‘It took over my life!’ How one man made his dream 90s video game on his own

Computer programmer Cassius John-Adams explains how he mashed up Crazy Taxi and The Fifth Element during an obsessive three-year period, single-handedly creating the game he'd always dreamed of

Over lunch one day at work, Cassius John-Adams, a computer programmer for a Canadian TV network, was moaning to his co-workers that things aren't as good as they used to be. We got on to how everything, from video games to science-fiction films, was better in the late 90s and early 00s when we were all much younger," explains the 45-year-old from his house in Toronto. Someone mentioned The Fifth Element, Luc Besson's wildly inventive 1997 sci-fi film. John-Adams brought up Crazy Taxi, Sega's cartoonishly energetic driving game. And then, I was like: Man, I wish there was a mix between the two.' Everyone around the table went, Yeah, that would be the perfect mix.'"

It was the spark for one of the great passion projects in recent video-gaming history. Doing nearly all of the work himself, fitting it around his day job, John-Adams has made that very hybrid, a new game called Mile High Taxi that splices the vibe of Besson's movie and the hurtling mayhem of Crazy Taxi into a heady compound of millennial nostalgia.