Why aren’t more logos this pointy? Get it together, games industry.
Sega’s Jet Grind Radio was among the first big-name exclusives for the Dreamcast. In other markets it was called Jet Set Radio (the U.S. name was changed due to some trademark-related issues), though the game itself is otherwise the same. In short – if you’re into radical dudes and dudettes using the power of spray paint to save the world, this is the game for you.
The game starts out with a simple premise – the DJ of a pirate radio station broadcasts specifically to a handful of rival street gangs who enjoy rollerblading and graffiti and nothing else. Eventually they do battle with an evil CEO who has a vinyl record that summons demons. We’ve all been there. That DJ looks more or less exactly how you’d suspect:
In each level, you play as one of three skaters, who must spray tags onto a handful of pre-determined locations, while avoiding cops and being super rad and cool. Eventually, you’ll also be approached by various other skaters, who challenge you to replicate specific sequences of maneuvers; if you do these, they’ll join your crew. These are pretty fun, and occasionally quite challenging.
Each level is decently big and requires some amount of exploration to figure out where all the tag spots are. Thankfully, each one gives you a generous amount of time to do so – in some cases, you’ll definitely need it. As you tag more spots, the powers that be get angrier and angrier with you, and send increasingly ridiculous things to try and stop you – SWAT teams, police dogs, paratroopers, and even helicopters.
You’ll also occasionally run into this guy, who’ll just walk up and shoot you. There’s even a helpful green arrow to indicate “look here – this is the guy that is shooting you.”
The variety of challenges, solid level design, and gorgeous, cell-shaded aesthetics make Jet Grind Radio an absolute must-have. It’s not perfect – I wish movement was a bit less wonky, and the camera is occasionally unhelpful – but this is one of the few Retro Roulette games that I genuinely struggled to put down. It’s just so fun. Even replaying the same levels again, to get a faster finish time and a higher score, is super enjoyable.
With that in mind, I kinda can’t believe that, in an industry where anything popular gets a bunch of sequels, this series only got two releases (this one, and the Xbox game Jet Set Radio Future). It dared to be different, had an awesomely unique aesthetic and attitude, developed a solid fan base, and just…died. Sega still has the rights to the series, but just doesn’t seem interested in revisiting it. That’s kinda on-brand for them in terms of decision making, really. The Xbox One exclusive Sunset Override certainly takes inspiration from it, so maybe that’s something?
As a related aside, I also wonder sometimes about the future of Dreamcast gaming in general. It’s already relatively hard to find games for it, and the essential ones have been creeping up in price pretty steadily. The consoles themselves are also notoriously finicky, and it’s only going to get harder to find one in good, working order. At some point, there won’t be many working ones at all. That’s really weird to think about. I hope I’m wrong, or that a good solution presents itself in the coming years.
The silver lining, at least as far as Jet Set Radio goes, is that if you have both an Xbox 360 or PS3 and 10 American dollars, you can play it (remastered in HD) right now! Hurry up and do that before someone de-lists it. If you haven’t played it, I hope you’ll check it out – suffice it to say, at the time of its release there was truly nothing like this. Arguably, there still isn’t.
Next week’s game (our 75th!) is another beloved late-90s classic, since the Retro Roulette gods seem to like me now. I hope you’ll swing in, or perhaps fly or hover your way here, for next week’s blog.