Board Game Arena

The version of this game I played at school in the UK was called BlackJack - In addition to the power cards listed in the wikipedia entry, we also used a house rule where you could lay down runs of cards which mitigated the impact of picking up a lot of cards and made the game much faster. Is this something that could be added as a variant to Crazy Eight's? Or would it be better as a separate game entirely?

Its a houserule, so probably not

It's an officially listed variant on the wikipedia. It makes Crazy 8's a much better game since playing runs and melds gives the player more agency, and makes the picking up of cards less punitive