Crazy Taxi has always felt competitive. Every passenger is a race against the clock, every shortcut matters, every ridiculous jump is an attempt to squeeze a few more dollars out of a run before time expires. The strange part is that for most of the franchise's history, the person you were racing was essentially yourself. Crazy Taxi: World Tour is finally changing that. At Gamescom Opening Night Live on August 25, SEGA released what it officially calls the Crazy Taxi: World Tour Multiplayer First-Look trailer, showing rival drivers sharing the city, competing for passengers, and hunting for shortcuts — turning the familiar point-to-point Crazy Taxi formula into a live competition (Gematsu). Returning drivers Axel, Gena, B.D. Joe, and Gus were all shown racing at once.
Modes and matchmaking had already been detailed in late July — Gamescom's trailer was the first time players actually saw rival cabbies sharing a city in motion. Beginning September 11, a closed network test lets selected players try two online modes, Pickup Race and Cops 'N' Cabbies, both playable through Ranked or Custom matchmaking (VGChartz). Crazy Taxi has always rewarded driving faster and finding better routes — was competitive multiplayer the obvious next step hiding inside the formula for more than 25 years?
Pickup Race Might Be the Purest Multiplayer Version of Crazy Taxi Possible
Pickup Race supports up to six players with a simple shared objective: find passengers, deliver them, and earn as much Crazy Money as possible before time runs out — whoever earns the most wins. What's clever is how little SEGA actually had to invent. The core Crazy Taxi loop was already competitive against a clock; Pickup Race just adds five other people trying to beat that same clock better than you. A passenger stops being a guaranteed objective and becomes a contested resource the moment another cab spots it first.
Cops 'N' Cabbies Shows It's Not Just Normal Crazy Taxi With More Players
The second mode splits players into two teams of three, described across multiple previews as a police-versus-taxi-drivers showdown, giving World Tour something more asymmetrical than a straight delivery race. That distinction matters for the game's long-term life — Pickup Race answers what competitive Crazy Taxi looks like in its purest form, while Cops 'N' Cabbies asks what else the franchise's driving can support mechanically.
Multiplayer Was Actually an Idea Crazy Taxi Nearly Had From the Beginning
Kenji Kanno, who created the original 1999 game and is leading World Tour's development, has said multiplayer was heavily requested back when Crazy Taxi first launched but was simply impossible on the hardware of the era (GamingSpeaks). That reframes World Tour's online modes as less of a modern trend chase and more like an idea dating all the way back to the original game finally becoming technically possible. It's also worth noting this isn't literally the franchise's first attempt at multiplayer — Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars included local ad-hoc multiplayer on PSP in 2007, where players could compete for fares and even steal passengers directly from each other. What SEGA is specifically calling a series first is online multiplayer. Fare Wars quietly proved the concept nearly two decades ago on a much smaller scale; World Tour is finally attempting it as a full online mode with six drivers sharing the same streets.
The September Test Is a Stability Check, Not a Preview of the Full Game
The closed network test runs September 11–13 across PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and Steam, with cross-play tested between all four, and includes two maps, four playable characters, and six cars with tuning options (Adventure Gamers). It's worth being clear about what this test actually is: SEGA says its purpose is evaluating the stability and performance of online multiplayer ahead of the 2027 release, not showcasing the finished game. The test excludes single-player and story content entirely, and Nintendo Switch 2 — confirmed for the full game — isn't part of this round of testing at all.
Old Fans Still Get the Classic Formula
World Tour isn't abandoning single-player to make multiplayer work. The full game includes a new story-driven campaign — following Axel around the world as he chases masked villains who stole his beloved taxi, across five cities — alongside an Arcade Mode designed to capture the feel of the originals, with multiplayer layered on top rather than replacing what longtime fans already expect. That's probably the right call for a franchise whose identity has always depended on arcade handling, reckless shortcuts, and blaring punk rock as much as any specific mode — Gamescom's trailer notably used Bad Religion's "Ten in 2010," with SEGA confirming other returning tracks from the original soundtrack. The real test isn't whether SEGA can bolt multiplayer onto Crazy Taxi. It's whether racing actual humans for the same fare turns out to be the missing piece the formula was quietly built for all along.
