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Taxi

Williams, 1988 — shot-by-shot rules and strategy guide.

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Taxi is a small, honest late-eighties game with one enormous scoring feature and a lot of pleasant filler around it. The feature is the jackpot. It starts at 500,000, tops out at four million, and carries over between balls, between players and even between games until somebody collects it. Nothing else on the machine scores close. Learn how to raise it and how to cash it.

The fare cycle

Five passengers, picked up in a fixed order: GORBY, PINBOT, DRAC, LOLA and SANTA. Two of them, PINBOT and GORBY, are already lit when the game starts, and collecting one lights the next. Each pickup pays a 20,000 tip and adds 20,000 to your end-of-ball bonus. Load all five and the jackpot lights.

Each name belongs to a shot, and knowing which is which stops you wasting a lit window:

Once the jackpot is collected the cycle reverses and you drop everyone off — SANTA, PINBOT, DRAC, LOLA, GORBY. Completing that relights the jackpot and lights one outlane for special. The second run through, only one passenger is lit at a time, and a second full cycle will not light the other outlane, so the special is effectively a once-per-game prize.

Raising the jackpot is a switch-hunting exercise

Spell C-A-B in the three top lanes and Raise Jackpot lights for ten seconds. During that window every switch on the playfield adds 2,000 to the jackpot value. That is the key insight: this is not a moment for careful aimed shots. A ball rattling around the drop banks or bouncing through the lower playfield is worth far more than one clean ramp. Feed it into the busiest part of the machine you can reach and let it stack.

Collecting is a specific shot. With all five passengers aboard, the jackpot is paid by entering the JOYRIDE hole from above, around the right semi-orbit. You have fifteen seconds once it lights, and if you miss it LOLA gets out of the cab and has to be picked up all over again to relight it.

Carry Passengers is the habit that wins games

The small target just right of the JOYRIDE hole lights for about ten seconds whenever you complete either drop bank — LOLA or PINBOT, lit for a pickup or not. Hitting it holds every passenger you are carrying into the next ball, which is the difference between finishing the fare cycle and starting from nothing every time you drain. It is reachable from both flippers but much easier as a left backhand. Repeat hits on the same ball pay 20,000, then 30,000, then 50,000, and taking it on your final ball adds a Passenger Payoff of 20,000 per passenger.

The AIRPORT ramps and the million

The inlanes cross-light the ramps: right inlane lights the left ramp, left inlane lights the right. A lit ramp scores the current airport value and advances it — 20,000, 40,000, 60,000, 80,000, then 100,000 plus the airport million, which is collected at the JOYRIDE hole with no time limit at all on default settings.

The ramps are the least forgiving shots here and a soft attempt rolls back down at you, so if the left ramp is a problem on your machine, shoot DRAC instead — the catapult throws the ball at the right ramp and advances the airport value for you. Watch one interaction: if DRAC is lit for a pickup, the airport award times out before the eject fires.

Multiball, and what it is actually good for

Lock a ball in the right lock hole and shoot the left ramp with a subsequent ball. The lock carries between players, which means you can quite legally start multiball on a ball somebody else locked. Once it runs, relock both balls in the Express lanes in order — the lock hole first, DRAC second. The second lock pays 300,000, both balls are ejected, and both ramps light for a 100,000 Airport Ride.

It is easy to start and hard to milk, because those ramps punish anything less than a clean shot. The genuinely useful thing to do with two balls in play is take the PINBOT and LOLA banks.

Extra balls and the bonus

There are two routes. JOYRIDE can award one outright, on the spot. The other is three C-A-B completions inside a single ball, and that one must be collected at DRAC before you drain — it does not carry over, so go and get it the moment it lights. Beyond 5x the C-A-B lanes stop advancing the multiplier and pay a flat 50,000 CAB Bonus instead. The end-of-ball bonus itself caps at 99,000 before multiplying, plus 20,000 per passenger, for a theoretical maximum of 595,000. Be aware of one mean detail: passengers from a completed earlier sequence do not count. Pick up all five, collect the jackpot, drop off SANTA and drain, and the machine credits you with one passenger, not six.

