The Rebellious Crazy Taxi Driver Axel Makes His Way To Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble via SEGA Pass DLC

Axel, one of Crazy Taxi’s iconic cabbie drivers, makes his way to Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble as part of the SEGA Pass DLC.Axel joins AiAi and friends, causing chaos along the way!

Axel will be playable across both Adventure Mode and Battle Mode, with unique stats to help him on the courses. Plus, for Axel only, all in-game bananas will switch to coins in homage to the franchise so you can rack up some insane money.

The SEGA Pass is included with the Digital Deluxe Edition of Banana Rumble and will also be available as a separate bundle to purchase. Individual characters will also be available a la carte. All content is scheduled to be released over the coming months.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble launches exclusively for the Nintendo Switch family of systems June 25, 2024. Pre-order your copy here!

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Power Surge: SEGA Announces Five Brand New Games for Classic SEGA Titles; Now In Development

SEGA’s announcement at the Game Awards was a major treat for many SEGA fans as the iconic gaming company revealed five brand new games in a mind blowing trailer featuring their library of classic SEGA IPs such as Jet Set Radio, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Crazy Taxi and many more to come!

Currently the games are in development and we can hope to see more information in the near future. You can follow updates by signing up on SEGA’s Next Level website.

This is a big day for every SEGA fan who remembers the company’s iconic franchises and now we can experience these games again in a brand new era. Which game are you guys excited for, let us know in the comments below.

SEGA News Bits Live: Sonic Origins Revealed + Jet Set Radio Rebooted

WAKE UP! There’s a lot to talk about this morning as Sonic Origins has been officially revealed and detailed. Let’s run through all the features, digital bonuses and prices. Also, we run through the past week of SEGA news including reboots of Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio and a Streets of Rage movie from the John Wick guy.

If you want to support this type of content, you can check out our Patreon!

If you enjoy our SEGA News Bits segments and want to support us: Give us a sub and give this video a thumbs up so it shows up on more like-minded fans YouTube recommendations. You know, how that YouTube algorithm is.

SEGA reportedly working on new Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi games as part of Super Game project

According to a report from Bloomberg, SEGA is in the process of developing big budget reboots of Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi, as part of the previously reported on Super Game project. For a refresher, the Super Game project is SEGA’s attempt to basically have their own Fortnite. Meaning a recurring revenue stream with a large online community built around it. SEGA already has released Phantasy Star Online 2 globally, but reboots of Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi would hopefully garner a larger audience and even more sales in SEGA’s eyes.

According to the Bloomberg report, the Crazy Taxi game has been in development for over a year and should release in two to three years. Jet Set Radio was named alongside Crazy Taxi on SEGA’s annual report listing IPs SEGA wishes to bring back.

The writer for the Bloomberg piece stressed that these projects could still be cancelled. In my personal opinion they could just be covering their butt should this report prove false. Also, in my opinion, the use of “reboot” here could be incorrectly used, as writers in the past referred to any sort of followup as a “reboot”. More news as we hear it!

[Source: Bloomberg]

The SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show LIVE: Lisle Wilkerson (Shenmue II, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Fighter)

Lisle Wilkerson voiced Joy and Yuan in Shenmue II, Sarah Bryant in Virtua Quest and Virtua Fighter 4 and 5 and Gina in Crazy Taxi! She has a new podcast of her own, Adventures of a Blonde Geisha, and we’ll talk all that and more on Wednesday, February 23 at 6:45PM Pacific, 8:45PM Central.

Subscribe to Adventures of a Blonde Geisha today and leave positive reviews!

Support us on Patreon! Get early access, join in the conversation, get Q&A priority, become a guest on the show and more!

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New Dreamcast documentary speaks with Masayoshi Kikuchi (Jet Set Radio), Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Rez), Rieko Kodama (Skies of Arcadia), and more

To celebrate the upcoming 20th year anniversary of the SEGA Dreamcast, the Japanese YouTube channel Archipel has decided to go talk to Japanese creators that worked on software for the Dreamcast. This is just the first part and the people they got from SEGA is pretty crazy:

Hiroshi Iuchi (Ikaruga), Kenji Kanno (Crazy Taxi), Masayoshi Kikuchi (Jet Set Radio), Rieko Kodama (Eternal Arcadia/Skies of Arcadia), Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Space Channel 5 / Rez), Tetsu Okano (Segagaga), Yoot Saito (Seaman), and Hiroaki Yotoriyama (Soulcalibur)!

Its nice to see some of these creators sit down and talk about their time working on the very iconic Dreamcast, pretty excited to see part two of this documentary series. If you haven’t seen Archipel’s content, you should totally check out other documentaries they have done.

Crazy Taxi joins Games with Gold for February

Hey, hey want to play Crazy Taxi and save some crazy money? Well, it seems that if you are a Xbox Live member you will be able to do just that. The Xbox 360 port of Crazy Taxi is set to join Microsoft’s Games with Gold program this February. Never heard of Games with Gold? Its a monthly service of free downloadable games for Xbox Live subscribers. Unlike rival service PlayStation Plus though, if you download the games, you keep them forever. Even if you cancel Xbox Live.

Crazy Taxi is also backwards compatible with the Xbox One, so you can play it on your shiny new console. While this port of Crazy Taxi isn’t perfect and has its issues, getting it for free to me seems worth it. Actually, since they changed the soundtrack, maybe even for free is asking too much…

SEGA Talk Podcast #12: Crazy Taxi (1999)

We’re back! SEGA Talk turns its high beams on and takes a closer look at SEGA AM3’s classic arcade and Dreamcast game Crazy Taxi. Despite its seemingly simplistic premise, Crazy Taxi offered up a lot of depth and has seen a long and successful history as a franchise with games still being released as of 2017. What are our memories of the game? What was the development history? How do the in-game cabbies compare to real life cab drivers? All this and more is talked about on SEGA Talk!

