Jet Grind Radio

Plot

You play as roller blading graffiti gang member Beat as you attempt to take over a wacky cell shaded Tokyo-to from rival gangs by tagging the game world and avoiding the over eager police force. The game begins in the shopping district Shibuya-cho where you must defeat the rival Love Shockers gang. Other ares include Benten-cho and Kogane-cho where you must paint over the tags of the rival gangs the Noise Tanks and Poison Jam. The mysterious cult/crime gang the Golden Rhinos also appear and become the new bad guys in the later stages of the game. The DJ Professor K provides much of the narrative via the pirate radio station Jet Set Radio and gives you heads up on whats going on throughout the game. Additional roller blading degenerates are met throughout the game and recruited to your gang as playable characters.

Gameplay

Jet Grind Radio has the player controlling a roller blading graffiti artist and so there is the expected array of grind rails, half pipes, wall rides and jumps worked into the game world. However the layout is not like games such as the Tony Hawk series. The emphasis in Jet Set Radio is on using the various obstacles and your skating skills to reach taggable objects and then spray paint them in ridiculous, often mid-air style. Points are pushed more into the background with time limits creating the challenge. Tagging buses as you grind past them or bill boards as you back-flip over them is a common event.

At first, the player will be drop into an area of one of the cities of Tokyo-to. The player can skate around, earn some points by grinding on rails. If giving enough speed, the player can perform tricks, the player can also wall ride to earn more points as well.

But most of the player's time shouldn't be spent on just performing tricks, the player has a time limit to tag certain walls. First the player has to collect spray cans and get to a tagging location, by pressing the left trigger, the player will enter a quick time event. In the quick time event, the game will direct the player to perform certain motions on the analog stick. The player will accumulate more points when the player completes the motions on the analog stick.

The game has multiple characters that the player can chose. Each character differ in terms attributes such as, the amount of spray cans each character can hold, the amount of health they have, and the way each character handles.

There are three versions of the spray cans that can be found in the stages:

• Yellow Spray Cans - 1 spray can
• Blue Spray Can - 5 spray cans
• Red Spray Can - Will restore health

Levels

Jet Grind Radio features a total of five levels.

Shibuya-Co

The very first level of the game. The rival gang that owns Shibuya is the Love Shockers

Benten-Co

This area is own by a gang that is known as, Noise Tanks; a group of Otakus with a robot-like behavior.

Kogane-Co

This area is own by the Poison Jam gang. Poison Jam are a group made up of horror movie fanatics.

Bantam Street

A level that was added to the U.S release of the game. Bantam Street is loosely based off of a area in New York City.

Grind Square

Another level added to the U.S release of the game. Grind Square is based off of Time Square in New York City.

Playable Characters

• Beat
• Gum
• Tab
• Mew
• Garam
• Yo-Yo
• Cube
• Combo
• Piranha
• Slate
• Pots
• Love Shockers
• Poison Jam
• Noise Tanks
• Goji

Other Info

• 1 player
• VMU compatible: 4 blocks
• VGA box compatible
• Jump Pack compatible
• Modem support

Soundtrack

Jet Grind Radio's funky and upbeat soundtrack was a big part in helping form the game's distinctive style. New songs were added in the North American and European releases of the game to cover more musical genres and round the soundtrack out.

The soundtrack CD.

• Humming the Baseline - Hideki Naganuma
• Let Mom Sleep - Hideki Naganuma
• Moody's Shuffle - Hideki Naganuma
• Rock It On - Hideki Naganuma
• Grace and Glory - Hideki Naganuma
• Sneakman - Hideki Naganuma
• Sweet Soul Brother - Hideki Naganuma
• That's Enough - Hideki Naganuma
• Super Brothers - Guitar Vader
• Magical Girl - Guitar Vader
• Miller Ball Breakers - Deavid Soul
• On the Bowl (A Fargus Remix) - Deavid Soul
• Up-Set Attack - Deavid Soul
• Yappie Feet - Deavid Soul
• Funky Radio - B.B. Rights
• Mischievous Boy - Castle Logical
• Yellow Beam - F. Fields
• 'Bout the City - Reps
• Everybody Jump Around - Richard Jacques
• Electric Tooth Brush - Toronto
• Dunny Boy Williamson Show - Deavid Soul (Japanese Version Only)
• Just Got Wicked - Cold (North American Version Only)
• Slow - Professional Murder Music (North American Version Only)
• Dragula - Rob Zombie (North American Version Only)
• Improvise - Jurassic 5 (North American and European Versions Only)
• Patrol Knob - Mixmaster Mike (North American and European Versions Only)
• Recipe for the Perfect Afro - Feature Cast (European Version Only)
• Many Styles - O.B. One (European Version Only)
• Funky Plucker - Semi Detached (European Version Only)

De La Jet Set Radio

De La Jet Set Radio is a re-release of the original game in Japan. Sega re-released the game in response to all the technical issues that Japanese players had with the original game; such as poor collision detection. The re-release includes all of the added content that was in the U.S & European version of the game.And on top that, the game also added three new music tracks.

HD Edition- PC/PSN/XBLA

Jet Grind Radio shown under Sonic 4.

On April 24th, 2010, a screenshot of the Xbox Live dashboard was leaked showing a trial of Jet Grind Radio available on the Xbox Live Arcade along with Sonic 4 and Quake Arena. Many are speculating that the Dreamcast hit is going to be re-released soon for the Xbox live Marketplace and that it would feature everything the Dreamcast version had to offer, including beautiful HD.

Further rumours persist with a now release window penned in for Summer 2012 on PC, Playstation Network, and Xbox Live Arcade for a HD revision of Jet Set Radio (naming is unknown for North America as is the additional content that the European version contained under the Jet Set Radio branding).