I’ve written a few of these articles, but to get me in to the swing of things I thought I’d start with something easy. Something people probably already know about but never played.

Humming the bassline

Jet Set Radio Future was the sequel to the Dreamcast smash-hit (as much of a DC game could be) Jet Set Radio (or Jet Grind Radio if you’re in the US). For the uninitiated, Jet Set Radio follows a gang of rollerbladers who go around covering Tokyo-to in graffiti. You would play short levels much like Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1-3 while trying to spray as much as you could while doing tricks, grinds, flips and all that other good stuff.

What made the game unique and not an extreme sports game at all, was that there was a narrative running throughout and a strong sense of style. This was one of the earliest games to use Cel-Shaded graphics, the colour palette is aggressively bright and the music is a great mix of Hip-hop and J-pop mash-ups along with other more conventional music (for the US release anyway) brought together and composed by Hideki Naganuma. The soundtrack for this game is probably more famous than the game itself, it is an absolute banger, check it out on Spotify.

The game was well recieved, it was ported to GBA (yeah) and recently got a HD makeover for every console last gen.

Jet Set Radio Future

Jet Set Radio Future (JSRF) took what the original game did and ran with it. The levels became huge sprawling open world areas. I mean seriously huge, you could probably fit the entirety of THPS3 inside one of JSRF’s levels. You could upload your own artwork and use it as grafitti or make it in-game with an editior. The music went deeper into the cut-and-paste hip-hop genre then the previous game ever did and included music from the Beastie Boys (or the Latch Brothers) and Cibo Matto, which sat alongside bass heavy house music and punk once again curated and composed by Naganuma.

The Cel-Shaded graphics also took a notable upgrade and to be honest they haven’t aged a bit. JSRF looks amazing in motion, and while it does suffer some slow down (especially if you’re playing on an Xbox 360) the particle effects and texture work envies that of Wind Waker. The story and lore was also revamped, you now have optional skaters to recruit and loads of gangs to battle with alongside the cops. The villian changed from a gruff cop to an insane police chief who commands his men to kill on sight.

The battle system has gone from skating around a square spraying cops with spray cans (although you still do this a couple of times) to battling tanks, helicopters, APC and giant mechanical spiders. Your skaters moves have been upgraded as well so you never feel outgunned, even when greatly outnumbered.

The controls are tighter than Jet Set Radio, an additional stick means you can control the camera as you have full reign over the open world, opening bridges and tunnels to new areas as time goes on. You can collect music and find secrets in nooks and crannies all over the world. The game is huge in scope considering it came out in February 2002, a mere 5 months after GTAIII.

Why didn’t anyone play it?

The first and most obvious reason, is that the game was an Xbox exclusive. In an era where the PS2 reigned with absolute dominance, being an Xbox exclusive (that isn’t Halo) was suicide. It was a launch game with the system, which also came with the much more mainstream friendly SEGA GT 2002. Maybe you’d play SEGA GT for 10 minutes before putting Halo in to play with your mates.

Japanese games do horribly on the system, nobody knew that at the time as Microsoft was in bed with SEGA, promising exclusives and other stuff like that. Now in hindsight, this was a very poor choice. Xbox One is currently trying to reach 75K lifetime sales in Japan while PS4 is pushing for 3.5 million (source). Multiplatform Japanese games do a lot better internationally on the PS4 console as well, (most recently FFXV sold 79% of its copies on PS4) but at the time who was to know.

To the average consumer, the game would look like a weird extreme sports game. You already have Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, SSX and Tony Hawk Pro Skater why would you want another one? The game is actually a 3D platformer more than it is a sports game but you couldn’t really tell until you had played it.

The demo for the game was the fucking versus mode. I reckon people that played it didn’t even realise it had a versus mode. So all in all it was a bit of a mess, wrong platform, wrong audience, shit demo.

This might sound negative but the game is absolutely incredible. It had a weak launch but is now a cult classic. The game still stands the test of time, just beware of 99th Street if you’re playing on Xbox 360, it drops to about 10 FPS. I strongly recommend it though, give it a go this year!