Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars Kenji Kanno not-as-crazy interview

1UP chatted with AM3 chief game design manager Kenji Kanno, one of the Sega folks behind the original Crazy Taxi series. Believe us, the guy isn’t crazy like the taxis in Crazy Taxis – or maybe he is … crazy about the band The Offspring, that is, of which he is a fan. Here’s what Kenji-san thinks of the Crazy Taxi series as it stands today.

Crazy Taxi on the PSP is not Kenji’s focus, but he gave a lot of design advice to Sega of America who lead the project. He says that the whole point of the game is to have fun in a short period of time.

This is exactly what they did in the series. They took the game core and put it to different places – San Francisco taxi style, or New York, for example – to see how it works. Instead of “evolving” the series, they took the core and did different things with it.

Kenji does not have any platform faves for Crazy Taxi. Actually, he likes them all, saying that the gameplay of the game should make the player forget the platform they’re playing on and get sucked into the core of the game.

Asked about putting more user-generated content on Crazy Taxi, specifically courses, Kenji says that he’s really not thinking about that. It’s an area of pride for him, where he could show the gamer his experience. He could see doing customizable characters, though. Kenji thinks that less user-generated content is being made by the Japanese developers because that’s how it is in Japan. People tend to go out, unlike in the West, where people tend to stay home, birthing need for user created experimentation.

Sega’s Crazy Taxi comes out in the U.S. this June. Trivia: having a game developer fan is cool. The Offspring vocalist Dexter received a free Dreamcast from Kenji when the band went to Japan. Interesting, ain’t it?

Via 1UP

1UP chatted with AM3 chief game design manager Kenji Kanno, one of the Sega folks behind the original Crazy Taxi series. Believe us, the guy isn’t crazy like the taxis in Crazy Taxis – or maybe he is … crazy about the band The Offspring, that is, of which he is a fan. Here’s what Kenji-san thinks of the Crazy Taxi series as it stands today.

Crazy Taxi on the PSP is not Kenji’s focus, but he gave a lot of design advice to Sega of America who lead the project. He says that the whole point of the game is to have fun in a short period of time.

This is exactly what they did in the series. They took the game core and put it to different places – San Francisco taxi style, or New York, for example – to see how it works. Instead of “evolving” the series, they took the core and did different things with it.

Kenji does not have any platform faves for Crazy Taxi. Actually, he likes them all, saying that the gameplay of the game should make the player forget the platform they’re playing on and get sucked into the core of the game.

Asked about putting more user-generated content on Crazy Taxi, specifically courses, Kenji says that he’s really not thinking about that. It’s an area of pride for him, where he could show the gamer his experience. He could see doing customizable characters, though. Kenji thinks that less user-generated content is being made by the Japanese developers because that’s how it is in Japan. People tend to go out, unlike in the West, where people tend to stay home, birthing need for user created experimentation.

Sega’s Crazy Taxi comes out in the U.S. this June. Trivia: having a game developer fan is cool. The Offspring vocalist Dexter received a free Dreamcast from Kenji when the band went to Japan. Interesting, ain’t it?

Via 1UP