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Screenshot: Sega / Edward Joseph / Kotaku
Minnesota governor and Democratic VP nom Tim Walz apparently loved his Sega Dreamcast back in the day. And reportedly he played Crazy Taxi. So of course someone out there decided to mod Walz into Crazy Taxi.
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Perhaps you live under a rock or just started using the internet today, and aren’t aware of Tim Walz and his Dreamcast. Well, if I were you I’d click this link and read our wonderful explainer on the whole Walz Dreamcast Saga. But the short version is that recently we learned the possible future vice president once owned a Dreamcast and played it so much his wife had to hide it from him. He later gave that Dreamcast to someone and it ended up in the hands of a ResetEra user who suggested Walz was a Crazy Taxi player. And now, as a perfect ending to this odd saga, Walz is a playable character in Crazy Taxi.
As reported by MPR News, video game developer Edward La Barbera has created a mod that adds Walz (and Kamala Harris) to Crazy Taxi. Here’s some footage of the mod in action:
La Barbera decided to add Walz to the game after reading an article about his Dreamcast online. “I thought it’d be a funny homage, like Bill Clinton in the arcade game NBA Jam,” La Barbera told MPR News.
The game dev learned how to mod Dreamcast games and then reportedly spent a week putting the mod together. He also added snow-covered trees and Minnesota landmarks to the game’s map. Clips of Walz speaking were also included in the mod, letting the VP nom say a few words (as Crazy Taxi drivers typically do) while driving around like a maniac.
“I chose a more Minnesota-casual flannel outfit for Tim because it was easier to create than a suit,” La Barbera explained. “Basically, I had to work with the original character model, and that model had the over/undershirt look.”
To actually play this mod you’ll need to have a Dreamcast emulator set up and do some tinkering to the Crazy Taxi files. It’s not easy to setup, La Barbera admits, so the modder uploaded some more footage of the Walz mod in action on YouTube so we can all enjoy him picking up fares and dropping people off. Also, yeah, 2024's been a weird election year, huh?
