Crazy Taxi mod restores product placement and analog controls



Even in a world of constant ports and re-releases, game preservation can be tricky. As licenses expire or the hardware a game was designed around becomes obsolete, certain games are going to inevitably end up changed from their original state. One such example is Crazy Taxi, the arcade game that received fairly faithful PC and console ports in the early 2000s, received another round of ports around 2010 that had to be altered for release. Namely, the real-world locations customers would want to be driven to, like Pizza Hut or Kentucky Fried Chicken, had to be renamed to generic titles, like Fried Chicken Shack. While there has been a mod available for some time now called the Dreamcast Restoration Mod that restores the titles of the restaurants, it used a method that only let the same number of characters be used on the new titles, meaning, for example, Kentucky Fried Chicken had to be shortened to KentuckyFriedChickn. It also replaced some of the new building designs with new assets that replicate the look of the original, albeit imperfectly.

Now, a new mod has been released that aims to improve those shortcomings, coming to us from modders Silent and alexvgz, who created the original Dreamcast Restoration mod. Dubbed Dreamcast Restoration mod 2.0, the new mod fixes the issue in the location names, but more importantly, is able to accurately depict the buildings as they were in the original arcade version. This is because the assets for the original version still exist in this port, but were being wallpapered over with new ones. By disabling the code that told the game where to find the new assets, the original models appear unaltered. (It's worth noting that the Dreamcast Restoration mod does not restore the original Dreamcast music; it was deemed unnecessary since such a mod already exists.)

Crazy_Taxi_JtWQkuJuCM.jpeg

While working on the Restoration mod, the team noticed some other issues in the game code that could be fixed relatively easily. So, releasing alongside the Restoration mod is a SilentPatch that addresses some of these issues. It restores proper analog controls, which also had an imperfect fix out already, as well as fixes a crashing issue when trying to use a steering wheel controller. Another notable change is that it restores the cheat codes present in the arcade version and Dreamcast port. While the cheats activated at the main menu were carried over to the recent ports, those activated in-game were missing. The SilentPatch even makes these codes activate using the same input as they did in the first PC port from 2002, meaning guides written for the game nearly two decades ago will be compatible with this mod. There are other changes included in the patch, and a full changelog can be seen in Silent's blog post attached below.

:arrow: Source
 

Axido

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meh. it's one of the few cases where it fits in. kfc will stick in your head a lot better then some generic place assuming your you live in a place where kfcs, pizza huts and the likes are common

I don't mind content that doesn't reflect reality when I'm playing a game to escape reality.
However, I do like parodies of real-world brands. Like "Burger Kong" and "Massivesoft" in C&C: Red Alert 2 (and Yuri's Revenge respectively) or humorous made up ones like "Pißwasser". Other than that, branding could stay out of the games I play entirely without me even noticing.
 

WiiU_user

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I personally like the music of the gamecube version better…. Crazy Taxi seems to be working on the dreamcast emu just fine
 

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