YMMV / Jet Set Radio

• Awesome Art: The series' vibrant cel-shaded aesthetic still looks good even after twenty years.
• Camera Screw: Both games have pretty miserable cameras, with the only game that has an adjustable camera being the HD re-release of the original. Both games require you to reset the camera to move it, which works sometimes and screws you over other times. Future's camera also snaps to look at your piece while spraying, blocking your view from heading into a Bottomless Pit and also managing to screw up your controls.
• Cult Classic: To date, the series consists primarily of two mainline games released in the early 2000s, plus a Japan-only typing game for mobile phones and a handful of releases of the first installment (a GBA Reformulated Game and two updated rereleases — the Japan-exclusive De La Jet Set Radio and the international Jet Set Radio HD). Despite this, Jet Set Radio is still widely-beloved decades later for its stylized aesthetics, diverse characters, unique gameplay, and especially its incredible soundtrack.
• Demonic Spiders: Assassin #2, a group of jetpack-flying gunners who patrol the first game's "Fight or Flight" level. This provides them with the ability to attack you nearly anywhere in the level, which makes just getting around a hassle and turns large and xtra-large tags into a battle of attrition due to their patrol behavior meaning you can't just lead them away from the tags like you can with the foot-patrol goons.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Cube's goth aesthetic and comparatively extensive backstory in both games led to her being a fan favorite.
  • The Noise Tanks have an appealing and distinct cyborg-based aesthetic which manifests in their numerous gadgets, such as rocket skates and tertiary arms.
• Epileptic Trees: The recurring fan theory that Clutch is Coin's Future counterpart. Next to no evidence supports it, since he doesn't have any history with Future's versions of Combo and Cube.
• Even Better Sequel: Future irons out nearly every flaw of the original game, with a more interesting story and varied gameplay. Many of the frustrating elements were dropped and the elements that did work were expanded upon with more depth and better control. Even those who have the Early-Installment Weirdness reaction to the original game freely admit to having enjoyed the successor.
• Fanon: Because the manual and guides are so obscure, many characters' common interpretations are quite different from canon. Gum has the most stark changes: official resources describe her as energetic and loyal, but she's commonly portrayed as stoic and unamused.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • "The Concept Of Love" from Future samples a Black Panther speech about fighting for one's rights and humanity, which (although most likely unintentionally, due to Hideki Naganuma's then-limited knowledge of English) ties in pretty well to that game's themes about fighting against a CEO who has no qualms about having kids-to-very-young-adults decimated over cleanable graffiti, and fighting against his oppression of non-conformists in general.
• Fridge Horror:
  • The series' premise revolves around the police using deadly force on graffiti artists. How many people did they kill before the games' events?
  • Most of the citizens are unfazed in the face of wanton police brutality. At best, they could feel too powerless to fight it. At worst, they may have been conditioned to the point of seeing it as acceptable, or even outright support it.
  • In Future, it's implied that Gouji has the firepower (nukes included) to wipe Tokyo-To off the map if he really wanted to. When he uses it to blow up the residential zone, the tapes scattered throughout imply that his gang views it like a game (even when a child is trapped in the blast radius). How close was Tokyo-To to nuclear annihilation?
  • On a related note on Future, the existence of the Fortified Residential Zone raises a terrifying question; What happened that was so bad that an entire, hyper-fortified city needed to be built underground?
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Splatoon, thanks to both games featuring teenagers in fashionable streetwear covering their cities in graffiti while jamming to a cross-genre soundtrack. It helps that Hideki Naganuma, the series' composer, retweeted some fanart of two Inklings in Beat and Gum's clothes, stating a crossover between the two series would be a "dream project."
  • With Steven Universe as well, thanks to a comment from the creator about one of the characters loving the game's soundtrack.
  • Naturally, it shares a lot of fans with its Spiritual Successor, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In Japan, Classic was released in an unfinished state on a sinking ship, and Future was exclusive to the Xbox, which sold much worse than the competition. Neither game appealed to the wants of their Japanese audience at the time of their release either, as the market was geared more towards anime RPGs and arcade fighters. On the other side of the pond, Western players consider both games cult classics and have been frequently cited as examples of the artistic and aesthetic potential of video games.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Dash jumping in the original. Because your speed is kept as you jump and until you land, jumping during a dash extends the speed boost longer than intended. This is especially handy for Jet Crush and speedrunning.
  • Two in "Graffiti High:"
    • By spawning two Onishimas, you can get a second helping of 500 bonus points, marvel as they ram into each other, or synchronize their tagged animations.
    • A paratrooper gets stuck on the geometry. This makes the player character constantly alert over an enemy that can't hurt them.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Because the combo disc with Sega GT 2002 is more common and cheaper on the secondhand market than the solo disc, most people buy it for Future exclusively.
• Love to Hate: Onishima is unquestionably a guns-blazing, morally bankrupt cop, but that's why fans enjoy him: his over-the-top responses to graffiti artists provide some of the best setpieces in the game, and experienced players will tag him for a lot of bonus points (and his following "damn").
