If there’s one thing in a game that I want to be real, it’s probably the rocket-powered rollerblades that everyone in this game wears. ‘Twould be a considerable amount of fun to zoom around Japan battling cops and spraying graffiti all over the place. Of course, I’d be zooming around Leavesden (maybe even Watford! MAYBE EVEN ABBOT’S LANGLEY!!!) battling pikeys and washing their graffiti off everything, instead. But that wouldn’t be too much fun. (You’d better watch out, “Link”. You may be the big cheese of graffiti artists round here, but when Nintendo find out you’ve stolen the name of their character they’ll bum you into submission.)
Yes. Graffiti-ing is the aim of this game. You’ve got to “tag up” the local bits of what is apparently Tokyo, and achieve superiority over the other local gangs. But they’re not the only thing in your way. So are the police. Hang on, I said that before. But you’ve actually got to compete against the other gangs in non-violent ways, such as races, and spraying over their paint. Meanwhile, you get a bit more physical with the po-po and all their po-pomobiles, taggin’ graffiti over them to stop them somehow. They should really fire the person who makes their tanks, and get someone who can make tanks that withstand being painted on. The story is pretty stupid, so I won’t bother any more with the plot.
“Graffiti is art. However, graffiti as an act of vandalism is a crime.” Or so say Sega every time you load up the game. And they don’t skimp on the graffiti available for you to use. There are 5 different kinds, and you pick one “tag” for each. They’re done by real graffiti artists (although “Link” doesn’t seem to make an appearance. Nor does “Ask”, or as he is more commonly known, “Haris”.) You unlock more by picking up “graffiti souls” or even make your own. So there’s plenty of potential for knobs.
I’m not sure how I got this far without mentioning the games graphics. A lot of games now use cel-shading (cartoony-ish 3D graphics), but the original Jet Set Radio was one of the first to do so. It might even have invented them. I dunno. Yeah, the graphics are cool. In fact, the whole game is cool in a futuristic Japanese kind of way. The characters speak in a mixture of streetspeak and cod-philosophy (example: “Sometimes, you gotta get moving or nothing’s gonna happen, yo.”) . The music, although some people will think it’s shit, suits the game.
You may say “Yes, that’s because the game is shit.” No, it’s not shit. It’s great. The main message to people who say that: You ain’t got no graffiti soul, bro. You just gotta listen to the street and then you be mixin’ wit da truth.
