Smashing Drive, the "other" taxi arcade game - A 1UP classic from May 5, 2009

There was a title that came out a few years after the original Crazy Taxi that borrowed a lot of the same elements and presented them in a new way. Spanish developer Gaelco is what I would consider to be the "poor man's Atari or Sega." The studio has always had titles that compliment what the big boys had done in the arcade yet never seemed to have the budget to put as much polish into the graphics and levels as the other developers. However the core of their games have always been memorable and filled with tremendous potential.

I talked a little bit about Gaelco a while back with the rally game they made for the Neo Geo. Their isometric racer was amazing but their attempts at 3D were a mixed bag. The first 3D title I ever played from them was called Radikal Bikers. It was a simplistic arcade game, the polygons were large and clunky and the maps fairly creative. The purpose of the game was to deliver a pizza on a scooter before the rival could. Along the way you could gain power-ups and exploit shortcuts to better your odds of winning. Radikal Bikers came out a year before Crazy Taxi and actually managed to capture a lot of the magic of the Sega racer in a much smaller package. The physics were way over-the-top as the biker could kick over cars and not be destroyed in a head-on collision. The game even had a catchy theme song that helped tie the experience together. Unfortunately for you the console version wasn't that good and unfortunately for this blog I'm talking about cars, not bikes. 

A year after Crazy Taxi, Gaelco responded with their own taxi driver. Smashing Drive, published by Namco here in 2000, was anything but a clone of the Sega game. It played a lot more like Radikal Bikers, and that was actually a good thing. The learning curve was not as random as the Sega driver, Smashing Drive played more like a classic driver. The levels were shaped according to the difficulty or "shift" the driver was choosing. The best way to maximize a score was by memorizing routes, finding all of the power ups and knowing when to use them. Repetition was the key to success and that damn obsessive bug in me was pulling to play this title over and over.

The car fan in me instantly fell in love with the Super-Cab. It was a retro-futuristic model, part lead sled, part science fiction and all brutal. I'm not sure how far in the future the game was set as the rest of traffic didn't have anything that could compare to the cab. It could transform in various ways and as far as I was concerned had dethroned the G-6155 Interceptor as the greatest car in an action driver. I'd like to hear your thoughts on that bold claim!

The power ups in the game helped turn the experience from casual driving to full-blown arcade hijinks. Depending on which power up you used it could get glider wings to float over traffic, a speed boost,  and battering ram to smash through traffic, an enormous fog horn to blast oncoming motorists, or monster truck tires to roll over everything. The taxi had become the supercar that racing game fans wish they could carry over into other titles. Not unlike a rolling version of the BFG or chainsaw shotgun.

Unfortunately the console and portable ports weren't that great so people curious about the title felt burned. To those that got a chance to get into this arcade title I salute you. Smashing Drive is a heck of an experience. Like Radikal Bikers, it was brimming with possibilities but never got much love. For the sake of this little piece of 1UP I'd like you to know a little bit about Gaelco's gem.

Have you ever played this rare arcade game? Let me know in the comments section please. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!