E3 was filled with unreleased games. Around every corner there were AAA titles, from Dead Space 2 to Epic Mickey. There were so many that it was impossible to walk five feet without tripping over some huge holiday release, yet, despite this, I found myself unnaturally drawn to a game in the Sega booth that was not only out, but had been for years. It was Crazy Taxi, and it's one of the first games scheduled for release in the new partnership between Sega and Microsoft to bring Dreamcast games to the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. Excited to see how the conversion went, I buckled up, jumped in, and prepared to make some crazy money.

The first thing I noticed was the music. Generally speaking, nearly every game of Crazy Taxi began with The Offspring, with only a few other bands making up the soundtrack. It became the signature of the series, and when the demo on the show floor didn't begin with "All I Want" or "Way Down the Line" I was a bit confused. Later, I found out that the licensed music was taken out of the game, a disappointing revelation to be sure. Still, with custom soundtracks, it wouldn't be much of an issue, and I'd be able to load on anything as soon as I downloaded the game. The other omission I noted was in the locations visited, which have had their names changed to generic.

Neither of these problems were large enough to get in the way of gameplay, and were more fueled by memories than anything else. The same couldn't be said about the visuals, though, which were a mixed back. On the one hand, Sega was able to upgrade the visuals by bumping the game to 1080p, and while the textures and models were still low-detail, they were high resolution and fairly good looking. As good looking as they could be without a full-blown remake, at least. While it was good to see this upgrade, it was disappointing to see that it apparently came at a cost. Around every corner, there were objects popping into existence, appearing from nothingness. It became so problematic that it was impossible to drive five feet without seeing a car some thirty feet away literally appearing out of thin air. It's easy to get over the lack of a licensed soundtrack and, to be honest, I can do without being told to drive a woman to the KFC, but visual problems not found in the original is a bit inexcusable.

Everything else worked. It was fine. It's Crazy Taxi as you remember it; just without the music or locations, and with 1080p graphics and significant issues with graphical pop-in. Hell, if I weren't dead set on writing a full preview, I could have just written that sentence above and called it a day. Either way, the game will be hitting Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network later this year, and as long as they fix whatever is causing ghost vehicles to appear out of the abyss it will be an instant purchase for fans of the series.

Crazy Taxi is due out this fall for the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.