Jet Set Radio, or Jet Grind Radio as he liked to be called, is a radical platform grinding, public property defacing, stick it to the man MTV generation, adults are lame, Sega Dreamcast game. They don’t make games with this level of attitude anymore. Now, a large number of games on your modern consoles are crying for Oscars. Nothing wrong with that in of itself, but it has become a major trend. You owe it to yourself to get away from all that, get some sun and play a classic Sega title. Released on the Dreamcast in June of 2000, of course I’m playing it on my PSVITA, Jet Set Radio has gameplay similar to Tony Hawk with its grinding the city streets, Mario 64 and other 3D platforming collect-a-thons. It has its own premise with tagging the streets with Graffiti while avoiding police. Graphically, Jet Set Radio has stood the test of time with its simple Cel-Shaded graphics and its Street Punk aesthetic. It looks as good now as it did in the Y-2K. The city streets are as colorful and vibrant as the graffiti the Rudies, the in game term to describe the rebellious teens, who spray paint the streets. You start off the game with Beat, who is then initiated into a local gang via a tutorial mode. A simple task of grinding a few rails, a tagging mini game, and following characters like GUM , through a difficult route to an end point.Upon entering the gang, you’re introduced to the world of Jet Set Radio and the main story. You’re in one of several gangs trying to expand and control their turf through spray painting over rival gangs tags like a bunch of dogs marking territory. Sega had to keep it rated G, because initiating through drive by shootings and getting jumped would have been too real. The gangs get word of the happenings of the streets by a pirate radio broadcast called Jet Set Radio hosted by Professor, with a questionable doctorate, ‘K”. He brings a lot of life to the game and serves to move the story forward. Reporting of a mysterious group looking for a golden record.
The story progresses in single level parts of Tokyo-to. You’re to tag over a set number of rival gangs tags in a set amount of time while avoiding the cops. You get points for tagging extra spots as well as landing tricks. The cops show up after a certain number of tags have been hit, so one strategy is to hit the larger tags first before the cops show up, then hit the smaller ones. The levels get progressively larger to a point they all become inter-connected. In the levels, you can also unlock aspect of the games by collecting the JSR symbol, what you see on the top right of this page. The slow unlocking of the city is a great way to ease a new player in. When you gain full access towards the end of the game, it becomes a mini-open world and feels akin to a 3D platformer mixed with Tony Hawk. However, as cool as that is, unlike Tony Hawk or Mario 64, the way the characters move is more reliant on the environment. In comparison, Mario feels fun to play even without walls to jump off of. Same for the skaters in Tony Hawk where you can perform tricks without rails or walls. That isn’t to say the environmental set ups in game aren’t awesome, in fact they’re great.
Which brings me to the controls. They handle well enough although maneuvering the camera can be cumbersome. Landing on rails, jumping and grinding are responsive, but getting up to speed could use a boost option or better physics system for building momentum. Collision detection seems hit or miss at times, but for the most part, it handles smoothly. What does put a stick in front of a roller-skater is how tricks are preformed. You’ll do high jumps off billboards and off half pipes with your character performing some kind of skate trick that gives you points. These feel mostly automated with little control over what tricks you’re performing in comparison to Tony Hawk on the PS1 where every button and input direction could preform different stunts, combos and signature moves. For a game with a colorful cast of characters full of personality, Jet Set Radio fails to add these to their rosters move set when skating. At most, you’ll get a difference in speed and how many cans they can hold at a time. It’s a drawback since it slows down a lot of the movement used for hitting the higher scores of the game which is needed to unlock certain aspects. Unlockable like music and playing as rival gangs like the Love Shockers or the GG’s mascot “Pots”.
Despite some archaic controls, even feels clunky on the re-releases like on PSVITA, overall the game is a blast from start to finish. You will enter huge levels skating at on roof tops and sky scrappers while dodging police and even the military. It’s like you’re playing in a pop punk music video. I mentioned the unlockable, many are hidden and some are locked behind a score system. Others are unlocked as you advanced the story. Story mode alone, you unlock 7 playable characters. They approach the GG’s hideout and asks to join. To unlock them, you have to beat them in a race to tag a spot at the finish line. After you claim more turf you are met with a boss battle where you have to tag the rival gang members themselves in a match. I think this game mode could have been given a multiplayer treatment, especially on the Dreamcast where you chase each other around tagging each other and marking territory. A missed opportunity with the Dreamcasts 4 controller ports, or as an update when Jet Set Radio was ported to other consoles like the PSVITA.
Larger Boss battles are in short supply with only one major boss being the end boss which I won’t spoil.
