Forget Call of Duty, Real Men Need the Retro Love: Jet Grind Radio

Oh yes indeed. Hold on to your asses, gentlemen. It's Jet Grind Radio.

Fans of useless fact-tacular will be shit-your-pants thrilled to hear that this was known as Jet Set Radio in other territories. The rest of us only need to know that it hit the Dreamcast in 2000, and has since become a kind of unofficial poster boy for the console. Fans of late nineties cool, this one's for you.


This free-roamy action game was quite a revolution when it landed. The world of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, MC Hammer-esque baggy rap pants and rollerblades was not ready. Its cel-shaded art alone was quite alien; akin to giving a hairy-assed caveman a microwave oven or something. You can't blame the poor bastard for taking a crap in it, it's all new and befuddling for him.

Which is just how many of us felt on first venturing into this futuristic, free-roamy world. The game is set in Tokyo-to, a fictional take on the Japanese capital. The city is beset by three dastardly criminal gangs, each of which control their own sector of town. As these cheeky bastards tend to do, each is encroaching on the others' territory as Jet Grind Radio begins. You form your own band of badass skater dudes, and set about dealing with your rivals.

Now, when we say ‘dastardly criminal gangs,' we aren't talking Grand Theft Auto. Charles Manson levels of homicidal crime spree-ery, this is not. Being the late nineties and all, these gangs are simple graffiti artists, dicking about on rollerblades and endangering their asses on highways and all of that good stuff.

Said graffiti is the main gameplay element. This is how you mark your territory; like cats peeing on the floor but more hygienic. You roam about the city performing missions and challenges, and can ‘tag' areas with your chosen paint emblem wherever you find them. But not without attracting the wrath of the gung-ho police, who have no qualms about shooting rebellious teenagers right in the damn face with actual bullets.

Dodging rivals and/or stray buckshot, performing tricks, finding secrets, this is the name of the game. As is enjoying one of the funkiest gaming soundtracks this side of... Lipps Inc's Funkytown. A place which is, incidentally, not quite funky enough to feature, such is the funkiness of the game's music.

Jet Grind Radio is a unique one, a kind of playable time capsule of the era it was created in. A simpler time, before the craptacular musical warblings of Justin Bieber and everything else that sucks. As we know, the Dreamcast died on its ass far too early, but it left behind a legacy of quirky, charming weirdness like this. At least it isn't Seaman. Holy balls.