BODY: The horn blares, the fare jumps in, and suddenly you're power-sliding past a bratwurst stand toward a glowing green arrow. After a hands-off tease at Summer Game Fest 2026, Crazy Taxi: World Tour finally let players grab the wheel at gamescom 2026—and 4Gamer spent about 30 minutes drifting through the newly announced "Germany" stage.
If you grew up feeding quarters into the arcade original, the muscle memory kicks in fast. The "Crazy Drift," the "Crazy Dash," and the mid-air tricks that stack up your fare multiplier all return, tuned to feel snappy rather than nostalgic. The reboot leans hard into its "World Tour" premise: rather than one fictional city, you barnstorm real-world locales, and Germany is the latest to join the roster.
The Germany stage swaps sun-baked California boardwalks for cobblestone old-town squares, autobahn straightaways, and canal-side shortcuts. 4Gamer notes the level is dense with the kind of destructible clutter and improbable ramps that define the series—less a faithful map than a playground built to be abused at 120 kph. Traffic is thick enough to punish greed but forgiving enough to reward showboating.
The bigger question hanging over the demo is tone. Sega has confirmed the game targets a live-service-adjacent structure, and the hands-on suggests the studio is threading a needle: keep the anarchic, punk-soundtrack spirit intact while building something that can grow stage by stage over time.
The insider take
From Tokyo, this one carries weight. Crazy Taxi is a Sega crown jewel from the Dreamcast era, and its revival sits at the center of the company's stated push to resurrect dormant franchises—announced alongside Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe, and Shinobi. Japanese fans have been cautiously optimistic but wary of the "live service" framing bolted onto a beloved arcade icon. A playable, genuinely fun Germany stage is exactly the kind of reassurance Sega needed to show at a Western event before the game reaches skeptical domestic audiences.
Originally reported by 4Gamer.net − 最新記事 (Japanese).