During our exclusive interview with Hardlight Studio chief technical officer Chris Southall, we learned the mobile developer was hard at work on a “reinvention of a classic SEGA IP.” Today, it looks like we finally found out what that game is as SEGA has announced Hardlight will release Crazy Taxi: City Rush on Android and iOS devices in late 2014.
“It’s not a Sonic game. I can also say it’s not an original [intellectual property]. It’s a reinvention of an existing IP,” Southall said. “Coming from the SEGA Rally and SEGA Racing Studio heritage, during that period, we were getting good links with some of the guys in Japan. So what we’ve been doing is working with the original game director of quite a famous old IP.
That original game director is Crazy Taxi series creator Kenji Kanno. According to the game’s description, “City Rush captures the spirit of the beloved Crazy Taxi series with one-touch, intuitive controls that make for a fun and frantic ride everyone can enjoy.”
No details on whether it will be a free-to-play game or for a one-time purchase, but looking at Hardlight’s history with the popular free-to-play Sonic Dash and Sonic Jump, chances are it will probably be a free-to-play game. [Update: multiple outlets have reported the game will indeed be free to play]
Along with the announcement, comes two videos, including a gameplay video that you can see below.
Sonic Dash is little more than a cash in on Temple Run, mainly game play gimmicks are true to Temple Run instead of the source material however one saving grace for the game is that it borrows assets from the Sonic franchise.
I have no idea why Hard Light couldn’t do the same with Crazy Taxi, because this game is not looking good.
Chris Southall told us they originally wanted to have character specific abilities in the game but didn’t have time. While that’s certainly disappointing, as essentially every character plays the same, I think a lot of credit should go to Hardlight for greatly improving and supporting the game since it’s been released.
If you look at what Sonic Dash was when it was released and what it is today, the differences are quite stark. I definitely don’t think the game is a Temple Run “cash in” as it easily does enough to differentiate itself from a gameplay standpoint.
What makes you say Hardlight’s Crazy Taxi isn’t looking good, though? To me, I’m kind of glad they’re revamping the visuals. It would have been easy to simply keep the same visual style as the rest of the series, but Hardlight has worked with Kanno to do something different.
He most assuredly approved everything, so it has an official stamp of approval from the series’ creator. I’m looking forward to the game because as you all know, I’m a big Hardlight fan. I think they do great work.
I like Hardlight and I enjoy Sonic Dash, I have also read all the interviews and coverage for the game. It does have assets from Sonic Team in the game and that is a great thing. Gameplay wise it is sufficiently different from Temple Run.
I just used Temple Run as an example because it is the most popular, I should have said Cash In on endless runners because it borrows heavily from the popular formula rather than the original Sonic formula.
For example Sonic Dash stripped the magnetic shield of it’s shielding ability, that gameplay choice is an aberration and the whole one power up at a time is clearly inspired from other Endless Runners. Nothing wrong with that, Sonic Lost World is obviously inspired by Mario Galaxy, though it does a lot more original stuff than Sonic Dash.
As for Crazy Taxi, the original game is downloadble for free these days, so I am just going to get that. This game is not working for me, I am glad you like it though.