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If you want to give us feedback, suggest a topic for the next podcast or want to ask a question for us to answer on the next episode you can add them as a comment below or send theme directly to our email. Make sure you use subject line ‘SEGA Talk’ and as always, thanks for listening!

SEGA’s Streets of Rage, Altered Beast to be adapted to film/TV with Walking Dead production company

alteredbeaststreetsofragewalkingdeadSeems that the SEGA established Stories International will be teaming up with The Walking Dead and Fear of the Walking Dead production company ‘Circle of Confusion‘ who has also produced TV titles such as The Talking Dead, Powers, Outcast and Dirk Gently. They have also worked on films such as Spare Parts, American Ultra and Mr. Right. Circle of Confusion also houses executive producer David Engel who produced Straight out of Compton. The interesting part here is that the variety article, where the source comes from, specifically lists Altered Beast and Streets of Rage as the titles that The Walking Dead production company  will be working with.

“These are some of the most well loved SEGA games, and we are thrilled to be working with Stories to adapt them into major film and television franchises,” -Lawrence Mattis, Circle of Confusion producer

If you guys didn’t know, Stories International announced awhile back that they will be making movies or TV show based on SEGA video game franchises including Shinobi with Marc Platt, Golden Axe, Virtua Fighter, The House of the Dead, Rise of Nightmares, and Crazy Taxi. While we have been hearing about these adaptations for years now, we still haven’t seen what it will amount to. Do you think this will turn out to be good for SEGA’s brand? Does having The Walking Dead production company give you confidence? Let us know in the comments below.

[Source: Variety]

Steam Sale: Dreamcast Collection Titles $1.99 Each

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Do you need a handy, cheap Black Friday game gift, or perhaps want to finally jump into some classics for a paltry amount? Then SEGA has the deal for you. Until November 28th, every title under the “Dreamcast Collection” bundle, which includes Crazy Taxi, NiGHTS Into Dreams…, Jet Set Radio, SEGA Bass Fishing, Space Channel 5: Part 2, and Sonic Adventure DX are all available for a staggering $1.99 USD each. All of these games are priced at $7.99 normally, and normally buying them all together would be at least thirty dollars. That’s about an eighteen dollar difference for all of them.

Please note that the bundle itself is not discounted, and that Sonic Adventure 2, another Dreamcast classic released alongside NiGHTS and JSR, is not included in this sale. You will have to buy each game individually to make use of the discounts. So get on it, already!

SEGA is Finally Improving the Dreamcast Collection on Steam

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While it’s been possible for a while to get Sonic Adventure DX, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5: Part 2 and SEGA Bass Fishing on Steam, they’re not necessarily the best versions of the game to get. Sonic Adventure DX especially has problems like there being borders around the game and it having a low screen resolution. Which might have something to do with it being a port of the XBLA version, which was a port of the previous PC version, which was a port of the Gamecube version, which was a port of the Dreamcast version. So yeah, it could do with some improvements.

And it might finally get them, as SEGA announced today in a Steam forum post that they’re working on improving these versions over the next few months three years after they’ve been released. Among these improvements are added achievements, which can already be seen on the store pages of the games. Hopes up that this also means that they’ll finally add the Bad Religion back into Crazy Taxi.

Kenji Kanno and Hardlight Studios gives insight on Crazy Taxi City Rush with a Developer Diary series


Kenji Kanno, the original creator of the Crazy Taxi arcade game, and Hardlight Studios gives us an insight on the development on the upcoming Crazy Taxi City Rush mobile game for IOS and Andriod platforms.

While working with the team at Hardlight Studios for the first time, Kenji Kanno wanted them to understand the roots of the game franchise in order for them to be more ambitious and keep the original concept true to the game. He also gives his opinion on the unique thing about smartphones is that you could start the game as a timewaster at first, but become sucked into it and get really addicted to the game.

Hardlight Studio’s Scott West explains that their company has a different audience and playstyle. So what they did with the game was to implement missions from pickup missions, daily challenges which are timed, regular missions, ranking missions and special missions. For more highlights from the video that are included in Crazy Taxi City Rush, be sure to hit the jump.

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IMPORTANT UPDATE! SEGA’s video game ports on Amazon’s Fire TV are a bit disappointing

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IMPORTANT UPDATE: It ends up the Ouya controller WAS the problem of my control woes as I got the Fire Controller from Amazon today and I can say that Crazy Taxi works just fine on it. The drive/reverse buttons are in their proper place and we have brakes! The gas and brakes or on the R and L triggers respectfully, so while still not that comfortable, work much, much better than before. I owe an apology to Sega for blasting their port when it was poor bluetooth controller support that was the main culprit.

Last week, I picked up the new Fire TV as a mini console for my living room. I like the idea of playing some mobile games on a full blown console but sadly, the Ouya just wasn’t what I wanted out in that regard. Fire TV solves that by not only having a ton of video apps, but much more popular mobile games rather than the overload of weak indy games the Ouya consists of. Very fun games like Asphalt 8, Rayman Fiesta Run and Riptide 2 occupy a decent launch library. Those games include some of Sega’s more popular titles. I tried out four of the eight Sega games available and sadly, the porting of those titles from seems to not have gone over as well as hoped. My impressions after the jump.