Jet Grind Radio

"Gives You All the Good of the Original, and All the Bad, Too"

Opening Remarks: Just when you think developers and publishers only care about big-name games, something like this comes along. I never thought a game like Jet Set Radio (Sorry, but I refuse to use the American name) would get the GBA treatment, but that's exactly what's happened. THQ wisely chose Vicarious Visions, developers of the Tony Hawk games on GBA, to handle the conversion. Is it a success? You bet'cha.

Gameplay: Despite being reduced to a top-down, isometric view (as with the Tony Hawk games), the gameplay of the Dreamcast original has been reproduced perfectly here. The goals remain the same: Skate through NeoTokyo and complete your goals, which are usually tagging your gang's logo on walls and objects with graffiti, while avoiding the police. The original game had a time limit, something I never understood since all it did was make the game more frustrating than it needed to be, not to mention didn't let you explore the levels much, and it's back in this game as well, completely unwelcome. What purpose does the time limit serve? Why didn't they remove it? As if I don't have enough crap to worry about with the cops on my ass and having to reach almost impossible-to-reach places on skates. It makes some of the later levels almost impossible to beat. There is a feature that lets you create your own graffiti, but not only can it only be small, but you can only use the tag in specific parts of levels.

Pros: JSR gameplay successfully converted to a handheld.
Cons: Annoying time limit.

Graphics: Like the Tony Hawk games, characters are 3D polygonal models on top of 2D isometric backgrounds. It worked for Tony Hawk and it works here as well. The characters are cel-shaded like their Dreamcast counterparts and look great. All the level background looks sharp and changes in altitude are easy to discern.

Pros: Everything.
Cons: Nothing.

Sound/Music: The sound effects are all sampled directly from the Dreamcast game and sound great. There are a handful of sampled music tracks as well, that all sound phenomenal, but they're only about 45 seconds long each and begin to loop after they're done, making for some annoying and repetitive music tracks.

Pros: Great sounding music and effects.
Cons: Repetitive music tracks.

Play Control/Game Design: Controlling your character is easy. You automatically grind rails when you land on them, instead of having to press a button to do so, and tricks are easily performed. The original Dreamcast game had an annoying aspect, that being, a lot of tags forced you to use advanced moves of the control stick to finish the graffiti tag, and unfortunately, that feature has made the move to GBA. It was bad enough having to do that with an analog stick, but with the digital control pad on the GBA, it's a nightmare. This should have been removed from the game and the simple tag feature of Jet Set Radio Future should have been used instead.

Pros: Tight and easy character control.
Cons: Annoying advance tag movements.

Improve:Get rid of the time limit and advanced tag movements.

Recommended if you like: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, 3, or 4.

Final Words: I'd love to see Jet Set Radio Future make its way to GBA, since that game fixed a lot of the majorly annoying problems with the original that are, unfortunately, present in the GBA port. Getting rid of the time limit and simplifying the tagging were great additions to JSR Future, and that's one game that needs to be brought to GBA. Unfortunately, JSR was produced in limited quantities and is very hard to find, therefore didn't sell very well, and the likelihood of THQ financing a port of the sequel isn't good. Sad, because it would make for one great GBA game, as opposed to this one, which must rest at simply "very good".

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/17/04