Culture/Games | Are you huge or super small in the “Space Taxi”?

Is that a traffic sign to suck on? Photo: Screenshot / Space Taxi A flying taxi lands on an enormous parasol. Customers get in and name their desired destination. “Thanks!” comes a voice as we land on a huge deck chair. We are in the one-screen game “Space Taxi” from 1984. Each level is one screen large. All together fill an enormous table tennis table.

Computer science student John F. Kutcher programmed the game single-handedly; it also received an award. Kutcher later received his doctorate and has been working on medical databases ever since.

His game illuminates the conditions in a future in which taxi users stand on cacti that are still growing horizontally. He used his own voice for the voice output; it runs at a different speed for each person.

“Space Taxi” shows how passengers behave when a taxi lands on them (they shout “Hey!” and seem to crumble).

Kutcher somewhat regrets that he ended up working for the game publisher Muse Software at the time; He would have expected higher sales elsewhere. He doesn't remember how he came up with the ideas for the 24 levels.

Bzz! Dead. A disgusting, very high-pitched noise. "Space Taxi" examines how people who live on a ping-pong table get from one place to another. This can certainly be called pioneering work.

Kutcher taught himself the Assembler programming language when he was 14 years old. When he left college, his local publisher went bankrupt.

“Space Taxi” shows how passengers behave when a taxi lands on them (they shout “Hey!” and seem to crumble). We also learn how to use teleporters and open previously closed squares to fly into. This is all very instructive, a playable study. Plus: snow flurries, black holes and cannons.

What kind of world does the game actually take place in? To do this, we analyze the first screen: “Short’n’Sweet”. At the top left is a large, green lollipop. So, green is the lickable, the stem is yellow. The lollipop appears to be hanging in the air or attached to a wall. The shape of the leak part is reminiscent of a traffic sign - we are in a world of traffic, so that fits well!

The lollipop is not the only candy in the picture: there are six purple dots below it to the left; From the title of the level it can be concluded that these are candies. At the top right of the screen you can see three more of them, directly above a red and white patterned candy cane, whose pattern and play of colors echo the frame described. In the middle below: a light blue platform resembling a house roof called “1”. It is one of the pads so called in the game, on which those to be picked up by the taxi appear - and to which they are taken. Since this is the first level, players can also view the “1” as a symbol for the start of the game. Once customers have gotten in, they can only say "Up, please!" on the first screen, due to a lack of alternatives, whereupon the barrier embedded in the middle of the frame at the top opens, placed between two tapered, downward-pointing triangles.

So, to repeat the question, what kind of world is this now? One (also) inhabited by giant creatures? Or are the guests and the person driving the taxi tiny? Or are they the giant creatures and the others are even bigger? Questions about questions.

In the cutscenes we look at the flying vehicle jetting through space towards the respective level title. And so we ponder.

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