Jet Grind Radio [WORK] Download
Saara Leistiko
Jet Grind Radio is an action platform game based on the Dreamcast version. The gameplay of Jet Set Radio differs in several key areas from its Dreamcast counterpart. Instead of being a 3D game using polygons, the game is a 2D game with an isometric viewpoint.[1][3] The goal of the game is to traverse through neighborhoods and find key locations to tag them with graffiti under a specific time frame. Players can grind on rails and perform tricks. When a key location is reached, players must tag it with graffiti that may require a single press of a button, or a sequence of buttons that need to be pressed at the correct time. The game offers a graffiti editor to customize and create unique graffiti tags. Players can collect hidden icons scattered throughout in order to expand the number of graffiti tags. After completing the story mode of a specific neighborhood, three new time attack modes are unlocked for that neighborhood. The three modes involve tagging an entire city, racing, and performing tricks. Jet Grind Radio also offers 4-player multiplayer that allows players to compete within the unlocked time attack modes.[4][5]
DJ Professor K broadcasts the pirate radio station Jet Set Radio to gangs of youths known as the Rudies, who roam Tokyo-to, skating and spraying graffiti. One gang, the GGs, competes for turf with the all-female jilted lovers Love Shockers in the shopping districts of Shibuya-Cho, the cyborg otaku Noise Tanks in the Benten entertainment district, and the kaiju-loving Poison Jam in the Kogane dockyard. The authorities, led by Captain Onishima, pursue the gangs with riot police and military armaments. After the GGs defeat Poison Jam, Noise Tanks, and Love Shockers in turf wars, they each drop a piece of a mysterious vinyl record. Professor K says that the mysterious vinyl record collected is The Devil's Contract and has the power to summon a demon.
Jet Set Radio was one of the earliest games to feature an open 3D world, which presented the team's biggest challenge.[11] Kikuchi said: "Making an entire town in a game was quite the prospect. It's not hard with modern hi-spec hardware, but that wasn't the case back then... It was very difficult from a programming standpoint."[11] Another Sega game developed in that period, Shenmue (1999), also featured an open world, but Kikuchi said the games posed different technical challenges, as Shenmue does not allow the player to jump or move at speed.[11] The team implemented grinding to allow players to enjoy speed without worrying about colliding with obstacles.[11] Smilebit chose to have a fixed camera as an attempt to reduce motion sickness.[14] They attempted to make the game impossible to duplicate on PlayStation 2 by pushing the Dreamcast limitations using bright colors, realistic shadows, and more than sixteen NPCs on-screen without lag that would have been impossible on PS2 due to its smaller memory.[14]
Jet Set Radio is recognized as one of the first games to feature cel-shaded graphics, with exaggerated shapes, thick lines, and flat, bright colors.[6] Insomniac owner Ted Price credited it as an influence on their game Sunset Overdrive.[80] Numerous indie developers have cited Jet Set Radio as a major influence on their games,[81] the most notable being the successfully crowdfunded Hover: Revolt of Gamers, Lethal League, and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, all of which draw heavy inspiration from Jet Set Radio's visuals and music and feature contributions from its composer, Hideki Naganuma.[82][83][84] The game has also been speedrun at Games Done Quick multiple times.[85][86][87][88] Other fan community-based Jet Set Radio projects include Jet Set Radio Live, a 24/7 browser-based radio station based on the fictional radio station in-game created in January 2016[89][90] and the albums Memories of Tokyo-To released on February 20, 2018 and Sounds of Tokyo-To Future by American musician 2 Mello on August 24, 2021.[91][92][93]
Oh yeah, if NLife keeps reviewing these forgotten GBA gems, I am going to have to look into new purchases to improve my GBA collection. I like its cel-shaded take on the isometric viewpoint.
As Jon says in his intro, the GBA had lots of games which continued Sega franchises which were dear to gamer's hearts. Vicarious Visions mastered the isometric viewpoint in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 right in time for GBA's 2001 launch, even though you had to be perfectly lined up for grinds in that one, it was still a good translation of the console games. Funnily enough the GBA music for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 grated after a while, too.
