Melly's Jet Set Radio Review

 

 

 

I started playing Jet Set Radio HD back in 2016, right after I finished high school and began college. I was at a point in my life where I wanted to dress myself with a stronger cultural understanding. I started reading Japanese fashion magazines like Popeye, keeping up with music reviews through Pitchfork and learning about Rick Owens, Raf Simons, A$AP Mob, XXXtentacion, Margielas, and Onitsuka Tigers. Simons and Owens, both excellent fashion designers, were inspired by the youth and fringe cultures, respectively.2016 saw the rise of rappers such as Lil Yachty, Lil Uzi Vert, Desiigner and discovered them through the infamous No Jumper Podcast, hosted by BMX rider Adam22. 16 years junior, the taste makers were MTV, playing nu-metal bands such as Cold. Oakleys and extreme sports were all the rage, with Tony Hawk and Dave Mirra being the most prominent faces of the X-games. The youth culture of 2016 was similar, but different in many ways.

Jet Set Radio was the culmination of that.

In an interview with GamesTm, Masayoshi Kikuchi, the director of Jet Set Radio, stated that he wanted to make Something dealing with pop culture and something that was cool. Ryuta Ueda, the art director of the game, designed characters that laid the foundation for the title's signature look. Their goal? Make a game about street punks that expressed themselves through the art of graffiti. This informs the design of the game, as in that same interview, Kikuchi brought up that the open world design posed a challenge to its speedy controls.

It's why the first thing you learn on Jet Set Radio is how to move, boost, jump, grind and lay paint. Players can perform tricks, jump off half-pipes to do flips and skate on walls. To a post-sixth generation video game player, the movement in JSR can be considered stiff. Jumps are somewhat committal, meaning if you jump to the left, it's hard to immediately move right. It's like other action games such as Ghost N Goblins or Castlevania. The utilization of fixed jumps in these games was to dictate that the player should make an intentional choice with either a consequence or a reward. Jet Set Radio rewards the player by linking grind rails and wall rides to ensure that they can move to their tag spots swiftly.

To the core gamer, JSR may seem like it's a game about "flow", a vague word gamers use to refer to the flow state. Post-sixth generation players use this word as adoration. The frame of mind tends to be, If the game lets me move and do things how I want with no interruptions, then that is good flow. Good flow is the equivalent to good game design, they say. I invite you to see this line of thinking as a mistake. JSR is a simple game that has mechanics that can frustrate beginner players. You'll learn on the first real stage of the game that speed is dictated by boost and jump momentum. Simply jumping on a rail won't have you automatically move along it. Instead, you'll most likely slide down and get hit by the stray bullet of Captain Onishima, one of the main enemy types that show up in the early game. If you were like me back in 2016, you'd probably find the graffiti system difficult at first. Players are prompted to follow directional cue cards in which they rotate the analog stick in certain directions. I played this game on keyboard back in 2016 and now in 2025, with a controller in hand, I think it's an underrated aspect of the game. It's slow at first but at some point, stronger players will figure out that the motion inputs don't change sequence (depending on who you play as) and you can put the input super-fast without waiting for the input cue to show up.

A common refrain I see from JSR fans is that it ruins the flow of movement in-game, but I disagree. Stronger players will realize that this mechanic encourages routing, the concept of selecting a path. Flow only has meaning when you have a route to go through. I'd play Beat or Garam or Combo if I didn't figure out which tag to go after first. Gum or any character with a high graffiti stat are who I used once I understood a level, as they get higher scores for bombing spots and having longer/complex motion inputs.

there are some legitimate gripes I've had with the game. Tag battles against rival crews tend to be annoying because you can still get damaged by them AFTER you've defeated a member. The map for each stage is placed in the pause menu, but I think a great quality of life feature would've been to make accessible via face button. Compared to the modern video game camera, JSR can make it hard to see things at times (personally, I think those who understand object permanence will deal with this better.)I feel it's so hard to get upset about this, because the game telegraphs danger off screen a lot. Yellow word bubbles with red exclamation points are drawn next to your character in-game to show when an enemy is attacking you. The blue arrows point to escape routes from enemies, as most will lose track of you until you return to ground area (Flying enemies in Kogane-cho's final stage are a pain).

Jet Set Radio is punk. It's cool. In between the original's released until now, there have been countless games about graffiti. Its much-loved sequel, Jet Set Radio Future, released in 2002 for the original Xbox. That game is more of an action-adventure title and drops the graffiti system and timers into something more palatable for mainstream audiences. Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure is an action-adventure game released in 2006. Ecko Unlimited, Marc Eckos brand, was a major urban fashion icon in the early Aughts. Hover: Revolt of Gamers released in 2017, inspired by the foundation Jet Set Radio set before it with its skating gameplay. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk developed by Team Reptile, released in 2023, is commonly viewed as a spiritual successor to JSRF. The game is currently available for PlayStation Plus' monthly free game offerings.

It was what prompted me to pick up JSR again, because even though I feel every game deserves its own right to exist as is, I just couldn't help but feel Cyberfunk is operating on derived nostalgia. The game even depicts B-boy culture, its roots found in the South Bronx of NYC, but it doesn't go beyond incorporating that into its gameplay in a meaningful manner. There's a new Jet Set Radio on the way. Youth Culture is different, but similar. Kikuchi and Ueda are returning to oversee the production of the new JSR. I can't tell you what extreme sport is popular now or how the modern population feels about graffiti. Fashion has changed since the end of the second millennium, as people opt for sleeker looks to complement baggier ones. Look at how Shinjuku fashion trends have changed over the years. Silhouettes got sleeker, but the spirit remains through color blocking and unique patterns. Jet Set Radio is a one-of-a-kind game, and I'm not sure if there'll be anything like it. That's totally fine.