Sega’s forgotten racing series is making a crazy comeback 20 years later

At The Game Awards in 2023, Sega announced plans to reboot five of its classic franchises. These included Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and Crazy Taxi. Of those five, so far we’ve only seen Shinobi: The Art of Vengeance, which was released last August and was a promising start to Sega’s reboot project. Now, as part of this year’s Summer Game Fest showcase, we’ve got our first look at Sega’s fresh take on its beloved stunt-racing arcade game, Crazy Taxi: World Tour. The game is set to launch on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X in 2027.

The new trailer shows a modernized version of the original game’s San Francisco-inspired map. It still looks like Crazy Taxi, but a whole lot nicer. OG driver Alex returns here, and it looks like he’ll have a few rivals to contend with. The gameplay on offer looks familiar — picking up customers and dropping them off as quickly as possible. World Tour makes some silly new additions to the formula too, like a fishing game and picking up a passenger who’s carrying dozens of pizzas.

The arcade version of Crazy Taxi was released in February 1999 and featured a San Francisco-inspired map, and came to Sega’s Dreamcast console the following year. It’s frantic and fast-paced, with gameplay modes featuring a rolling countdown clock or pre-set rounds of three, five, and 10 minutes. You can earn more money along the way by performing stunts, such as catching air and daring near-misses with other vehicles.

Back in July 2024, we got a glimpse of what the rebooted Crazy Taxi might look like, thanks to a couple of Sega job listings for the project where the game is consistently referred to as a “large-scale online title,” “open world,” and a “massively multiplayer driving game.” The original is a tight, fast-paced arcade driving game about ferrying passengers around a city map as fast as possible.

Image: Sega / RGG Studio

Though Crazy Taxi has been absent from our screens for too long, Sega’s Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio paid tribute to the series with the Crazy Delivery minigame in 2024’s Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. The minigame also appears in 2025’s Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

Crazy Taxi: World Tour launches in 2027 on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.