A class pick for a GBA review, nice one Jon.
The city of Tokyo-To is broken up into multiple portions, each of which is controlled by a different gang of inline skating graffiti artists. You control a gang called the GGs, and you must protect your turf from being sprayed up by rival gangs and venture into the other sections of the city to mark up your rivals' turfs. The game is tied together by Jet Set Radio, a pirate radio station run by DJ Professor K. K appears between levels to advance the plot, similar to Lynne Thigpen's role as the radio DJ in the classic gang film, The Warriors. Unfortunately, Professor K never wishes your clique luck as they bop all the way back to Coney.
A lot has been said about Jet Grind Radio's graphics in the months leading up to its release, and it's definitely worth repeating here: This game looks simply incredible. The characters and environments aren't made up of that many polygons, but the smooth animation and an amazing use of cel shading (which places a black outline around some of the polys, giving them an almost hand-drawn look - expect to see lots of games stealing this effect in the near future) make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The game's sound effects and music match the high marks earned by the graphics. The effects, while mostly consisting of grinding noises and the whoosh of spray-paint cans doing their thing, are well done, and the music is an amazing collection of hip-hop beats that fit the action perfectly.
The Good
The graphics and overall style of the game is very good and unique and all that stuff. Certainly it was refreshing to see when it first came out. The music gets boring pretty fast but it well made and fits the game nicely. Even though I'm not much into "hip kids owning the streets" or whatever, the story and presentation works fine.
It is a very fun game, in fact I think it's one of the best games for the Dreamcast. And it's still almost unique, the sequel for the Xbox is pretty much the same game.
The level design is mostly wonderful, even if there really are just five different areas to skate around in. The individual stages of the game are smaller or bigger parts of these areas, and upon finishing the game you can choose to play individual levels, or skate around the areas as you wish.
There are three different challenges you can take on upon completion of the game, and these can be done as many times as you want, in any order, or not at all. They are JET Graffiti, JET Technique, and JET Crush. In other words, the graffiti challenge, the trick challenge, and the race challenge. Unfortunately there is no two-player mode, which is a real bummer.
The music is good, the tracks are very skillfully mixed into each other throughout the game, and there is much variation.
The Bad
The controls. Oh man, the controls seriously ruin the experience for me, and indeed for anyone I know who has played this game.
Simple things like running up a set of stairs or wallskating to tag something can get very frustrating and often requires many replays. And the worst part is that I don't know if it's Sega's fault for designing the Dreamcast's abomination of a controller, or if it's just poor programming. Which brings us to the trick system. As far as I have been able to figure out, all tricks are random, the manual doesn't really mention them, and that's a big bummer. Something more like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater would have been preferable. As it is now, you only have to use three buttons (A, L and R) to play the game. Would it not have been a good idea to use B, X and Y to perform tricks? Getting a high score on all levels certainly would have been more fun and challenging if there were actual tricks to perform, not just jumping and grinding, hoping that the character will do some nice tricks along the way.
And the fact that there's always a time limit makes me so stressed out that I almost don't want to play it. But I paid for it so I have to.Also, the game's menus are extremely annoying, think Medal of Honor x10.
There should have been a two-player mode, I do however think that it would require two Dreamcasts linked in some way, since the graphics can slow down quite a bit in the single player mode, and I shudder to think what would happen in split screen mode.
The system for designing one's own graffiti tags is quite simple, and could have been better, perhaps utilizing a system similar to Animal Crossing's system for designing patterns for use in the game. There used to be downloadable graffiti tags and other goodies, but I have no idea if there are any official servers left, since the Dreamcast's untimely demise.
The Bottom Line
Great eyecandy, ok music, pretty fun game hampered by extremely frustrating controls, overly simplistic trick system and a long, boring loading/warning-don't-do-this-at-home sequence in the beginning...it is however worth the small amount of money you'd spend on it. It is a fun game, but be prepared for some extremely frustrating moments, and it's all because of the controls.
However, I seriously feel that not even the controls can spoil the fact that this is, in my opinion, one of the top three games for the Dreamcast, and if you don't own this, you suck.