Crazy Taxi Contest

Crazy Taxi Contest

As they enter into their twentieth year of record keeping for the video game industry, Twin Galaxies has launched a World Championship to identify the world's greatest gamers competing on Sega's popular Crazy Taxi video game.

Conducted on the arcade coin-op, Dreamcast, and PS2 platforms, the Twin Galaxies Crazy Taxi World Championship will identify more than 200 champions competing on more than 35 different tracks for both the NTSC and PAL formats, with the results going into the next edition of Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records, the electronic gaming industry's official book of records.

For more information on the Crazy Taxi World Championship, go to www.twingalaxies.com.

Starting May 3rd and ending July 2nd, 2001, the event will require competitors to submit videotapes of their best scores achieved under strict game settings. Walter Day, Chief Scorekeeper at Twin Galaxies, says: "It is absolutely necessary to verify high scores through videotape because there are so many difficulty settings, game cheats and other variables that can affect the player's score. We make the players play under standardized game settings."

Twin Galaxies' Crazy Taxi World Championship has been created in response to the worldwide excitement generated by Sega's recent "Mobile Assault Tour," which featured a Crazy Taxi tournament. Though Sega's contest was immensely successful," explains Robert Mruczek, a Twin Galaxies referee in charge of Twin Galaxies' Crazy Taxi World Championship, "hundreds of top Crazy Taxi players wanted another opportunity to compete for the "official" high score on each of the numerous game tracks that will be published in the next edition of Twin Galaxies' Book of World Records.

"This contest is free, available to the public at no charge," says John Saxon Wendel, Twin Galaxies webmaster. "All you have to do is sign up as a Twin Galaxies member -- and membership is free."

Starting Thursday, May 3rd, Twin Galaxies will begin to accept videotaped submissions of each contestant's highest scores. To make the contest even more exciting, Twin Galaxies invites the competitors to upload their scores directly to the TG web site, using a new device that uploads scores directly to the Twin Galaxies' online database. As a result, the Crazy Taxi contest center will be able to display fast-breaking high-score news in an ever-changing scoretable, depicting the standings as they change by the hour.

In addition to winning entries in the Book of Records, top players will receive ornate custom-made awards certificates suitable for display.

However, players will still have to send in their videotapes in order to get listed in the Book of Records. "Though the scoreboard will accept scores directly submitted by the public," explains Mruczek, "the final winners who make it into the Book of Records will be determined by the videotaped evidence sent in before Monday, July 3, 2001."