During our exclusive interview with Hardlight Studio chief technical officer Chris Southall, we learned the mobile developer was hard at work on a “reinvention of a classic SEGA IP.” Today, it looks like we finally found out what that game is as SEGA has announced Hardlight will release Crazy Taxi: City Rush on Android and iOS devices in late 2014.
“It’s not a Sonic game. I can also say it’s not an original [intellectual property]. It’s a reinvention of an existing IP,” Southall said. “Coming from the SEGA Rally and SEGA Racing Studio heritage, during that period, we were getting good links with some of the guys in Japan. So what we’ve been doing is working with the original game director of quite a famous old IP.
That original game director is Crazy Taxi series creator Kenji Kanno. According to the game’s description, “City Rush captures the spirit of the beloved Crazy Taxi series with one-touch, intuitive controls that make for a fun and frantic ride everyone can enjoy.”
No details on whether it will be a free-to-play game or for a one-time purchase, but looking at Hardlight’s history with the popular free-to-play Sonic Dash and Sonic Jump, chances are it will probably be a free-to-play game. [Update: multiple outlets have reported the game will indeed be free to play]
Along with the announcement, comes two videos, including a gameplay video that you can see below.
