Console: Sega Dreamcast
Developer: Sega
Release Date: 30th October 2000
Jet Set Radio (Known as Jet Grind Radio in the US) lets you play as a rebellious teen in Japan, fighting back against the man and other rival gangs through painting the streets with graffiti on your rocket powered skates. As you progress you'll uncover the plan by a large organisation to keep graffiti gangs off the streets of Tokyo-to and get the opportunity to take down the corporation for good.
Missions in the game are based around tagging a certain amount of targets with graffiti, sometimes they're in hard to reach places and other times they're the moving targets of other gang member's backs. As the player hits the targets, police and other agencies will attempt to stop them with tear gas, bombs and even fire in later stages of the game. Around the mission locations are "Graffiti Soul" icons which give the player new bits of artwork to paint onto the streets.
The player must first prove their worth, to join the "GG's", the gang the game is based around before making all of Tokyo-to theirs. To move easily through the city on your rocket skates, you have the ability to grind along railings and collect paintcans which are necessary to leaving your mark on the town. The characters also perform their own tricks between jumps, depending on their style rating. To begin with there are only 3 characters to choose from but with new applicants to your gang after certain missions, your roster grows to 10 or more.
The characters themselves are well designed and are fairly varied, both in their style and their individual stats. The story of the game is interspersed with the missions, in the form of comic strip panels and radio broadcasts by "Professor K", from the underground station Jet Set Radio. The story itself fits nicely with the cel-shaded style of the game, and doesn't seem too contrived when compared to other such plots.
Graphically the game is cel-shaded, as mentioned before and the world appears somewhat cartoony with stylised locations, which vary nicely. With a busy shopping district, a night-time shopping area and a waterside appearing early on in the game, there's a lot to explore. Later on the action moves to Grind Square, an inner city area run by the bad guys of the game, where again everything's set up nicely for exploration and tricks.
The soundtrack to the game is primarily a mix of songs by Hideki Naganuma and other Japanese Artists including Guitar Vader. There are some other artists on the soundtrack, however and overall it fits well with the feel of the game, and tracks are mixed into eachother well to fit the long mission times (some are upwards of 15 minutes). Although it's not an original game soundtrack, I'd argue that for this type of game (especially one featuring a supposedly pirate radio station) it works better.
Overall the game plays very well and there's a fun mix of roaming around on rocket powered rollerskates, defacing government property and giving the middle finger to the man before tagging your gang's symbol on his back. The missions advance the story nicely and fit nicely with the style of the game, leading up to the final missions where you have to use all your knowledge of the areas in previous missions to win. There's not a lot of games out there like Jet Set Radio, and I'd say its one of the Dreamcast's best.
Rating: 91/100
Grade: A
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