The mere mention of Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Shinobi and Streets of Rage at The Game Awards caught me off guard, but Sega's pledge to "produce brand new titles from the publisher’s treasure trove" was a personal highlight on a night designed to celebrate video games in the here and now. Between uncovering an old copy of Virtual Springfield in my parents' attic, and rediscovering the 33-year-old console RPG I spent a year renting from Blockbuster Video after it (optimistically) promised 300 hours of game time, retro games have featured pretty heavily for me in 2023, so the thought of reintroducing more of the classics into my life, this time with a fresh lick of paint and rebuilt to suit modern standards, from this point forward is exciting.
Like the games it went on to inspire, not least The Simpsons: Hit and Run, Crazy Taxi holds cult status for many players of a certain vintage. Jet Set Radio, on the other hand, perfectly encapsulated a moment in time; of teenage rebellion, garish color palettes, tongue-in-cheek post-NickToons era humor, and, of course, the Dreamcast.
