Published , by Sam Chandler
Published , by Sam Chandler
Fans of the Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio series might want to get their celebration hats ready. It would appear that SEGA is currently working on a new entry in the Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio franchises as part of its Super Game initiative that it announced last year as part of an alliance with Microsoft.
According to a report by Takashi Mochizuki of Bloomberg on April 19, 2022, SEGA is currently developing “big budget reboots of its Dreamcast games Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio”. The report cites people familiar with SEGA’s plans.
The report goes on to state that the Crazy Taxi game has been in development for more than a year, with plans to release it in a few years. Unfortunately, the people close to the matter also noted that both Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio are still in early development and are liable to be cancelled.
These aren’t just new entries in the games’ series either; these are purportedly part of SEGA’s Super Game. Revealed in October 2021, Microsoft and SEGA formed a strategic alliance that would leverage Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to allow SEGA to move forward with its Super Game. The branding of this focused on such keywords like Global, Online, Community, and IP utilization.
The Bloomberg report notes that the drive behind this Super Game branding is to create a phenomenon like Epic Games’ Fortnite, citing it as inspiration. The goal is, allegedly, to create an experience that can generate “recurring revenue”, according to Mochizuki.
It is certainly plausible that a new Jet Set Radio game is currently in development. It was only in May 2021 that Jet Set Radio artist Ryuta Euda returned to SEGA after working at Yahoo Japan. Furthermore, SEGA Sammy’s recent 2020/2021 fiscal year report revealed the company would look at its collection of dormant IPs and determine whether reboots, remasters or remakes are possible.
As an avid Jet Set Radio fan myself (which should be obvious judging by my own Shack Chat entries), it’s certainly a bit exciting to hear SEGA could be looking to revisit the worlds of Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi once again. Though nothing official has been announced just yet, there are still plenty of opportunities this year for SEGA to come out and make a lot of dreams come true. If all else fails, there’s still Bomb Rush Cyberfunk.