Jet Grind Radio

Action AdventureDeveloped by SEGA
Written By James Tocchio
 

In Jet Grind Radio, the player controls a member of a skate gang in a futuristic Tokyo, spraying graffiti, battling with rival skate gangs, and evading the authorities (local cops, the military, and corporate goons).

Developed by Smilebit, a SEGA studio made up of 25 people all under the age of 25, the game is fresh and vibrant. It has a unique art style (it was the first cel-shaded videogame), a raucous forward-leaning soundtrack, anti-establishment themes, and engaging gameplay, and these elements have made it one of the most popular Dreamcast classics and one of the best-selling games to come from the Dreamcast era (in all of its versions and re-releases it has sold over 1 million copies).

Plot

In a near-future city called Tokyo-to, DJ Professor K broadcasts the Jet Set Radio pirate radio station out to gangs of young skaters who rip through the streets spraying graffiti and making mayhem. The player characters’ gang, the GGs, competes for turf with rival gangs in different districts around Tokyo-to (the all-female Love Shockers from Shibuya-Cho shopping district, the cyborg Noise Tanks from the Benten entertainment district, and the Kaiju-obsessed Poison Jam in the Kogane dockyards). Captain Onishima of the city police department wages constant war against all four gangs, attempting to put an end to their hooliganism with the help of riot police, police dogs, and the military. The GGs defeat their three rivals, and in doing so collect three pieces of a mysterious vinyl record, which Professor K says has the power to summon a demon.

After claiming all of Tokyo-to as their own, the GGs are joined by two new skaters, Combo and Cube, who bring news that their hometown, Grind City, has been overrun by the Rokkaku mega-corporation. They beg the GGs to help them free their friend, Coin, who has been taken prisoner by the Rokkaku, and bring down the mega-corp once and for all. The GGs dive in, but are pursued by the Rokkaku, who steal the mysterious vinyl record. The leader of the Rokkaku, Goji Rokkaku, plans to use the record to summon the demon and take over the world. The GGs thwart his plans and defeat Goji Rokkaku himself (at the top of his headquarters’ skyscraper, no less) and restore freedom to the whole of Tokyo-to.

In the end it is revealed that the mysterious vinyl record, known as The Devil’s Contract, was nothing more than an old record, and that Goji Rokkaku had been driven insane by wealth and power.

Gameplay

The player controls a user-selectable member of a gang of graffiti-spraying inline skaters. Stages are large and complex, with numerous hidden locations and areas which can only be accessed by skillful play and execution of tricks and grinds. There are three types of levels in the game - Street, Rival Showdown, and Trial - with each level-type containing its own objectives.

Street levels require the player to tag over every graffiti location which has been previously tagged by a rival street gang before the timer runs out and while evading the authorities (which come in waves of ever-increasing difficulty). After that, the player must defeat a boss, usually by chasing the rival gang leader and then spraying him or her with graffiti.

Graffiti plays a big role in Street levels. The player can choose from numerous tags of various sizes and difficulty. The graffiti spraying is performed in-game through the use of the analog stick - the player matches the motions displayed on-screen to the movement of the stick. Each tag requires a certain amount of paint, and yellow spraypaint cans are arranged throughout the stages as pickups. Throughout Street Levels, the player is pursued by cops, the military, or corporate goons, who all attempt to deplete the player’s health to zero. Enemies can be sprayed with graffiti or knocked down, and health can be replenished through pickups (red and green spraypaint cans).

Rival Showdown levels allow the player to recruit additional gang members by defeating them. To do this, the player must match the rival’s movements and techniques, or by racing, reaching, and tagging an end-point before the rival can do so.

Trial levels are unlocked after an area’s Street and Rival Showdown levels have been cleared. Trials contain three challenges, Jet Graffiti, Jet Tech, and Jet Crash. In Jet Graffiti, the goal is to spray all of the many graffiti point before a timer runs down. In Jet Tech, the player must achieve the highest score within a time limit. And in Jet Crash, the goal is to reach and tag the endpoint before a rival.

Additional features include the ability to create and edit custom graffiti, a large collection of collectible graffiti icons which are scattered throughout the game world, and the (now defunct) ability to upload and download other players’ custom graffiti using the Dreamcast VMU and the game’s official website.

Development

Jet Grind Radio was developed by Smilebit, a young team within SEGA which was made up of former members of Team Andromeda (the Developers of the SEGA Saturn Panzer Dragoon series). The team was lead by Masayoshi Kikuchi, who had difficulty leading a team of developers since he had not had any prior directing experience. Kikuchi stated that he used trial and error throughout the development process to develop the concept of the game into one which be felt that anyone would find interesting.

Jet Grind Radio was the first game to use cel-shaded graphics, where character models and the game world are made up of objects with heavy line art and flat, bold coloring. Often called “a 3D cartoon,” cel-shading would be used in hundreds of games in the following decades.

