(Link to video)

It's time to make some CRAZY money? Are you Ready? Here We Go!

Game objectives

  • Fastest Time to Reach Crazy License
  • Plays on Hardest Difficulties
  • Starts with Shortest Timer

Emulator Settings

  • Dolphin 4.0.2-dirty
  • Dual Core and Idle Skipping Disabled
  • JIT Recompiler Selected
  • DSP LLE Recompiler selected
  • Skip Bios checked

Describe the Game

Crazy Taxi is an open world racing video game developed by Hitmaker (Sega AM3) and published by Sega. The main objective of the game is to pick up customers and take them to their chosen destination as quickly as possible.

About the TAS

How does this TAS work?

My goal was to reach $20,000(as fast as possible) while running out the clock as best I could. The game ends once the timer reaches zero. In theory, a TAS of Arcade Mode could run forever because if you reach the destinations with speedy bonus, you are given more time that is unnecessary.

San Francisco Level

I played Crazy Taxi with Arcade Rules starting with the lowest amount of time possible to start with and max difficulties on traffic and time(I was actually hoping that the streets would be more packed than they were!). In the beginning of this TAS, I had a lot of hard time remembering old skills from when I had played Crazy Taxi on my GameCube long long ago. One reason for this TAS being hard in the beginning was trying to figure out a combination of buttons to Crazy Dash, which if you have never played before is where you can see me accelerating very quickly and sometimes even jumping.
Other than learning Crazy Dash and Drifting all over again, the basic concept of the game was very simple. Pick up customers as fast as possible, try as close to as many vehicles as possible, and try to pick up the next best customer. To Reach Rank 1 on a new game, just earn $8,000. To Reach Crazy License, it's $20,000. On a game where you've unlocked the bike cart, Rank 1 is a lot harder to earn(You'd have to get over $85,000 or more).

Money Making

The main money-makers are drifting and crazy throughs. Crazy Jumps are too short to make much. Drifting can increment very quickly as detailed below in Wall Drifting. Crazy Throughs are when you pass close by other cars and trucks. If you look at the cash bonus animation there is bronze silver and gold. I thought it was random at first but your distance from other cars and trucks determines if you get silver of gold bonuses, obviously gold bonuses are better. On the freeways where I get huge combos that can be attributed to all the trucks and oil tankers, they dish out 2 bonuses each (buses only give one bonus). I got lucky with RNG and had loads of trucks on the way back to the baseball stadium.

Wall Drifting

Here is the only glitch in the game that I used. Basically if you are drifting and you hit a building or an immobile object, your car will go up onto its side and the game thinks you are continuously drifting. You can stay in the position for a pretty long time if you use a good combination of driving forward and backwards.
I wanted to save this until the end because it can be quite boring to watch someone do this trick for a long period of time, which is why I kept it only to get the last $3,000 to get me right above $20,000.
At the very end of the movie, where it looks like I am just wasting time drifting, I am. I attempted to make entertaining by getting the 100$ to push me into $20,000 and doing a little jump drift. The last 3 seconds had to be run down to the very, very last frame before I would get a Time's Up screen, this way the game finishes a little quicker than if I had dropped off the customer and ran around for 3 seconds(In testing, it saved 725 frames).

Thank You's

Etch, the real Crazy Taxi expert!
Zanoab, STBM, Warepire, Hegyak, thommy3, Phallosvogel, Ilari, Cooljay, Patashu, ALAKTORN, XkyRauh, niamek, jlun2, got4n, arandomgameTASer, Scepheo, Zarmakuizz, Spikestuff, andypanther, alec_kermit, and anyone else who helped in the thread and on IRC!

feos: Synced, judging...
feos: Awesome run, accepting to Moons.
Fog: Processing...