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Understand, understand, the concept of love!"^Explanation The chorus of "Concept of Love" gained traction for being repetitive and bizarre when taken out of context.
  • "Jet Set Radioooooooo!"^Explanation Professor K yells this at many points during Classic. Fans tend to use it as a substitute for "let's go" or "get hype."
  • Family Guy Funky Moments ^Explanation Thanks to Hideki Naganuma posting Family Guy memes on his Twitter account, a lot of JSR fanart bizarrely involves the Griffins. One of the most well-known is Peter skating at the viewer, dressed as Beat's Future design.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Future's final boss fight. Unlike the rest of the game, it's set in the dark, psychedelic interior of the Tower of Beauty, which uses living people as its fuel source (you can even see them helpless during the fight). Shadow figures relentlessly pursue the player unless they can make it to the top. All of this is punctuated by Gouji's unnerving, unhinged speech, glitching into itself a la SHODAN. While his eccentric personality was Played for Laughs earlier, this boss fight shows how dangerous he really is.
  • The Noise Tanks' voice clips in Classic's Japanese release. They're composed of technical sounds, indecipherable speech and a bizarrely low pitch, as if the Noise Tanks are malfunctioning. Their lack of visible mouths makes it even more unnerving.
  • A more mild case, but the world in Future counts. While the first game's Tokyo-to resembled it's real-world counterpart with some layout and stylization liberties, Future's version of the place looks concerningly alien. At first, buildings seem to just be a weird shape, and then you realize that those are smaller buildings stacked onto each other. The fact that this was necessary will have you thinking some kind of disaster occurred in the past. But when you get to Kibogaoka Hill, which is a miles-big "city" made of houses, scrap metal, storage containers and entire skyscrapers, all built over a flood, you'll start wondering if there was some kind of massive apocalypse that lead to such a haphazardly built... everything.
• Polished Port: De La Jet Set Radio, a Japanese-only revision of the first game released in 2001, was widely seen as the definitive version of the game until the HD version released in 2012 for taking the best elements of each version and combining them into one definitive package.
• Porting Disaster: The Game Boy Advance version of the first game was an ambitious effort to put the whole game on inferior hardware, but had several cut tracks, poor controls, and level design which was not always optimized to put the new isometric view into account, leading to many frustrating moments that weren't in the original.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Nearly all of Yo-Yo's flaws were retooled in Future: he's unlocked at the start, his stats are more well-rounded, the graffiti mechanics were retooled to remove combos, his voice clips were re-recorded and his design was overhauled to be more iconic.
• Scrappy Mechanic: In Classic, graffiti and camera control are mapped to the same button. Tag battles and small tags, in turn, can become disorienting as the player sprays paint and adjusts the camera at the same time. This can be reconfigured in the HD remaster.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Future is significantly easier than the Nintendo Hard first game for a variety of reasons:
  • In the original game, every level was a Timed Mission and you had to tag every spot in one go, but the sequel lets you take all the time you want.
  • The combo system for larger tag spots was removed for this installment, and now you simply have to spray multiple times for them.
  • Grinding was made much easier, as characters will now readily snap with little trouble to any grind rail. You can also grind straight upward, allowing easy recovery if you fall.
  • The biggest drop in difficulty, however, is caused by the fact that you are no longer forced to dodge the law after enough tags. While law enforcement shows up from time to time, you actually get to fight back against them and it all happens in enclosed areas, and once you fend them off, you are free to go about your business.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Beat/Yo-Yo is a popular ship across both continuities, despite the two rarely acknowledging each other.
• So Bad, It's Good: The general opinion about "Birthday Cake" is that it's annoying, deranged and nonsensical. Naturally, it's also one of the game's most memorable songs. The general consensus it's that it's an acquired taste.
• Spiritual Successor: Due to how popular it is and SEGA's unwillingness before 2023 to make another sequel, a couple sprung up over the years.
  • Hover: Revolt of Gamers was inspired by Jet Set Radio and Mirror's Edge, even having two tracks by Hideki Naganuma.
  • The 2023 game Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is the first (albeit unofficial) new entry to a series that hasn't had a new game since the early 2000s.
  • The fan game Butterflies (created by Le Crew for mobile/PC) is also heavily inspired by Jet Set Radio. That game has yet to be ported to consoles.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • "That's Enough" has a lot in common with Fatboy Slim's "Always Read The Label".
  • The Latch Brothers sound very much like the Beastie Boys, due to them being a side project of one of their members.
• That One Boss:
  • Future's final battle against Gouji/A.Ku.Mu in their disorienting, psychedelic arena. Getting to the fight requires a difficult series of jumps, and since the paint is at the bottom and the boss has a large health bar, the player needs to refill at least twice.
