Last month, in a profile of newly minted Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, The New York Times included an offhand line about “the time his wife had taken away his Dreamcast, the Sega video game console, because he had been playing it too much.” Weeks later, that anecdote formed the unlikely basis for the improbable story Crazy Taxi: Tim Walz Edition mod that inserts the governor of Minnesota (and his running mate, Kamala Harris) into the classic Dreamcast driving game.
“Tim Walz is rumored to have played Crazy taxi “His wife took his Dreamcast so much… that I decided to put it in the game,” modder Edward La Barbera wrote on the game's Itch.io page.
Unfortunately, the pay-per-play mod cannot be burned to a CD-R and played on Dreamcast hardware. Currently, the mod's visual files are set to work only with the Dreamcast emulator Flycast, which includes built-in features for replacing in-game textures.
After a few minutes of playing with settings and folder structures, launching the mod replaces the Crazy taxi The Gus character is modeled after Walz wearing an unbuttoned black-and-red flannel shirt (a look that, according to The Wall Street Journal, “has made him a DNC fashion icon”). There are also plenty of little visual details beyond Walz’s character, like “D” and “R” gears labeled “Democrat” and “Republican,” a ticker counter labeled “campaign $$$,” and a countdown timer measuring the seconds “until election time.”
The mod files also include new voice lines for Walz and Harris taken from “their respective DNC speeches.” Making those files work in a standard Crazy taxi The ROM does require quite a bit of fiddling with third-party ISO management programs, though, so you might be better off watching a gameplay video if you just want to hear a Walz cabbie yell “Mind your own business” at an impatient passenger.
The mod allows Walz and Harris to (unofficially) join a long list of real-life political figures appearing in video games, including Bill Clinton and Al Gore as hidden characters. NBA Jam characters, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin as DLC characters in Mercenaries 2 and, uh, Abraham Lincoln leading a mech attack team in the 3DS title Codename: STEAM
Where Are They Now?: Walz's Dreamcast Edition
Although Walz and the campaign have not made any public comments about his alleged Dreamcast addiction, there has been a surprising amount of detailed reporting on the fate of the Governor's legendary Dreamcast. Former Walz student and campaign intern Tom Johnson told Agency that Walz brought the old console in as a possible donation in the summer of 2007. Tanner said it didn't get much use in the office break room, but after the campaign, he took the system, complete with a copy of Crazy taxi On the way home to play with my roommate Alex Gaterud.
From there, Gaterud sold the console on Craigslist for a mere $25 in 2012. As he recalled to Agency, at the time, “advertising something that was 'formerly owned by a US Congressman' doesn't add any value on Craigslist.” The customer of that Craigslist sale, Bryn Tanner, was posting about the acquisition online years before Walz became a national political celebrity.
More recently, Tanner has begun posting TikTok videos about his relatively famous console and showing it off at local gaming convention 2D Con. “I’m basically famous,” Tanner joked in a post after the NYT story.
Walz, 60, is on the cusp of the first generation of national politicians who grew up in the era of early home video game consoles (he would have been about 13 when the Atari 2600 was released). Younger politicians have even begun catering more specifically to the gamer demographic, such as when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on a charity show. Donkey Kong 64 Marathon Twitch stream to promote transgender awareness and political action.
But some of Walz's political opponents have tried to capitalize on the fact that he apparently became addicted to a console that came out when he was in his 30s. “It's reported to be a funny and relatable story, but doesn't anyone else find it a little sad that a 35-year-old man would become so addicted to video games?” conservative activist Charlie Kirk posted on social media.
For those who knew Walz as a gamer, though, this makes him more human. “I think it's the specificity of the thing that really draws me in,” Tanner told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune last month. “The fact that it wasn't just, 'Oh, my wife took my video game away,' because that could be anything. It was the Dreamcast. It was kind of an underrated flash.”