What It Ripped Off: Crazy Taxi. One of the many good things about Sega's ill-fated and consequently much-loved Dreamcast console (consoles that die young are to gamers what trouble artists that kill themselves are to regular folk) was that it was powerful enough to handle the Japanese giant's arcade hits. Crazy Taxi was one of the many arcade games that got ported to the console in its short life, and it ended up being one of the greatest games to grace the system. A year later in 2001 The Simpsons: Road Rage came out and it was literally Crazy Taxi set in Springfield. Players controlled various famous faces from the show in a car, picking people up and driving them to their destination as quickly as possible. The only discernible difference from Crazy Taxi is that a yellow hand showed you the way instead of an arrow. That and The Offspring didn't feature heavily on its soundtrack. The similarities were so undeniable that Sega actually filed a lawsuit against the creators of the game, but it was settled outside of court for an undisclosed sum, leaving Road Rage to be produced on a mass scale. While Pong at least tried to improve the design of the game it ripped off, The Simpsons: Road Rage did no such thing, making it the most shameless rip-off in gaming history. What do you think are some of gaming's most blatant rip-offs? Have you played any that you've actually enjoyed over the years? Let us know in the comments.
