Having discovered MAME™ about 3 years ago his new hobby grew into a true obsession and Mitch is now the proud owner of a kit built cocktail machine, rebuilt Stargate stand up (both running MAME™) and now more recently 3 Japanese Pachislo Slot machines (Metal Slug, Tekken and Jet Set Radio).
| Game Info |
| Platform360, GBA, iOS, Android, PSN, Sega Dreamcast |
| PublisherSega |
| DeveloperSmilebit |
| Release DateOct 30, 2000 |
Jet Set Radio HD is everything the original was, but time hasn't been kind to the stylish Dreamcast title.
Jet Set Radio HD is the latest remaster in a string of Dreamcast 'hits' to see new life on download platforms, but Sega has been insistent that they've learned its lessons. The publisher has emphasized how hard it's trying to get things right this time, and for many, it couldn't have chosen a better game.
Jet Set Radio was part of Sega's onslaught of new properties with an emphasis on flash and style during the second wave of Dreamcast software, but it might be one of the more obscure. It's a game that almost everyone has heard of, but I think few have actually played. This was remedied somewhat with 2002's Xbox sequel Jet Set Radio Future. Unlike Sonic Adventure or the arcade hit Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio HD is the chance for many to finally play a game they've only heard about.
Nostalgia has the side effect of high expectations though, and Jet Set Radio HD just can't meet them. While the flash and style of Jet Set Radio HD remains untouched and unvarnished by a dozen years of progress, the rest of it can't stand up to scrutiny. Squirrely controls, camera catastrophes, and nonsensical level design make Jet Set Radio HD a better memory than game.
THE POLICE PRESENCE AND TIMER FORCE PRIORITIZATION OF OBJECTIVES
Set in a futuristic alternate-reality Tokyo, Jet Set Radio HD sees roving gangs on high-tech skates battling for turf via full-contact tagging. Your goals vary from level to level, but generally involve skating around a city landscape, tricking off surfaces to collect cans of spraypaint used to tag targets spread around, while avoiding the police. As you tag more and more spots, the police response escalates, from dudes with batons to tanks and helicopters.
The police presence serves to give Jet Set Radio HD more depth than it would have otherwise, forcing prioritization of targets. Some tags can take a great deal of time spent standing in one place while performing ever-more complicated swipes of the analog stick, which is almost impossible amidst a hail of tear gas. In turn, you'll want to explore each level to collect enough paint to pull off the longer tags and to learn where you'll want to focus first if you want to finish each level in time, to say nothing of racking up big points and placing high up on the new leaderboards.
Ordinarily, a local police force treating incidents of graffiti like an insurgency in Fallujah would seem ... extreme, but Jet Set Radio's aggressive visual presentation mitigates that. It may not have been the first game to push the modern idea of stylized cel-shaded graphics, but it was the first to do it properly. Everything is bright, slick, and mostly playful. It's a testament to Jet Set's execution that even 12 years later, it looks even cleaner than it did on the Dreamcast. There's a minimum of tweaking, save for its new widescreen presentation - though it would have been nice to see some updated textures as well. Devotees to the original will be excited to hear that all but one of the songs originally featured in Jet Set Radio are present in this HD remaster.
Jet Set Radio HD marks Sega's most successful Dreamcast re-release, at least from a technical perspective. The care and effort to make sure players get the Jet Set Radio that was released in 2000, while accounting for modern expectations, is evident down to the aforementioned Xbox Live and PSN leaderboard functionality and widescreen support. That's also the problem.
When viewed without the lens of nostalgia, all of Jet Set Radio'sfaults are apparent. Skittish controls aren't such a big deal at first, when Tokyo is small and each objective is visually obvious, but things get more complicated fast. As the police get more insistent, the controls basic failings and limitations are multiplied by cheap shots and extended falling and knockdown animations that leave you out of control of your character for entirely too long.