  • The Hikage Street Terror Drone. Its hitbox is relatively small, so players are usually damaged upon contact while tagging it. Each hit activates a cutscene that halts the flow of the action, which can be distracting in the middle of a jump or rail trick. Should the player fall, they need to ascend long grind rails to get back up, and the framerate drop caused by the drone's bombs can make things even slower.
• That One Level:
  • Jet Set Radio:
    • Bantam Street has some hard-to-reach tags that can drain the player's timer and most of the paint requires some tricky wall jumps. The only two available characters the first time through have the highest Graffiti stats in the game (making multi-spray tags harder in return for more points), and multiple tags are guarded by Assassin No. 5, who pursues the player with a whip which can't be dodged by dashing or jumping. Its preceding mission, Love Attack, is one of the easier tag battles, so this one's difficulty tends to catch many by surprise.
    • Grind Square's suspended grind rails and tricky jumps usually lead to a lot of fall damage. Since the GG's best graffiti artists are frail, it's more dangerous for anyone pursuing a Jet rank.
    • Yo-Yo's recruit race. Because the only faster character is unlocked late in the game, you'll match his speed at best. The race itself is Benten-cho's Jet Crush route, which is also That One Sidequest as described below.
    • Combo's recruit race. You're forced to use a character with the second lowest speed in the game against Beat, who has above-average speed. This would be fine if you know how to pass Beat's route, but one section forces you to enter a door placed above a half pipe. Because of Combo's large hitbox, it's easy for him to get stuck trying to fit through the door, which can give Beat an unbeatable lead.
    • Fight or Flight (Kogane-Cho's Golden Rhino mission) has snipers in hard-to-reach areas that guard most of the graffiti spots. If you tag enough of them, you'll instead have to contend with Assassin #2, a mob of goons with machine guns and jetpacks. These guys move fast, hit hard and are much more mobile than the base enemies, which makes it difficult to weave through the lead even if you planned your route in advance.
  • Jet Set Radio Future:
    • The Tokyo Underground Sewage Facility is a vertically-oriented stage with quite a few tricky jumps over health-sapping water. With no fast way to get back up to the upper floors (unlike most of the other stages, you cannot unlock shortcuts here) and plenty of ways to fall down to the first, falling off of a higher level or getting a Game Over makes it even more difficult. A single mistake while jumping will force the player to go through the entire level again.
    • The Skyscraper District & Pharaoh Park has a much darker color palette than the other stages, which can make judging your jumps tricky. They're usually over bottomless pits and preceded by unusual ramp mechanics, too^note You accelerate while going up specific sloped surfaces in this area; in almost any other stage, you'd lose speed trying to do this on similar setpieces, and there's no visual indication these particular ramps do this. Should you fall, the area's checkpoints are spread apart and far from your objectives (especially ones in the perimeter). Moreover, this stage is big, and a number of objectives and Graffiti Souls are in remote locations with long gauntlets of platforming challenges before them.
    • It's easy to get lost in Hikage Street, since each of the three paths are similar. Each one is punctuated by a large stair-grinding setpiece (with minor variations in rail structure). All of the graffiti spots are on the top of them, and if you fall, you need to ascend it again.
• That One Sidequest:
  • In Classic, the optional Jet Crush levels have tough time limits (if you're going for the highest rank), knockback mechanics that drain momentum and fling the player away, and players needing to mash the dash button. Benten-Cho is generally considered the hardest because of its narrow corridors, lack of shortcuts, and multiple jumps that, if you miss them, cost you the race.
  • In Future, a Graffiti Soul in Shibuya Bus Terminal requires the player to jump on all 13 bus stop rooftops without touching the ground. Unfortunately, the mission text is partially untranslated from Japanese and the mission itself is bugged: there's a ramp on one of the rooftops which the player will likely hit after a jump. If they do, that stop doesn't count.
  • One Graffiti Soul in the Tokyo Underground Sewage Facility involves wall-riding up a giant vertical passage. The walls must be ridden in sequence (as trying to wall ride the same wall twice in a row doesn't work), the two safety platforms in the passage have no barriers to prevent you from falling again, the player can get stuck in a corner and there are metal wall panels that cannot be used for wall riding. If you hit them, they can send you back to the start.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Initially, a huge chunk of the soundtrack couldn't be licensed again for Classic's Updated Re-release, which led some to decry it. Fortunately, efforts by Sega brought back all but one of the original songs and even a few from Future to compensate.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The game's soundtrack is largely responsible for its Teen rating. Although the most explicit lyrics were censored, several made it in about drugs, sex, and "rock that shit, homie!" Hell, "Rockin' the Mic" has a couple of very audible N-words in it along with "fellatio."
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: It's very easy to view the series (especially Future) from an anti-capitalist lens: the main villain is a Corrupt Corporate Executive with enough money and connections to effectively buy Tokyo-to's police department, reducing the actual cops to pencil-pushing figureheads while he sics his mooks on what are ultimately harmless non-conformists in an attempt to control the city through force for the sake of his own ego, while the heroes are all scrappy young adults who simply want to have fun.

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