The game’s art style, created and refined by Ryuta Ueda, was decided upon even before the gameplay had been established. Ueda wanted to create something fresh and young, and completely unlike the team’s earlier games, and unlike anything else that SEGA was creating. Inspiration came from Sony’s PaRappa the Rapper. Of this game, Ueda said “…that’s the first game with pop culture like that. They did it first. After that I decided to make a true game, not just a visual experience, that was actually for adults.”

The impressiveness of the graphics and overworld are hard to overstate. At the time, open world games were virtually unheard of. Shenmue famously invented the genre, but Smilebit saw Shenmue as a slower-paced and less exciting open world game compared with their intentions with Jet Grind Radio. To create a sense of speed and fluidity, Smilebit made every surface of the game playable - meaning that the player can grind, skate, or jump onto any surface at great speed.

The team pushed themselves to build a game which could not be replicated on the new console of SEGA’s rival, Sony’s Playstation 2. The game’s bright colors, realistic real-time shadows, and the ability for more than sixteen NPCs to be displayed on-screen at once without lag achieved that goal. Due to the PS2s inferior memory, a game as large, fluid, and fast as Jet Grind Radio could not be made on the Sony system at that time.

SEGA executives worried that the game would be seen as “too Japanese.” As a result, the team was made to create new stages based on New York City and to change the nationality of two characters to be American. Ueda was not happy about the changes, as he felt it diminished what he considered to be essential Japanese elements within the game.

The game’s soundtrack was groundbreaking in its time. Comprised of original tracks by Hideki Naganuma, with contributions from Richard Jacques, Deavid Soul, Toronto, and B.B. Rights, the Jet Grind Radio soundtrack was integral to the game’s uniqueness. In addition to the original tracks, songs were licensed for use from such eclectic genres as J-pop, hip hop, funk, electronic dance music, rock, acid jazz, and trip hop. Contemporary reviewers cited the soundtrack as among the game’s strongest assets, and Hideki Naganuma has mentioned that Jet Grind Radio (and its sequel) have remained his favorite projects.

Legacy

At the time of its release, Jet Grind Radio was nearly unanimously praised as a masterpiece. GameFan rated it 97/100; GameSpot a 9/10; IGN a 9.6/10; and ODCM gave it a perfect 10/10. The gameplay, presentation, art direction and soundtrack were all consistently lauded. At the E3 Game Critics Awards in 2000, Jet Grind Radio won in the category Best Console Game, and was Runner-up for Best in Show. At the 2001 Game Developers Choice Awards, Jet Grind Radio won the “Excellence in Visual Arts” award, and was nominated for Game of the Year. At the 4th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, it was nominated in the categories Game Design, Original Music Composition, Game of the Year, Console Innovation, Console Game of the Year, Sound Design, and Visual Engineering.

Jet Grind Radio has been massively influential in the decade following its release. Insomniac Games owner Ted Price has cited it as a major influence on their game Sunset Overdrive. Bomb Rush Cyberpunk draws heavy inspiration from Jet Grind Radio in both visuals and its soundtrack, which features contributions from Hideki Naganuma himself.

Characters from Jet Grind Radio have appeared in more recent games, including Sega Superstars Tennis and Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed.

Today, Jet Grind Radio’s graphic style, themes, and soundtrack, are as vibrant and effective as ever. However its controls do leave something to be desired. The player characters are difficult to maneuver in tight quarters, and the exaggerated lack of gravity makes gameplay a bit floaty and imprecise. In addition, the camera is difficult to control by today’s standards (centering the camera is mapped to the same button as spraying graffiti, which is disorienting). For the first few missions, at least, there will be a steep adjustment. Adaptable players will, however, come to terms with the controls and camera system. It just takes time.

A version of Jet Grind Radio was released for GameBoy Advance. This game features many of the same themes, stages, songs, and characters from the original, but is instead a 3-D isometric game. Today it is quite rare (and given the prices which it commands on eBay, I’m glad I still have my copy purchased new back in the day).

A sequel to Jet Grind Radio was developed and released for the XBOX, called Jet Set Radio Future. This game improved on many of the original game’s mechanical issues (the camera and controls were more precise and intuitive). In addition, the game was larger in scope, had a more varied soundtrack, and featured greatly improved graphics. For these reasons, JSRF is regarded by most to be the best game of the pair. Judged on their own merits and in their contemporary time, both games are masterpieces.

Buy Jet Grind Radio on eBay here

The Jet Set Radio Original Soundtrack CD

SEGA’s music division, Wave Master Inc., released the Jet Set Radio soundtrack on compact disc (in Japan) back in the year 2000. Playing the disc on a CD player naturally plays the tracks as expected. But if you put this disc into a PC you’ll find a few bonus materials. First is a tiny demo video of the game in action. Next is a PSD file of a 3D paper model of Potts (the GG’s in-game pet dog). Accompanying this is a PDF which can be printed, and the pieces cut out and constructed into our own 3D paper model of Potts. I’ve included that file below along with a YouTube video of the soundtrack, with accompanying bonus materials. Enjoy.

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James Tocchio
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