Funky Skater Beat of Jet Set Radio Future Keeps on Grinding

Looking at the cover art for the games as a young boy, I was immediately draw in because of the look of it Tony Hawk plus some kind of weird Japanese rebel spray painting. This game is called Jet Set Radio Future (JSRF) and it is a kind of sequel/remastering of the Sega Dreamcast game Jet Set Radio. JSRF was released on the original Xbox in 2002. The game is 3rd person and the graphical style of the game is called cell shaded  , which means the games as almost a hand drawn quality. 

In the game you can play many different characters that are apart of your crew called the GGs. You recruit more people to your crew as you play the game, but you need to beat them in a race to get them to join. Throughout the game the GGs have to fight against the enemies gangs that are causing trouble to the city. The city in the game is loosily based on Japan itself. The games setting has a real 1990s Japanese punk setting and the music of the game matches it perfectly.

The soundtrack to this game was made by Hideki Naganuma and Richard Jacques, who were the same duo that created the music that was in the original Jet Set Radio. Some of the songs that are in the game were not released on the original soundtrack of the game because they were made by other lesser known bands. Some of these bands were BS 2000 (Adrock from Beastie Boys), Scapegoat West, The Latch Brothers (Mike D from Beastie Boys) and the Prunes. I am noticing a pattern here. I will sadly not talking about these song since they were not on the official song track of the game, but in a different blog post I might. In this post today I will be discussing three of my favorite songs from it, but they are all extremely great songs.

When you put in the disc and the logos of developers and producers fly by, the music starts up with this heavy guitar rift that is pure 90s punk and the song name is "The Concept Of Love". On screen it is showing some of the characters in the game skating around everywhere and doing crazy tricks. This music and title screen video gives the player the exact feel of what this game will be. The song is extremely well made and almost sounds like something that is commercial, but then again most of the songs on here sound very well made. This song like most of the other songs on the soundtrack is very repetitive which makes it addicting.  If you are not into this heavy music don't worry every song on this soundtrack is different.

The nest song I will talk about is i think my favorite out of them all and it's "Oldie But Happies". This song uses old time television voices for most of the lyrics of the song and has this extremely happy-go-lucky beat to it that strangely matches up to skating around. The song near the end develops into  this chanting part that really keeps building and you almost feel inclined to chant along to because of how simple and cheeky the song is. 

The last song I am going to talk about is titled "Let Mom Sleep (No Sleep Remix)". This song is a remixed version of the song that appeared in original Jet Set Radio. The song starts out with this siren against a really funky beat that leads into some very intense bass lines. This song almost makes you want to dance more than anything else. Much like the last song I talked about this song also utilizes old television dialogue for the voices in this song. I don't know what it is about that idea, but I really enjoy that. I think it has to do with the fact that it is completely out of context and sounds ridiculous. 

This album, along with Halo, was one of the first that I really just sat there and just listened ot the music instead of playing the game. I loved everything in this game from its quirky graphics to it extremely silly idea of using graffiti to fight against the powers of evil and also inspired me to learn graffiti art which may not be the best thing. Thanks for reading and have a nice one!