Even escaping the fuzz can backfire, courtesy of an abysmal camera. In Jet Set Radio HD's eagerness to show you a cutscene of police ineffectiveness, you'll lose all control of your character, often in the middle of a very demanding attempted grind or jump. Even in simple situations, the camera struggles, clipping through walls and obscuring the player character enough to make unreliable, unresponsive controls the least of your concerns.
All of these problems add up to a game that feels like less than the sum of its parts. Even the timer in the upper right corner seems present to force a sense of urgency in the desperate hope you won't catch how poorly everything is stitched together, to say nothing of the random figurative and literal blind alleys. For example, if you skate to one end or the other of some levels, there's an exit. To where? The level select screen. Why? Who knows.
I exceeded the limits of my patience with Jet Set Radio HD after about six hours. I had played the same level seven times, instructed to follow a rival gang in order to tag their backs and chase them off my gang's turf. After an hour of chasing, and missing grinds, and being knocked over by the faster skaters, and colliding with level geometry - and watching giant pieces of the stage disappear and reappear in the distance - I had almost taken the other team out, only to miss a grind. I watched my jump sail past the rail and I rolled into the level exit. My skater was recovering, and refused to respond to my inputs. As I exited the level without completing it, I had to let my controller go - at high velocity, in the direction of the floor 10 feet away. That wasn't where I stopped playing, but at that point, I was finished with Jet Set Radio HD.
WHY IS THERE AN EXIT BUILT INTO LEVELS? WHO KNOWS.
Wrap Up:
JET SET RADIO HD IS FULL OF GOOD IDEAS, BUT THE GAME CAN'T LIVE UP TO ITS OWN LEGACY
In 2000, Jet Set Radio was an aggressive, desperate shot from a Sega in decline to make something different, something that caught people's attention. Now, 12 years later, time has scrubbed away everything but the game they released, and the spit-shine hasn't been kind. In every way, Jet Set Radio HD is a prototype, full of ideas only half-realized and poorly put together, ideas which would be put to better use in the much-improved sequel Jet Set Radio Future (which featured comparatively huge city levels of greater complexity and infinitely more-responsive controls). Jet Set Radio HD is the best Sega has pulled off with regards to their Dreamcast re-releases, but the game can't live up to its own monumental reputation.
About Polygon's ReviewsSonic & Sega All-Stars Racing
by Jared Rosenberg - February 4, 2010, 10:54 am EST
Total comments: 11
Could this Sega racer beat Mario Kart at its own game? These impressions come with 3 minutes of video footage from the Wii version.
Games from Sega like Sonic Drift, Sonic R, and Sonic Riders have tried mimicking Mario Kart's formula for success, yet each has fallen short. Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, developed by Sumo Digital, is Sega's latest attempt and I recently had a quick hands-on with it.
My very first race in the game was on a course inspired by Jet Set Radio Future. The cel-shaded visuals of Jet Set Radio Future on the original Xbox are still a feast for the eyes, so I was a bit disappointed to see blurry textures and a somewhat low-polygon world appear before me as the course loaded. While the graphics for the level were disappointing, the controls were very responsive. Anybody who has played Mario Kart Wii with the steering wheel will instantly be at home with the game's controls, since they are nearly identical. Pressing up on the D-pad activates different power-ups such as bombs, while hitting either the 1 button or the B button causes your character to begin a power-slide. The biggest highlight of the Jet Set Radio Future level was observing a small section in the background that I could have sworn looked like the Yokosuka Harbor from Shenmue.
Players who aren't happy with motion controls will be pleased to learn that the game drives just fine using the analog stick on the nunchuk.
The most impressive level I played was a Casino Sonic the Hedgehog stage that was reminiscent of Mario Kart's Rainbow Road, featuring giant towers of playing cards, slot machines, and pool balls rolling about in a roller coaster-like contraption. The graphics for the Casino stage were high quality and the level design was inventive and fun. I am hoping that the Casino stage was one of the more polished on display, because some of the other stages were graphically underwhelming. In a House of the Dead level, the large fountain that appears in front of the famous Curien Mansion looked like it could have been pulled directly from the Sega Saturn version of the game. The course designs seemed pretty good, but possibly not up to the high standards set by the Mario Kart series.
