“Taxi II – The Game” was a French Dreamcast exclusive, based on the fun action comedy movie of the same name*. As with many video game adaptations of movies, the game was poorly received and is generally regarded as a bad racing game, that’s definitely not the quality you’d expect from an Ubisoft release.
Even though the game isn’t going to be anyone’s favorite, the release was unique, both because of it’s exclusivity, as well as the large following the movie series gained over the years. Plus, it seemed to at least be better than the PlayStation version! Lucky for us, Derek Pascarella and a group of contributors have teamed up to translate this game to English, including adding English subtitles to all the FMV scenes!!
I’m always so appreciative to people who take the time to translate games. As cheesy as it sounds, I truly believe things like this make the world “a smaller place”; Whether it’s simply translating the HUD in a shooting game, or translating an entire script and it’s FMV’s, doing so allows people outside of the original culture to experience the game. I hope people continue to take the time to make these region-exclusive games available to a much wider audience.
To see the game in action, check out the livestream link above. If you’d like to try it yourself, Derek’s patch for the original game can be found here: https://github.com/DerekPascarella/Taxi2TheGame-EnglishPatchDreamcast
*A note about the movies: The Taxi movie series is one of my personal favorites and was very popular in Europe, however the US remake was a giant flop and in my opinion, an insult to the original; I always thought the actors in the original, combined with Luc Besson’s action-at-the-pace-of-the-music style of moviemaking were what set this apart from other action comedies. While Queen Latifah is generally awesome in everything she does, even her performance couldn’t save the turd of a US remake. Don’t waste your time on that one, but I definitely recommend the original and the sequel. The 3rd & 4th movies were fun, but not as good as the originals. I’ve heard #5 is beyond awful and doesn’t include any of the original characters.
Announcing the v1.0 release of my English translation patch for the DC French-exclusive "Taxi 2 – The Game"! I couldn't have done it without @traynoco, @pupshniff, @Prof_gLX, Zack (MýnÆnglishTáwk), and LastCat.
Now hit the road!https://t.co/P9u3HzlheJ@RetroRGB @TheDCJunkyard pic.twitter.com/mOBiWv3iRi
— Derek Pascarella (@DerekPascarella) February 3, 2021