How Taxi plays

Taxi is one long fare run: pick up five passengers, load the cab, collect the jackpot, then drop everyone off to relight it and open an outlane special. That jackpot is where the real money lives, so almost everything you do is about growing it and getting a full cab to it.

The loop

  1. Pick the five fares up in order, each at its own shot and each collectable only while its light is on.
  2. Spell C-A-B up top to open a ten-second window, then bang every switch you can reach to drive the jackpot higher before it closes.
  3. With the whole cab aboard, collect the jackpot at the JOYRIDE hole taken from above off the right semi-orbit.
  4. Drop all five off in reverse to relight the jackpot and arm one outlane for special, tapping Carry Passengers off a drop bank so your riders ride along to the next ball.

Reading the lights

  • Five Passengers (status) — lit: A passenger can only be picked up while their own light is on; two of them start lit at the buzzer and collecting one arms the next, so the cab fills in a fixed order rather than in any order you please. · then: GORBY rides in on the right semi-orbit, PINBOT is the right drop bank, DRAC is the U-loop hole, LOLA is the centre drops, and SANTA is the JOYRIDE hole shot straight from the flippers. Load all five and the jackpot lights.
  • The Jackpot (status) — lit: A full cab lights the jackpot at the JOYRIDE hole, but it only pays when the hole is entered from above via the right semi-orbit; the value opens around half a million, climbs toward a four-million ceiling, and holds over between balls, players and games until somebody finally takes it. · then: Spell C-A-B to open a ten-second Raise Jackpot window and pound every switch on the glass while it runs, since each one adds to the total. Then collect from above within the short window -- miss it and a rider bails from the cab, and you must fetch that fare from the start.
  • C-A-B Rollovers (letters) — lit: A lit letter across the top is one you have banked this pass; completing all three does three jobs at once, and you cannot steer which one you take with the flippers. · then: Each completion steps the bonus multiplier toward five-times and then pays a running CAB bonus, and just as importantly it opens the ten-second jackpot-raise window every single time. Spell it three times in one ball and the extra ball lights over at the DRAC hole.
  • AIRPORT Ramps (shot arrows) — lit: Each return lane cross-lights the far ramp -- the right one arms the left ramp, the left one arms the right ramp -- and shooting a lit ramp banks the standing airport value and pushes it one rung up the ladder, from twenty thousand toward a hundred. · then: Alternate a return lane and the opposite lit ramp to walk the value up; if the left ramp fights you, the DRAC catapult fires the ball at the right ramp instead and advances it just the same. Five lit ramps light a flat million waiting at the JOYRIDE hole.
  • Carry Passengers (status) — lit: Knock over either drop bank and the small target beside the JOYRIDE hole lights Carry for about ten seconds; take it and every fare currently in your cab rides into the next ball instead of climbing out when you drain. · then: Backhand it from the left flipper inside that window -- it is the single most valuable habit here, the line between rebuilding the fare run from nothing and finishing it. Repeat hits on one ball pay a climbing Carry bonus, and taking it on your last ball adds a payoff for every passenger aboard.
  • Express Lane Multiball (mode) — lit: Sink a ball in the lock hole, then the left ramp is lit to start the multiball; from there both balls have to go back into the Express lanes in a set order, the lock hole first and then DRAC. · then: The second relock pays a few hundred thousand, kicks both balls back out, and lights both ramps for a hundred-thousand Airport Ride. Two balls loose is the moment to clear the PINBOT and LOLA banks, since the ramps rarely pay well and drain easily during it.
  • JOYRIDE Awards (mode) — lit: Roll the right return lane and the JOYRIDE hole opens for about ten seconds; the awards printed on the backglass run from a near-worthless ten thousand up to an outright extra ball or a special. · then: Take the hole from below off the flippers inside the window -- ten seconds is room for one controlled shot, not for dithering. An extra ball drawn here is handed over on the spot with no separate collect shot.

Lane change: not verified for this machine yet.

Start scoring

Does Taxi have an action button?

Nothing to press but the flippers. This is a 1988 Williams with a manual plunger feeding the spinout lane and two flippers below — no third button, no trigger, no magna-save. Everything clever you do here you do with aim, cradling and nudging.

Goals in Taxi

Every goal below is tracked step-by-step, with shot paths drawn on the playfield map, inside the app.

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