Speedrunning Crazy Taxi with a live band is an inventive way to dodge a DMCA takedown

It was an unusually musical Awesome Games Done Quick this year, with an Elden Ring hitless boss showcase performed using an electric saxophone controller, followed by a Crazy Taxi speedrun with a live backing band.

The original soundtrack of Crazy Taxi by Bad Religion and The Offspring is an essential part of its appeal, but also a sure way to get a DMCA strike on your video of it. To get around that, runner chuckles825 performed this run with Limiter Cut, a backing band formed for the occasion. They played the songs to a thrilled audience, skipping to the next track when chuckles825 finished each level and restarting whatever song they were playing when he goofed and, for instance, drove an entire taxi-load of grandmas into the sea.

It's not the kind of speedrun you watch to learn about how various glitches and skips are performed—the all-romances speedrun of Fallout: New Vegas went a little deeper on that stuff. This one you watch for the entertainment value of recurring hard stops whenever a level's complete followed by the drummer doing that snippet of Change the World over the menu screen.

You can tell the song order was chosen to suit the level length, so don't worry, you'll get to hear a decent amount of Bad Religion's excellent Ten in 2010. (And less of The Offspring's not-so-great Way Down the Line.) While clearly a test of everyone involved's stamina, and the singer's vocal cords especially, it's a fun watch and I'd be happy to see them do something similar next year. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is the obvious choice, but consider: Trombone Champ.

This year AGDQ raised more than $2.5 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, pushing the event's lifetime fundraising total over $54 million.