Hitmaker was the name Sega gave its AM3 arcade team in 2000, and the team’s best-known game came out just before the change. Crazy Taxi (1999) gave players a cab, a hilly city modelled on San Francisco and a clock, and asked for each fare to be delivered as fast as possible, with punk rock on the soundtrack. In its first test version, the producer Hisao Oguchi told Edge, the taxi “simply picked up passengers”, and “it was more ‘cool taxi’ than ‘crazy taxi’. After the location test, we concentrated more on the ‘crazy’ aspect.” Crazy Taxi and Virtua Tennis, both on Sega’s NAOMI arcade board, came home to the Dreamcast, and Oguchi went on to run Sega itself.
Fast facts
- Origins: Sega’s third amusement-machine research and development department, AM3 (AM R&D#3), whose arcade games included Jurassic Park, Star Wars Arcade and Sega Rally Championship (1995).
- As Hitmaker: a separate Sega subsidiary from 2000 to 2004, led by Hisao Oguchi.
- Key people: Hisao Oguchi (producer of Crazy Taxi, later president of Hitmaker and of Sega); Kenji Kanno (director of Crazy Taxi and producer of its sequels); Mie Kumagai (producer of Virtua Tennis for the Dreamcast).
- Games: Crazy Taxi (1999, as AM3), Virtua Tennis (arcade; Dreamcast 2000), Virtua Athlete 2K (2000), Crazy Taxi 2 (2001), Confidential Mission (2001), Virtua Tennis 2 (2001), Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller (2002), Virtual-On Marz (2003), and the arcade games Air Trix, Derby Owners Club, The Maze of the Kings and World Club Champion Football.
- The end: folded back into Sega in 2004.
Crazy Taxi
Edge previewed Crazy Taxi in April 1999 as an AM3 arcade game for NAOMI. Kanno, its director, said the team had been influenced by car chases in old American television series. He compared it with AM1’s 1997 free-roaming motorbike game Harley-Davidson & L.A. Riders, where the ride was “relaxing and enjoyable”: “With this game we wanted something different — we wanted panic.” New York was ruled out as the setting: “New York is very dark,” said Oguchi. The music was punk: “We use Offspring and Bad Religion for the background music in the game,” said Kanno, as if it had been a group decision. “It is his personal taste,” a colleague laughed.
The game followed on the Dreamcast early in 2000, and on the PlayStation 2, published by Acclaim, in 2001. Crazy Taxi 2 moved to New York and added a jump button; Edge found that Hitmaker had “adhered to the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ adage”. Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller followed on Microsoft’s Xbox in 2002.
Virtua Tennis
Virtua Tennis began in the arcades on NAOMI. The Dreamcast version added the doubles matches players had asked for, and a one-player World Circuit of training games and tournaments; “After all, the videogame is born from tennis — Pong,” its producer, Mie Kumagai of AM R&D#3, told Edge. Edge gave it eight out of ten in September 2000, finding it “the genre’s most accomplished example to date”, spoiled only by “almost unbeatable players in later stages” and matches of a single set. Dreamcast Magazine called Virtua Tennis 2 (2001) “the best sports game the Dreamcast has ever seen”.
After the Dreamcast
Sega announced the end of Dreamcast production in January 2001, and Hitmaker turned to other formats and back to the arcade. Its games appeared on the PlayStation 2 (Virtual-On Marz) and the Xbox (Crazy Taxi 3), and its arcade cabinets got stranger: Crack’n DJ, a DJ mixing game, and Air Trix, which Edge described as the freestyle play of Tony Hawk’s with the skateboard controller of Sega’s earlier Top Skater. Asked by Edge in 2001 where games were going, Oguchi predicted they would be “played by a much bigger audience”. In World Club Champion Football, an arcade football game, players moved real cards across the cabinet’s table to position their team; by the end of 2004 Edge was noting that Sega’s Sangokushi Taisen used the same system.
In 2003 Sega restructured; Edge thought the collapse of merger talks with Sammy had prompted it. The magazine reported that the company’s president, Hideki Sato, would step down to become chairman, “with Hitmaker president Hisao Oguchi stepping up as his replacement”. The next year Sega folded its studios back into the parent company, AM2 among them, and Hitmaker’s name went with them. By December 2004 Edge was describing Sega’s studios by their old department names again: Sangokushi Taisen came from “the former Wow studio (now re-established as AM1)”.
Sources
- Edge issue 17, February 1995: AM3 and its earlier games (see Sega Rally).
- Edge issue 70, April 1999: Crazy Taxi preview (AM3; producer Hisao Oguchi and director Kenji Kanno; the TV car chases; “we wanted panic”; the location test; the Offspring and Bad Religion; San Francisco).
- Edge issue 78, November 1999: Crazy Taxi for the Dreamcast (see Sega Dreamcast).
- Edge issue 81, February 2000: Dreamcast Crazy Taxi “nearly here”, release “February (Japan)”. Issue 82, March 2000: Dreamcast review.
- Sega of America press release, 2 February 2000 (archived by Sega Retro): the Dreamcast version’s US release. https://segaretro.org/Crazy_Taxi
- Edge issue 84, May 2000: Virtua Tennis for Dreamcast (Mie Kumagai, AM R&D#3; doubles; the World Circuit). Issue 88, September 2000: Virtua Tennis review, eight out of ten.
- Edge issue 89, October 2000: Virtua Athlete 2K (“In-house (Hitmaker)”). Issue 93, January 2001: “Sega AM3, since renamed as Hitmaker”.
- DC-UK issue 16, December 2000: “Hitmaker (formerly AM3)”; Confidential Mission and Crack’n DJ.
- Edge issue 98, June 2001: Crazy Taxi 2 preview (New York, the jump button), Confidential Mission review, and Crazy Taxi for PlayStation 2 (Hitmaker/Acclaim). Issue 99, July 2001: Crazy Taxi 2 review. Issue 100, August 2001: interviews with Sega’s studio heads, Oguchi among them. Issue 101, September 2001: Air Trix. Issue 103, November 2001: Virtua Tennis 2.
- Dreamcast Magazine issue 30, January 2002: Virtua Tennis 2 review.
- Edge issue 109, April 2002: The Maze of the Kings and Derby Owners Club; Crazy Taxi 3 (Xbox, Hitmaker). Issue 114, September 2002: Kenji Kanno, “producer and designer at Sega’s sub-division Hitmaker”. Issue 125, July 2003: Sega’s restructuring and Oguchi’s appointment as president. Issue 127, September 2003: Virtual-On Marz. Christmas 2004 issue (144): the former Wow studio “re-established as AM1”; Sangokushi Taisen and World Club Champion Football’s card system.
- Wikipedia, “Sega AM3” (web, secondary): AM3 becoming Hitmaker Co., Ltd. in Sega’s 2000 restructuring, and Sega’s reintegration of its studios in 2004. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_AM3