Vicarious Visions are GBA wizards. They made the best-ever Tony Hawk game, porting Pro Skater 2 to the GBA, so they are likely the best possible choice to translate Jet Set Radio into an isometric game of the same style.
This means dropping the two most important assets of the game — the groundbreaking cel-shaded aesthetic and crunching down the superlative soundtrack into several bite-sized looping bits.
On the whole, it’s fascinating how much has remained the same. Most of the level navigation stays true to the original game, with slight changes for the isometric perspective, one important cut level, and combining some hard-to-translate levels into smaller and more navigable spaces.
It is still hard to properly judge distances, often having to track off-screen jumps and requiring more rote memorization, while also making even more precarious choices, like shortening the allotted time in several of the game’s segments.
It has some unique features. It’s the only game where you get to play as beloved DJ Professor K. There’s four-player which I truly wish I could test or see but have no capacity for, and finishing the game unlocks some different content.
There are also several version differences between NA & PAL versions, most notably: when you finish graffiti in the PAL version, it triggers a crunchy “JET SET RADIO” effect every. single. time. In the NA version, it plays something like the original sound effect. In the PAL version, some of the character names match their original JP Dreamcast version counterpart and in the NA game, they’re consistent with versions in that market.
If the main complaint of Jet Set Radio is it’s hard to play, the isometric switch mostly intensifies that issue by making it harder to read and judge, while nullifying other factors, like making the enemies mostly useless, and not much of a threat for most of the game. It gets legitimately painful in the late levels, especially with the truncated runtimes allowed and more guesswork involved but save states exist for reasons, too.
While this is not nearly as definitive as THPS2, it’s just interesting that it exists at all. It’s a time capsule for how games used to be ported. Worth a look just out of curiosity for how everything has been shrunk down but that original Dreamcast game is still, by far, the superior option in every conceivable way.
This means dropping the two most important assets of the game — the groundbreaking cel-shaded aesthetic and crunching down the superlative soundtrack into several bite-sized looping bits.
On the whole, it’s fascinating how much has remained the same. Most of the level navigation stays true to the original game, with slight changes for the isometric perspective, one important cut level, and combining some hard-to-translate levels into smaller and more navigable spaces.
It is still hard to properly judge distances, often having to track off-screen jumps and requiring more rote memorization, while also making even more precarious choices, like shortening the allotted time in several of the game’s segments.
It has some unique features. It’s the only game where you get to play as beloved DJ Professor K. There’s four-player which I truly wish I could test or see but have no capacity for, and finishing the game unlocks some different content.
There are also several version differences between NA & PAL versions, most notably: when you finish graffiti in the PAL version, it triggers a crunchy “JET SET RADIO” effect every. single. time. In the NA version, it plays something like the original sound effect. In the PAL version, some of the character names match their original JP Dreamcast version counterpart and in the NA game, they’re consistent with versions in that market.
If the main complaint of Jet Set Radio is it’s hard to play, the isometric switch mostly intensifies that issue by making it harder to read and judge, while nullifying other factors, like making the enemies mostly useless, and not much of a threat for most of the game. It gets legitimately painful in the late levels, especially with the truncated runtimes allowed and more guesswork involved but save states exist for reasons, too.
While this is not nearly as definitive as THPS2, it’s just interesting that it exists at all. It’s a time capsule for how games used to be ported. Worth a look just out of curiosity for how everything has been shrunk down but that original Dreamcast game is still, by far, the superior option in every conceivable way.