Sega's pledge to bring Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network downloaders a hefty chunk of titles from the publisher's final foray into the home console market has brought us such Dreamcast...erm, "classics" as Crazy Taxi, Sega Bass Fishing, Daytona USA, and Space Channel 5: Part 2, which is to say, it hasn't exactly brought us very many of the games people who owned Dreamcasts are actually shouting about when they yell at you regarding how great the Dreamcast was. Fortunately for those who enjoy yelling about how great the Dreamcast was, that's about to change.
Via a vague YouTube video posted on Sega's official blog, the publisher has officially announced its intention to bring the much-beloved Jet Set Radio to XBLA and PSN sometime in the not-too-distant future.
Jet Set Radio (known as Jet Grind Radio in North America) is, of course, the famous Dreamcast game that somehow managed to make rollerblading seem like something other than a misguided holdover hobby from the early '90s. In it, players would take control of a group of rollerblading miscreants hellbent on grinding every available piece of scenery in three distinct districts of Tokyo-to, while spraying graffiti all over everything and staving off rival gangs, cops, and military soldiers in the process. Think of it like Tony Hawk meets Marc Ecko's Getting Up, all wrapped up into a still rad-looking cel-shaded art style from a time before people really knew what the hell cel-shading in video games even was.
While Sega's mystery blog doesn't give any hints as to a time frame for Jet Set Radio's arrival, we can expect that it won't be too far off, if they're already dropping hints about this thing. In any event, it'll be plenty of time for people to start arguing about whether Jet Set Radio, or its sequel, Jet Set Radio Future, had the superior soundtrack (it's totally Jet Set Radio Future). And while you're doing that, maybe say a little prayer that the full soundtrack actually makes it into this HD re-release. After all, it's not like we haven't had to deal with excised licensed tracks in these sorts of games before.
Finally, please enjoy this original trailer from the game's original press cycle back in 2000, and remind yourself how adorably unpretentious video game trailers were back then.
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