Game developer adds Gov. Tim Walz as playable character in Crazy Taxi
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By Hunter Dunteman, Fargo Forum
Sporting an unbuttoned red-and-black flannel with a white undershirt, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz hops in a taxi to begin his shift.
It’s not real life, however. It’s a 3D rendering added to what’s rumored to be his favorite video game: Crazy Taxi.
The goal is simple — play as a taxi driver and deliver your passengers to their destinations in the fastest time possible. Earn extra cash by driving crazy, but beware of other vehicles and obstructions.
The addictive game was released on arcade machines in 1999 by Hitmaker, a now-defunct division of Sega. By 2000, it was available on Sega’s Dreamcast console to be played at home.
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Not even Walz — then a teacher at Mankato West High School — could escape the thrill of the game. He reportedly played the Dreamcast so much that his wife, Gwen, had to confiscate the console.
When he gave away the console in 2007, Crazy Taxi was still in the disc drive, the Star Tribune reported.
His apparent love for the game is what drove California-based musician and video game developer Edward La Barbera to add Walz to the game.
“I saw a news article on the gaming forum Resetera, about Tim Walz owning a Dreamcast. Rumor also had it his favorite game was Crazy Taxi,” La Barbera told Forum News Service on Tuesday, Sept. 10. “I thought it'd be a funny homage, like Bill Clinton in the arcade game NBA Jam.”
After learning more about how to mod Dreamcast games, La Barbera spent about a week creating the mod.
“I chose a more Minnesota-casual flannel outfit for Tim because it was easier to create than a suit,” he explained. “Basically, I had to work with the original character model, and that model had the over/undershirt look.”
In addition to adding Walz, he also paid tribute to some Minnesota landmarks in his redesign of the game's map.
“That snowballed into trying to make the world into a wintry Minnesota environment instead of California,” La Barbera said. “I replaced palm trees with snow-covered pines, replaced the stadium with Target Field and the mall with the Mall of America.”
A new stop was added, where players can use Walz to deliver people to a polling precinct, too.
In a YouTube video posted by La Barbera, Walz is shown drifting around a corner in a light blue convertible, with audio from his speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention overlaid.
“Is it weird? Absolutely,” Walz’s character says while taking a sharp corner.
Players can also play as Vice President Kamala Harris, who has her own lines pulled from her DNC speech.
The mod is only playable via emulator software, according to La Barbera, and does not include the full game. It can be downloaded with or without a free-will donation.
Though it's his first time creating a game mod, La Barbera has published another game with similar pop-culture vibes in the past — Frasier Fantasy — which allows players to “experience the thrilling adventure of living an evening as Dr. Frasier Crane.”
