Jet Set Radio looked like nothing else on a games console in 2000. Its skaters and streets were 3D models, but drawn with flat areas of colour and thick black outlines, so that the whole city looked like a moving cartoon. Edge’s reviewer called the decision “to create the style of a 2D cartoon world which actually operates within a three dimensional physics … nothing short of audacious and stunning”, and ended with a prediction: “Expect imitations.” Underneath the look was a game about a gang of teenagers on motorised inline skates, spraying their tags over a Tokyo where graffiti is outlawed, while a pirate radio DJ narrates and the police bring in heavier and heavier weapons to stop them.
Fast facts
- Developer: Smilebit, one of the companies Sega set up in 2000.
- Team: producer Takayuki Kawagoe, director Masayoshi Kikuchi, art producer Ryuta Ueda; most of the music by Hideki Naganuma.
- Released: Japan, summer 2000 (¥5,800); North America, 31 October 2000, as Jet Grind Radio ($49.95); Europe, late 2000.
- Platform: Sega Dreamcast; later a Game Boy Advance version (2003) and an HD version (2012).
- Sequel: Jet Set Radio Future for the Xbox (2002).
The GGs and Tokyo-to
The player controls the GGs, a gang whose home turf is Shibuya. Rival gangs hold the other districts. As DC-UK explained, the Love Shockers had moved into Shibuya, the horror-fan Poison Jam ran Kogane, and the technophile Noise Tanks ran Benten. The aim is to take each district by spraying the GG tag over every marked spot before time runs out, then chase the rival gang down and tag them too.
Spraying is the game’s main skill. A small tag takes a single can and a press of a button; Edge found that large ones needed up to 12 cans and a sequence of moves on the analogue stick, while the police closed in. Paint runs out, so the player has to plan a route past the spare cans. Grinding along rails, walls and rooftops happens automatically once the skates touch an edge, and tricks come from a single button and the stick. Edge thought the tricks less elaborate than Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater’s but “significantly more intuitive”.
The police begin with Captain Onishima and his revolver and escalate. DC-UK listed what followed: SWAT teams with machine guns and tear gas, motorised units, and finally tanks and helicopter gunships. Over it all a pirate DJ, Professor K, comments on the gang’s progress. Before release the team was keen to say what kind of game it was. “People still think it’s a music game,” Kawagoe told Edge. “An action game was always uppermost in our minds. … People are skating inside a city — not in order to hit someone, but to flee.”
A young team and its own style
Edge met the team in the spring of 2000. Most of them had worked together on Panzer Dragoon II Zwei and Azel and on the Dreamcast version of Sega Rally 2, and Kawagoe stressed how young they were: “The team is very young — averaging 26 or 27. It is unique inside Sega and in the videogame industry.” Ueda, the art producer, had joined Sega after seeing how popular Sonic was abroad, and had been disappointed to find “only anime and manga-like designs”. Jet Set Radio was his chance: “There is not any special Sega concept or inspiration. It is my style.”
Was it the first cel-shaded game?
Sega’s American press release presented the look as new: it was a “new cel shading design” which, it said, gave the game “the unique and stylish cartoon look and feel never before seen in a videogame”. Edge’s preview in May 2000 called it “the beginning of a new trend, which Sega is dubbing ‘cel shading’”, and the game is usually credited as the first cel-shaded video game.
Writers at the time were less certain. The same Edge caption added that “Infogrames’ Wacky Races uses a similar method”, and an American writer reporting from E3 in 2000 thought the game was “taking a page out of Eidos’ Fear Effect by making the main characters look like animation cels”. In 2001 a reader wrote to Edge convinced that Wacky Races, which reached British shops first, was the first cel-shaded game. Edge replied that Jet Set Radio “beat it to market in Japan by about four months. So, our claim stands.” What is clear is that Jet Set Radio was the game that made the technique famous: by 2003 an Australian PlayStation 2 magazine wrote that cel shading “really came to prominence in Jet Set Radio on Dreamcast”, and the cel shading entry follows the fashion that came after.
Jet Grind Radio, and the music
Sega of America renamed the game Jet Grind Radio, to Edge’s regret, and changed it for the American market. Its release added a New York-inspired city, Grind City, alongside Tokyo-to; tags designed by the New York graffiti artist Haze, known for album covers for Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys; and a soundtrack that added Jurassic 5, Mix Master Mike, Rob Zombie and Cold to “a handful of Asian hip-hop and techno-funk artists”. Players could design their own tags, or load a JPEG image from the internet through the Dreamcast’s modem. The European version also gained the American-style districts, and DC-UK praised its “non-stop grooveathon of rap, hip hop, rock and techno”.
Reception and later life
Edge gave the Japanese release eight out of ten, finding “a depth and vibrancy which can be breathtaking” under the cartoon graphics. DC-UK’s verdict was simply “An absolute must-buy”. It did not sell: “Jet Set Radio may have been a landmark title, but sales were poor,” Edge wrote in 2001.
Smilebit made a sequel, Jet Set Radio Future, for Microsoft’s Xbox in 2002. A Game Boy Advance version of the first game, published by Atari, followed in 2003, and in 2012 Sega announced an HD version for download on PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and PC.
Sources
- Edge issue 84, May 2000, pp. 36–39: preview and team interview (cel rendering; “a new trend, which Sega is dubbing ‘cel shading’”; Wacky Races; Kawagoe, Ueda, Hosokawa and Kikuchi; “an action game was always uppermost in our minds”).
- Edge issue 86, July 2000: E3 report (“Shame Jet Set Radio was renamed Jet Grind Radio”).
- Digital Press issue 44, July 2000, p. 3: E3 report (Jet Grind Radio “taking a page out of Eidos’ Fear Effect”).
- Edge issue 88, September 2000, pp. 86–87: review (¥5,800; tags and spray cans; Professor K; eight out of ten; “Expect imitations”).
- Sega of America, press release, “Jet Grind Radio Brings Graffiti Art, Street Beats and Futuristic In-Line Skating to Sega Dreamcast”, Business Wire, 31 October 2000: release, $49.95; Grind City; Haze; the soundtrack; custom tags and JPEG images; “never before seen in a videogame”.
- DC-UK issue 16, December 2000, pp. 46–57: feature and review (the gangs and districts; the police; the new American-style areas; “An absolute must-buy”).
- Edge issue 100, August 2001, pp. 35–39: “sales were poor” (see Smilebit).
- Edge issue 102, October 2001, p. 86: letter and reply on Jet Set Radio and Wacky Races.
- PlayStation 2 Official Magazine (Australia) issue 10, January 2003: cel-shading feature (see Cel shading).
- Hyper issue 120, October 2003, p. 88: Game Boy Advance version (Atari).
- Retro Gamer issue 101, 2012, pp. 78–79: Hideki Naganuma; Jet Set Radio HD announced for PSN, PC and Xbox Live Arcade.
- Wikipedia, “Jet Set Radio” (web, secondary): release dates; the Guinness World Record for the first cel-shaded game; the 2012 HD platforms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Set_Radio