.

Sadly I also think luck plays a big role in getting a good run. If you get really good customer patterns you waste far less time between customers. Lookout Tower has been annoying the hell out of me lately for that reason, seems to be the worst offender of "here's a lot of customers but none of them are what you want." Also everybody wants to go to KFC but nobody ever leaves from there, seems sketchy.

I got $60k with BD Joe yesterday, kinda just messing around since I never used him much. I actually like the way he handles but the width of his cab definitely comes to bite you sometimes. It's specifically noticeable on the highway when you're trying to squeeze past semis; I've triggered a couple jackknifes with him and that practically never happens with anybody else. I'll probably upload that run later, takes like 2.5-3 hours (low tier internet plan, I'm cheap).

Emulator seems perfectly fine. I haven't played on DC in several years but I haven't noticed any differences or bugs. Low system requirements too, my PC is like 3 or 4 years old, i3, integrated graphics. I assume with a better graphics card I could record at a better framerate but in terms of actual gameplay it's perfectly smooth.

EDIT: video links
Axel run cut short: https://youtu.be/vNsAWvaZeQQ
BD Joe $60k: https://youtu.be/1pDHSHzj18Y

EDIT #2:
Axel $66k: https://youtu.be/ckHk8yVYIV8

[Davey]

Necroing this thread to post some new(-ish) uploads. Despite the repetition, I still love picking this game back up once in a great while.

I uploaded a bike run for each character, although I'm not as experienced with the bike. It does seem pretty busted once you're used to it, though. I remember crushing my scores when I first discovered the code to unlock it, then being really surprised when the author of crazytaxi.net said he preferred the car. I went back to the car after reading that and never really gave the bike a proper chance.

I started messing around with it last summer, posting these two:
Gena $79k
Gus $77k

...then apparently lost interest or got busy or something, and didn't try the other two until this week:
BD Joe $76k
Axel $84k

Although character difference isn't nearly as pronounced with the bike. You can bounce from one character to another with no need to adjust.

[LordHypnos]

Just because nobody has said it yet: Thanks for making these videos, it's really cool to see what CT is like when played at a high level (or at least much higher than I ever played it).

[Marc]

Bike!?

Love this game, sadly the only version I have access to at present is the X360 one - I'm just not a fan of the altered visuals and soundtrack but it's better than nothing I guess. I thought I was relatively good at it, but reading / watching some of this stuff makes me realise I was only playing at it! Deeply impressive stuff.