As players complete stages they rack up Sega Miles which can be used to purchase new levels, characters, and music. Content-wise, the Wii version appears to have everything that the other editions of Sonic & Sega All-Stars will have. I decided to try to spend some of the Sega Miles I had earned, and witnessed a diverse line-up of Sega favorites available for purchase, including Alex Kidd, Big the Cat, Ryo Hazuki, the Bonanza Brothers, Opa-Opa, B.D. Joe from Crazy Taxi, and even Akira Yuki and Jacky Bryant from Virtua Fighter sharing a car. In addition, I saw that Super Sonic Racing from Sonic R is an unlockable music track, along with a stage set in the Monkey Ball universe based on the Monkey Target mini-game.
Sega is strongly catering to their fans with Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. The controls felt right, but some levels looked like they could use some work. Overall, Sonic & Sega All-Stars looks like it can be a contender.
Check out video footage of Seaside Hill's Whale Lagoon below.
Talkback
I am confused. You say that the controls were smooth and responsive, yet in the video the player kept falling off the tracks every time he failed to make a turn.
Also, it's very likely that the HD versions will have prettier levels.
I am confused. You say that the controls were smooth and responsive, yet in the video the player kept falling off the tracks every time he failed to make a turn.
Also, it's very likely that the HD versions will have prettier levels.
Pap I think the first few times the player fell off it was because he/she started his/her turn late. The last time the player fell of it was because the player ran into something and fell off.
Who played the gameplay video?
This doesn't look half bad. What kind of multiplayer options are available?
This doesn't look half bad. What kind of multiplayer options are available?
Four-player splitscreen and eight-player online (don't know if the two can be mixed like in Mario Kart Wii).
I'm willing to give Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing the benefit of the doubt as it looks like Sumo Digital has done a nice job with the Wii version. I'll consider it, providing there's an option to turn off that annoying commentator.
I tried the PS3 demo. I was shocked. The track, gameplay, weapons, and graphx were quite awesome. It's very challenging too, without relying on cheap weapons. You've got to race well and use drift to pull ahead. I'll probably buy it as it may be right up there with Diddy Kong Racing. Can't wait for Mario Kart in HD.
This looks fun, but I don't know if I have room in my library for a third racing game.
This looks fun, but I don't know if I have room in my library for a third racing game.
I'm sure M&M's Kart Racing could afford to move over a bit ;)
Ha ha, I forgot about that game. Though as long as this game is better than THAT, it could be fun. I might get it sometime down the line on sale or something, but I'm in no rush. The two I was referring to were Mario Kart Wii and ExciteBots.
I played the PS3 demo of this game a few days ago, and it seemed surprisingly OK (if completely derivative of Mario Kart). It even featured the extreme rubber band AI of the Mario Kart series. ::) I really didn't care for the variety of games showcased with the stages, though, as they seemed to skew either Sonic or Billy Hatcher for some odd reason. Instant FAIL for Sega not having a Skies of Arcadia or Valkyria Chronicles stage in there.
Which reminds me: I found the PS3 demo to be pretty difficult, even with the AI racers set to Beginner I could barely claw my way to second place due to a last second '**** you!' from the AI racer behind me. How is it in the Wii version?
Jet Set Radio Slot Machine Manual
Game Profile
| Genre | Racing |
| Developer | Sumo Digital |
| Players | 1 - 4 |
| Online | 1 - 8 |
Worldwide Releases
| Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing | |
| Release | Feb 23, 2010 |
| Publisher | Sega |
| Rating | Everyone |
| Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing | |
| Release | Feb 26, 2010 |
| Publisher | Sega |
| Rating | 7+ |
| Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing | |
| Release | Feb 26, 2010 |
| Publisher | Sega |
| Rating | General |