Joined: 10/1/2013
Posts: 98
Location: My Basement
I've recently gotten back into Crazy Taxi, so this was right on time! Technically impressive: The Crazy Throughs and wall-sticks. Looks Unoptimized: Stopping the car. Meh vote.
Guga
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Joined: 1/17/2012
Posts: 838
Location: Chile
lol
Joined: 2/8/2006
Posts: 60
At least in the actual arcade version, you can't play forever (although over an hour is possible) as you will eventually run out of customers to pick up since they don't respawn.
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 757
subanark wrote:
At least in the actual arcade version, you can't play forever (although over an hour is possible) as you will eventually run out of customers to pick up since they don't respawn.
Depending on how good you are, 3hrs is about right for getting virtually every passenger. [Well over 200]. And that is factoring in fatigue and muscle pain from constant drifts and dashes. And by God it's entertaining! Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
Editor, Expert player (2315)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3856
Location: Germany
This video is not available in my country, what Anyway, I saw one of the WIPs and the driving was pretty outrageous :)
Joined: 7/30/2013
Posts: 79
Youtube sucks.
(◕‿◕)
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Joined: 2/1/2014
Posts: 928
MUGG wrote:
This video is not available in my country, what Anyway, I saw one of the WIPs and the driving was pretty outrageous :)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e6803bfzcxqoi4j/%5BTAS%5D%20Crazy%20Taxi%20-%20Rank%201%20%26%20Crazy%20License%20%28480p%29.mp4 That's not fair to you guys! Here's a link to it on dropbox :)
Dimon12321
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Joined: 4/5/2014
Posts: 1128
Location: Ukraine
Nice run, dude! YES! P.S: 'It's time to escape from the city!' =)
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
mklip2001
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Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2224
Location: Georgia, USA
Fishaman P wrote:
Looks Unoptimized: Stopping the car.
At that point, the limiting factor is the remaining clock time. As long as the money gets obtained, solarplex doesn't need to optimize the last delivery speed as much. In fact, I found it pretty funny how incompetent he made the driver look at the very end, where the last passenger complains about how slow the ride was. It stands in good contrast to everything before. ... or do you mean that every stop looks unoptimized? I'm only commenting on the very last one. The run looks quite inhuman, and the sideways air was always fun. Great job with this!
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 757
Some questions. Why didn't you pick Gus? Best top speed, no slow down over terrain.. serious air time? I mean Gina is great as an all rounder and all but still. Now I am thinking from my time on an actual machine where a TAS isn't a thing to worry about, but I am wondering if it'd be beneficial to try and cycle the entire city. There is a path of customers who will allow you to literally in 1 almost unbroken motion, and the underpass is absolute MURDER for traffic but could provide some sick bonuses. Same thing with the Fire Hall. Oi does it get insane for jams there, which means a shit ton more vehicles and bonuses. I know during a long scoring run, going across the freeway to the PD or Hospital on the alternate side is AWESOME for bonuses... but I always found going at a normal speed that you get the chance to pass a lot more semis and cars for large bonuses. Since the in game timer is a bit of a fussy thing for this, would that might not have yielded better bonuses in the end or more... or would it be slower. Forgive me.. trying to rap my head around the TAS and not let my Arcade experience totally derail it.. but if even the tiniest idea can improve the speed to nail the License then yay. Looked a lot of fun regardless! Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 69
Location: Calgary, Alberta
I bought Crazy Taxi as my first PS2 game. 100 games later and I still love it (unplayed in in a decade, but that might change...) and I wish I had followed the game's run with WIPs because I almost could have contributed... I would love to see a crazy box run beating WRs in every one of the 16 challenges. I'll have to dig up my save file to contribute my high jump score :P (I have to assume the physics is the same between PS2/DC and GCN.. and maybe Xbox even though that's prolly a different version) Yes vote.
Joined: 6/24/2007
Posts: 119
is it faster to only wall drift or drive back and forth on the highway? what would be the rate? ($/frame)
Joined: 12/31/2009
Posts: 174
flashthe wrote:
is it faster to only wall drift or drive back and forth on the highway? what would be the rate? ($/frame)
