Jet Set Radio Review (Dreamcast)

Set in the city of Tokyo-to the plots revolves around gang warfare and corrupt police and government institutions. In an attempt to stop the freedom of expression of its citizens just about everything that kids do has been outlawed, including skating. In an attempt to fight back against the powers that be rebel groups of skating gangs have sprung up to try and claim back areas of the city.

Starting with one character you must build up the gang known as the ‘GGs’ in order to battle both the other gangs and the police department and what better way to lay down chaos and anarchy than by covering everything in graffiti? The game works by presenting you with a number of small missions to undertake, these missions involve skating around areas while avoiding the police and painting over the marks left on walls and other structures by rival gang members. It sounds simple but in reality the police department will do everything from using run of the mill foot troops, to calling in tanks and the odd apache gunship in order to stop you.

What sets the game apart is undoubtedly the visual style. By using the cel-shading technique Sega has managed to create something completely unique and fresh. While at first the new graphical style may seem nothing more than just a cosmetic touch, without it the game would feel extremely flat. What the Cel-shaded look does is make the game a sort of living comic book, excellent considering the Japanese setting. Everything just seems to feel right about the look adding huge amounts of charm and really making Jet Set Radio one of the leading titles on the Dreamcast.

The quirky atmosphere developed by the visuals is further enveloped into the mind by the excellent Japanese techno-cyber pop soundtrack. Again being much more than just a cosmetic touch, if it was not there the game would be seriously lacking in the heavy levels of fun and charm brought by the music, all of which is of an excellent standard and not annoying in the least, something that cannot be said about the Xbox version.

However the game is far from perfect and the controls have to take the main blame for this. Your characters jump, grind, perform tricks and paint with relative ease. The problem comes when you are trying to turn to jump onto a rail. When you need to do this the camera is incredible awkward and more often than not you will completely miss the jump and have to try again. Not a problem most of the time but when the last few seconds of the clock are ticking away and you miss the rail for about the fifth time it can be very frustrating. Saying that though, with practice the problem soon disappears.

While the game has you doing more or less the same thing throughout, the variety of locations is excellent. Meaning you never find yourself getting bored with the constant spraying action. Some levels are set in sewers while others are abandoned train yards, neon heavy high streets or old junkyards each portrayed with their own unique and personality. Complete all the missions in one area and you get a boss section where you have to drive out a rival gang once and for all by ‘tagging’ them ten times each before the timer runs out.

Another problem with Jet Set Radio is that it really is to short, and accomplished skaters will not have too much trouble racing through the game. Once you manage to work out where all the areas to spray are the levels can be finished without much trouble. That is not to say the game does not offer up a challenge, it certainly does as finding all the areas that have to be sprayed can prove tricky, it just wont take you forever to finish it.

Overall, Jet Set Radio is inspired, mixing skating with the Japanese influences has created a beautiful and charming game that every Dreamcast owner should have, and the rest of us should get a Dreamcast to play. While short lived the game offers enough charm and incentives to keep you coming back to it even when it has been finished, and customisable graffiti and a large amount of playable skaters help keep the action fresh throughout the madcap levels. 

With a bit more attention spent on how the camera works and a rethink about using the time limit as a way to push up difficulty this would be up there with the all-time classics. As it is though it's an enjoyable experience that really should not be overlooked.

Overall 8 

Jet Set Radio Review (GBA)

When Jet Set Radio appeared on the Dreamcast, it was a breath of fresh air in a market stagnating from lack of imagination and choking on the fumes of its own seriousness. Its distinctive mixture of cel-shaded rendering (one of the pioneering titles for the soon-to-be-overused technique) and Japanese cyberpunk-styling perfectly complimented the level design - and brought a unique touch to what could easily have been just another skating game.

 For the uninitiated, Jet Set Radio takes place in the fictional city of Tokyo-To. The local law enforcement have been struggling with a number of skate gangs, adopting an 'anything goes' policy to stop them. Playing as Beat, a young skater in the scene, you must recruit new members to stake out your turf from rivals while evading the cops.  These gangs don't fight, instead they 'tag' Tokyo-To with graffiti in a contest to see who can spray the most. Success not only raises the profile of Beat's gang, forcing other skate factions to move elsewhere, it also really annoys the police chief.

Turning a graphically-stunning Dreamcast title into something credible on the Game Boy Advance would seem an impossible feat. The effort put into giving the handheld version some of the same style and atmosphere found in its more powerful Dreamcast brother clearly shows in terms of graphics and sound; adopting an isometric view, levels are filled with enough colour to mimic the trademark cel-shaded feel. Helping to complete the sensory package, a wide range of music tracks from the original have made the transition to cartridge (impressively, even including all their lyrics).

Unfortunately, a number of problems arise once the game begins. The first sign of trouble comes from the incredibly-difficult-to-master control system. Pressing up on the D-pad moves characters forward, with left and right rotating them. It sounds simple enough, but when grinding around the screen at all sorts of strange angles, it becomes nearly impossible to work out which direction to press for an accurate landing. More often than not the results are a nasty faceplant, made all the more frustrating by the fact that each level is timed. Given enough patience, the problems caused by the controls begin to fade as you get used to them - but they never become instinctive.

Cel-shading attempts to infuse a three-dimensional graphical style, but instead gives everything an almost two-dimensional feel. In the polygonal world of a truly 3D game (like the original Jet Set Radio) this works fine, but applied to an isometric landscape it does something very stupid: effectively, it makes everything look flat. In other words, the three-storey building on the corner appears to stand as tall as the traffic cone in the street beside it. This makes judging vertical height impossible - whereby you frequently hit walls, fall off ledges or cannot determine how high you should jump to reach something (which adds to the mounting frustration).

Though there are obvious flaws, there is also a lot of fun to be found. Just enough of that Jet Set Radio charm persists to help you shrug off each frustration and have another go. The difficulty will not pose too much of a problem for gamers familiar with skating games. Nor was Jet Set Radio ever considered a long-lasting title - a tradition this version continues, perhaps even taking a step backward by the significant drop in difficulty. Short and sweet? Maybe. Fun while it lasts? Definitely.

Jet Set Radio on the Gameboy Advance creates a strange quandary as a game. Someone who has never played the original might never come to grips with this miniature sibling. For fans of the series though, the chance to grind around Tokyo-To on the move far outweighs the frustration and general 'flatness' of the appearance. Likewise, the lack of difficulty will not matter to those who already know their way around the console version; making a race to the end come second place in terms of pure Jet Set appreciation. A title for the fans to be sure, but anyone else seeking that graffiti buzz should look to the Dreamcast, Xbox or the HD remakes to really understand, understand the concept of (Jet Set Radio) love.

6/10

Jet Set Radio Review (Dreamcast)

A review of Jet Set Radio on the Dreamcast (Known as Jet Grind Radio outside Europe)