Jet Grind Radio HD Announcement

Yesterday, Sega teased fans with a little video announcing a new Dreamcast game that’s getting an XBLA/PSN HD remake. Being the giant Dreamcast fan that I am, I watched the video with anticipation; what I found was nothing sort of amazing:



Yes people, we’re getting an HD port of the one and only Jet Grind Radio! For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of playing this classic Sega game, Jet Grind Radio (Jet Set Radio in Japan) is sort of a splice between a score-attack styled arcade game and an extreme sports title. The game basically consisted of the player, while under a time limit and the threat of the police, roller blading around the city while gridding on objects, collecting paint cans, and tagging over rival gang’s graffiti scattered around town. Mixed with tight controls, a colorful cast of characters, amazing music, and some great gameplay, Jet Grind Radio was easily one of the highlights of the Dreamcast’s library.

While this news really excites me, I can’t help but think of the game’s Xbox sequel, Jet Set Radio Future.

Future was basically the same concept as Jet Grind Radio but this time taking out the time limited score-attack style of gameplay and replacing them with open ended levels and more of a platforming style of gameplay that encouraged exploration more than speed runs. Even though some people think that Future was not a worthy successor to Jet Grind Radio, I beg to differ. Not only did I think Future was a better game, but it featured even BETTER music than the original game. I couldn’t help but feel Future was a better game just due to the fact that it was styled more towards my type of preferred gameplay style (since I’m not much of a fan of time limits). When Future was released, I played that game non-stop and accomplished basically everything that was able to be done in it, which was no easy task.

Here is a little sample of some of the awesome music found in Jet Set Radio Future:



I’m pretty thrilled that Sega is revisiting this franchise. Even though I doubt we will ever see a third title in the series, I am happy knowing they’re giving us the ability to play an upgraded version of the original classic. Hopefully if it sells well, Sega will hook us up with an HD version of Future as well. *keeps fingers crossed* I highly encourage anybody who has not played either game to hunt down a copy of each or jump on this Sega HD rerelease as soon as you can; you will not be disappointed.