Driving back and forth on the highway is fastest only because it is capable of collecting tips and building up the combo the fastest (obviously luck plays a large role here). Wall drift however is far more consistent and doesn't require luck. Using 4:28-4:46 as a reference, you collect 80 tips in 18 seconds using the highway. Using 5:49-5:54 as a reference, you collect 18 tips in 5 seconds using a wall drift. (solarplex may be able to provide the exact rate) Let's say driving through traffic yields 4.4 tips per second and wall drift yields 3.6 tips per second. Starting without a combo, you can expect after 20 seconds: Traffic: ~$3916 Wall Drift: ~$2628 Starting at a combo of 50, you can expect after 20 seconds: Traffic: ~$8316 Wall Drift: ~$6228 There isn't a proper way to calculate the rate because it would depend on your combo, luck, and route. Optimal strategy would be driving through high traffic going the opposite direction the entire time but that isn't always possible. The next best thing would be to build up your combo quickly and do a wall drift (when it is faster) with the remaining time. For the math above, the upper bound for earnings from tips is $1 * Combo. The amount you earn degrades over time from when you last earned a tip (not a major factor at the speeds used above).
Tub
Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 1377
hegyak wrote:
The music choices were made due to overzealous copyrights on Youtube.
It's blocked in germany anyway. :(
m00
Former player
Joined: 6/30/2010
Posts: 1095
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
And yet the German government criticizes other countries when they block YT...
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Joined: 12/10/2006
Posts: 118
Youtube blocks the videos. Not the German government or GEMA.
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Joined: 6/30/2010
Posts: 1095
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
thommy3 wrote:
Youtube blocks the videos. Not the German government or GEMA.
But the GEMA causes it.
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
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Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2086
The short version to my knowledge is that the blocking of videos is a result of Youtube and the GEMA being unable to agree on licensing terms and conditions, mainly the GEMA asking for unreasonable prices per view. (Incidentally, "unreasonable prices" is quite common with the GEMA, as it's been in the news that they recently raised music fees for nightclubs and the like as well.) While I find it disgraceful and unsuitable as a long-term solution, using a Proxy Service should be your best bet.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [2608] GC Crazy Taxi by solarplex in 05:53.18
Joined: 1/26/2009
Posts: 558
Location: Canada - Québec
I used to play this game at the arcade, great game. But, it seem like some client are more generous with the bonuses than other. Couldn't the route be optimized to get directly to those client rather than the first one at the beggining?
Joined: 10/31/2006
Posts: 134
feos wrote:
Awesome run, accepting to Moons. When trying to obsolete this run, one would need to make it more entertaining, since the time given to the player is fixed (even though the current amount is the lowest).
Maybe I am missing something here, but time isn't fixed, only starting time is. Every time he pick-ups/drop a customer, some time gets added. A run that could manage to get 20000$ in one customer would be way shorter (obviously not feasible, but just an example)
Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4017
You also get a smaller time bonus for being too slow in delivering a customer, as can be seen in this TAS. So competition should definitely remain time-based.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
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Sorry I haven't been replying! But I've been reading all of it, good questions have been asked that I so not know the answers too. Things like why did you choose Gina? (I picked her because she was chosen from the ps2 TAS. As for why not get massive points instead of getting extra time bonus? That's another thing I'd be willing to do another TAS for! This was a great run that came out super well. Next run to attempt to destroy my own run, I'll test Gus and the other guy besides axel. And I think I'm gonna try for more points and less time to keep it exciting
Joined: 2/21/2008
Posts: 255
I think Crazy Box lends itself to being TAS'd more than a High Score.
"The guy was fatally injured and wants to be covered by God's tears (rain) before he dies. God is too busy to bother because it wastes frames." Frames 16:26
Patashu
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xnamkcor wrote:
I think Crazy Box lends itself to being TAS'd more than a High Score.
Yeah ^. I want to see Crazy Box as well for sure :D
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu