If you're portraying graffiti in a positive light, you're going to need aaalll the light, if Jet Set Radio is anything to go by. Its cel-shaded visuals make the entire world pop out of the screen, much like a well laid out spraypaint design emerging from a wall. The kind that makes you go 'how the hell did they even begin to do that?', shortly followed by 'what does it even say?'
I'm no artist, and I've definitely not a skater, but this is a video game with all the effort taken out of the situation and reduced to simple button inputs, so I should be able to hit the streets running and get tagging.
But remember...
With that in mind, let's get going with Jet Set R-
Uh, yes. Thanks.
Fun Times
I've been looking forward to Jet Set Radio because I never played it back in the distant past, and it's got the kind of look that sticks around and remains attractive a long while after the fact. I'm emulating the Dreamcast original here and it's nice and smooth for once.
The controls to Jet Set Radio are confusingly simple. You've got movement on the analogue stick, a jump button, a sprint button and a graffiti button. That's your lot. That's all you need. These various grinds and tricks and flips you can see yourself doing? They just happen. I don't know how. They score points - I don't know why - but they aren't the reason we're here, right? We're here for 'art'.
After proving myself in some follow-the-leader style tutorial objectives, and confirming that those are indeed the only controls to this game, I'm finally able to hit the streets and see what Jet Set Radio has to offer.
I'm sorry, what? Bullets?
Are we sure this is art?
Well, let's see where this goes. Let's get spraying some art...
Frustrations
... and there we go, off to a stupid start after a second. See those spraypaint cans? You're going to need those pickups for reasons that I hope are rather obvious. You don't start with any - that'd be too easy, I suppose. No, instead you need to skate around and gather some cans.
Getting hit by and proceeding to land on a car isn't the best use of your time, especially when you do it twice in a row, but, paint can in hand, I'm able to tag a bus.
Alright, a third of a bus. Spraypaint runs out incredibly quickly, it seems. Better skate off and find some more.
Oh for crying out loud what is it with these drivers. Can't they see I'm trying to play a game here? That I'm trying to have fun?
I only have the stick to control myself with and a center the camera behind me button to help with those controls, but already Jet Set Radio looks slick but feels sluggish. If you have no speed, you will have no speed for anything to want to do. Your jumps won't get you anywhere useful, your grinds will grind to a halt, and you will feel like you would if you were skating for the first time in real life: useless.
Still not enough bloody paint, and now the police are on their way to get into mine. What else can this game do to sap the fun out of the concept?
If you weren't slow enough already, having two policemen cling to you as you skate would certainly do the trick, but you eventually shake them off and skate on your merry way, preferably to the other side of the map, far away enough for them to have to run around obstacles to reach you, at least.
This guy has a gun and will shoot you, so there's all the more reason to skate away and spraypaint in safety. Luckily, there are places that the police can't reach, allowing you to paint at your own pace - providing you've got the paint and don't fall off the bloody roof.
I eventually finish covering up rival tags with those of our own and get ranked as 'Turbo', which feels rather generous compared to how it actually went down - skating around doing nothing, bumbling into objects, getting caught by the police...
Still, we move onwards.
I swapped characters for the second level, hoping that having a higher graffiti stat would mean either more cans or faster painting. I don't even know how I'd measure it, though, so if anything I was just hoping Gum here would be better than... what was our own name? No idea.
Further Frustrations
Oh boy, this isn't going well, is it?
Further Fun Times
Levels are arranged as pretty sizable environments full of traffic and tagging hotspots. High up ledges and wide walls tend to serve as canvases for the bigger pieces, and signs and car bonnets for the smaller tags, which you can often get by grinding past and holding the graffiti button.
Finding all these locations and covering them up within the generous looking time limit is your goal, as is finding more bloody paint than you can conceivably hold.
I found myself in front of this giant wall of graffiti, which would have me go through all the various combinations of stick circling in order to imitate the waves of your arms as you spray paint. It's a nice touch to save the game from being 'press the left trigger to tag'.
Further Frustrations
And then I ran out of bloody paint. Again. Finding some more led me to fall into the sewers. I gave up.
There is one last thing for me to have a go at, and that's the graffiti creation feature.
Further Fun Times
This little graphical editor works miracles with the garbage you put into it, turning anything into a work of art. Text can be deformed, scaled, moved and manipulated in three dimensions, individually or as a whole, allowing for innumerable possibilities for the creative amongst you.
Once you've polished off your turd of a tag, one of the hundreds of colourful effects can be slapped onto the top of it, which really do make your creations that much more authentic.
Whatever you do, make sure you're on an actual Dreamcast when you click save, otherwise, your emulator will crash. That was fun...
Final Word
And that's where I left Jet Set Radio. With a crash that summed up my time playing it: this looks great! Oh, that's cool! Ugh, well, that was garbage. Time to do something else instead.
I was hoping Jet Set Radio would be like the Tony Hawk series, in that while never a perfect recreation of skateboarding, it did well enough to be insanely popular for what it was. Jet Set Radio isn't insanely popular, from what I can see. From what I read in its 1001 entry, it was an utter flop when released outside of Japan.
The controls are simple but sluggish and require a bit of time to get used to, especially with regards to getting speed and jumping. It's a weird floaty jump that increases in height the longer you press the button, so far as I can tell, but if you've messed up your run up before getting to the point of your jump, no amount of button holding will help. You might even float right over what you intended to land on, and where's the fun in that when you're chased by a gun-toting maniac cop?
Its J-Pop and Electronica music selection is said to stand out too, but as it's not really my thing I paid little attention to it. The graphics are as upbeat as the song choice though, even in areas of the city where you'd expect dirt and grime.
Jet Set Radio clearly has a style and sticks with it for the long haul, but if you're not fully on board, I don't know how much you'll get out of it. I do wish the graffiti editor worked. I might have had a better time if the level was covered in awful 'Cavil' tags. I guess I'll have to find a copy on the numerous other consoles to have se- oh. I own it on Steam. Well, I wonder how long I've had that...
Uhm... I might be back with more positivity? Don't hold your breath though - you know what Steam libraries are like. To scroll down to the J's means ignoring all the A through I's, and there are all kinds of great games hiding amongst those letters.
Fun Facts
Inspirations for the young development team who wanted to do something completely different to Panzer Dragoon Saga came in the form of PaRappa the Rapper and Fight Club, an interesting combination to say the least.
Jet Set Radio, developed by Smilebit, first released in 2000.
Version played: Jet Grind Radio, Sega Dreamcast, 2000, via emulation.
Version watched: Jet Set Radio HD, PC, 2012 (WoolieVersus)