Скачать или смотреть Courier Crisis - Sega Saturn - Intro & Gameplay sample (Inspiration for Crazy Taxi?) [4K50]

Gameplay Footage from the rather pricey PAL version of the game which is indeed optimised for 50Hz surprisingly. Note, we've muted the music due to it using licensed songs from numerous bands, which there is a rather large selection of in game. Party this is due to the fact we don't know what all the songs in game our and there Content ID status on YouTube.

Courier Crisis by all accounts is the game Sega's Crazy Taxi stole the concept from, polished it up and made a better game. It was developed by the short lived studio New Level Software, who previous did the Saturn and PlayStation ports of Road Rash. Which would explain in part why this game feels a lot like EA bike racing franchise.

An open world bike deliver game of sorts that's a modern take on Paperboy, the game is split up into five areas, Civic Center, Industrial Zone, Waterfront, China Town and Skid Row. While there's not a huge amount of differences between each area, there a few nice touches with different NPC walking the streets. Skid Row is the most memorable area with feral dogs chasing you and gun shots going off all around you. Largely however they all end up playing the same with you racing down a lot of small streets. This is one game concept that was perhaps a bit ahead of it's time, compared to the power of the systems it was released on.

The aim is to pick up and deliver the packages on each stage, while racing against the clock, take too long and you're fired, assuming you don't get busted by the cops or run out of health first. Racing round the streets of the city, you must dodge cars, trucks, npcs and plenty of other obstacles that get in your way to the goal. The longer you take to deliver your packages the less cash you earn and as your progress more of each area opens up. With the player required to deliver more packages over a larger area. All you have to aid you is a series of different trick moves that if pulled off successfully grant benefits such as speeds boosts, time bonuses, extra health and more. All the while cycling around to music from original artists and saving up cash to buy better bikes. And punching your way through the innocent bystanders on the streets, which given some of the NPC you can do this to would give modern ratings a field day if it was released now. Might explain why it got a German USK 18 rating, compared to the ELSPA 3-10.

So does all of this sound familiar to Crazy Taxi? There are so many similarity, that either both games borrowed from another third title or Crazy Taxi borrows heavily from Courier Crisis. Well Courier Crisis got released in Japan at the start of 1998 a year before Crazy Taxi. It also first released in late 1997 and Take 2 and Sega joint published the game in Europe. Crazy Taxi mainly benefits from much better controls and map design.

While the game was mauled by western reviewers back in the late 90s it's no where near as bad as they would have you think. However, Famitsu awarded it 25/40 in Japan which is a far fairer score it's an above average game with some original ideas, but it's too repetitive and the controls are too ridged.

Also known as: クーリエ・クライシス (Japan) Courier Crisis: The Saga of the Modern Fatalist (Full in-game title)

Release: 1997
Developer: New Level Software / ニューレーベルソフトウェア
Publisher: Take 2 & SEGA (Europe) BMG JAPAN, Inc /ＢＭＧジャパン (Japan) GT Interactive (North America)
Format: Sega Saturn (SS) / セガサターン

Courier Crisis was also released on PlayStation and is unlikely ever to get a re-release due to the music and GT Bicycles licenses. While the game has a humourous take on the world of bike riding, some content elements included in the game would now give the title a much higher rating.

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All footage in this video is captured directly from a Sega Saturn console, via an Elgato Game Capture HD60 Pro using a RGB Scart to HDMI upscaler. Upscaled to 4K to improve the video bit rate.