T
here are games that
turn the people
around me all gooey
with warm nostalgia.
Jet Set Radio is one of
them. Playing it, I immediately see
why. It has so much style – like
Katamari Damacy from the same
era – and feels effortlessly silly in
the way that most modern games
by big publishers simply aren’t
allowed to be.
Where I grew up, we didn’t have
youth culture or counterculture or
really much of any culture. On Friday
evenings we had pints at Petra’s
Pancake House. When it got warmer
outside we took six-packs of lager
down to the pastures by the river. In
those days I imagined the cool teens
looked like the way they do in Jet Set
Radio. If you’ve ever been to Tokyo
(or just looked at a Tokyo street
fashion blog), you’ll encounter the
real-life version of what I would have
otherwise assumed were just quirky
videogame characters.
The layout of the stages, too, is
reminiscent of the actual layout of
popular spots in the different wards
of Tokyo. Jet Set Radio looks good, it
sounds even better, and with the
power of games I’m ready to excel at
two things I’m usually terrible at:
skating and visual arts. Here goes a
sick grind! Well... I may have missed
the fence because of all my excess
momentum. But as soon as I’ve
walked up these stairs! Oh... now I’ve
hit the wall I was trying to tag.RADIO GA GA
It turns out that my character’s
demeanour and the general silliness
of the game had me thinking this
would be easy – that I’d be
effortlessly skating across the
rooftops of Tokyo-To while the police
force shakes their fists at me in a
rage. Jet Set Radio, however, is very
fiddly and dense. Once I’ve“The music is really the only thing
maintaining the illusion that I’m cool”
manoeuvred onto a roof with an
admittedly cool trick, I immediately
fall off the other side. Whenever I
ram into a group of police lemmings,
I end up pitifully tumbling and
crawling on my hands and knees. At
this point, the music is really the only
thing maintaining the illusion that
I’m cool and do crime well, even as
my character repeatedly yells “yeah!”
as I jump behind a large bus in order
to avoid the inspector aiming his
revolver at me. The challenges
between stages, in which I try to
emulate the tricks of other
characters, routinely end with me
embarrassing myself.
So I’m not as swift and smooth as
I thought I would be, but I love Sega
for wondering, out loud and in code,
about what it would be like to take on
the more serious, skill-focused
skateboarding games and instead ask
you to shake cartoon dogs off your
butt. I’m into the idea that once
you’ve mastered the actual skating,
no wall in the big city is too high to
be tagged. Of course we do unrealistic
things in games all the time, but we’re
often meant to take them seriously or
treat them with a certain amount of
gravitas. Here I may mess up the
landing, but I’m still cooler than
anyone else I know.MALINDY HETFELD
THIS MONTH
Found that some people are
too sick for sick grinds.
ALSO PLAYED
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice,
Slay the SpireBusting out some moves to stick it to the man in JET SET RADIO
WE TOOK SIX-PACKS OF
LAGER DOWN TO THE
PASTURES BY THE RIVERTHEGAMESWELOVERIGHT NOW
NOW PLAYING
DJ Professor K tells you what
graffiti is really aboutThe stages capture
the spirit of Tokyo.