One of Sega’s most overlooked franchises is Jet Set Radio. The world where skaters gang up and rule the streets and spray graffiti all over the city while fighting back against the cops has managed to make an impression on the Dreamcast and was good enough to get a sequel on the Xbox. However, these games are less classics and more niche games that gained a huge following online years after they vanished. With indie games coming in to fill voids left behind by Triple-A game studios leaving game franchises and their unique gameplay styles behind to history, it was only a matter of time till this game’s legacy became too great for others to notice and tried to replicate. With that, we got Bomb Rush Cyberpunk out of it. Why it’s not as grand as its Dreamcast original, it’s still a great time.
You start your journey off as Faux, a writer for New Amsterdam, who is a graffiti artist who is trying to claim the entire city as his turf. After breaking out of prison with Tryce, he gets his head lobbed off by DJ Cyber. However, thanks to some outside help, he was able to get a robotic head for his body and became Red. Now teaming up with Tryce and Bel, Red needs to conquer the other gangs trying to rule the city to not only get his old head back but also regain his memories. What follows is an adventure filled with graffiti, fighting the police, and learning about a story that goes deeper and darker than its colorful exterior shows.
This game takes more influence from Jet Set Radio Future than the original game. It’s an open-world game that slowly expands its world more and more as you progress through the story. The progress is simple; go to a new district and start spray painting some stuff. Get in a fight with the police, and once you finally get enough rep from spraying enough graffiti, you can challenge the rival team to a score attack mission where your squad needs to get more points than the other team. Perform tricks, spray spots, and keep your combo multiplier up by turning tight corners when grinding and riding new walls. Win the match, get the turf, and learn more about Red’s past. Repeat till you reach the end. Some story beats cause the plot to change from time to time, but more often than not, what you see is what you get, and that is “we have Jet Set Radio at home”.
Now, it’s not a bad game; far from it. The game nails down the aesthetic it wanted. The graphics and colors are nice and vibrant enough for each area to be distinct from not only one another but also as unique from its inspirations. It’s like a mix of Jet Set Radio’s cartoonish art style and the sequels’ realistic graphics. The music also gives off the feeling like it’s a 90’s vintage playlist. It’s composed of original tracks from Jet Set Radio composer Hideki Naganuma, mixed with songs from the real world, with both sides having good tracks. For example, “GET ENUF” is a great theme that pops up whenever you’re doing score challenges against rival graffiti groups and makes for a great victory theme. “In The Pocket” is a good menu theme that tells you what kind of game this is. Songs like “Operator” and “Jack Da Funk” are great for skating around and spraying buildings with graffiti. Overall, the soundtrack is composed of both great original songs and good choices for songs already made.
Spraying graffiti is a more simplified version of Jet Set Radio’s system. You go up to a spot and press the spray button. You then get a set of directions where you can move your cursor over in a pattern, and you’re given a time limit to decide which pattern you want. At first, you’re incredibly limited in terms of what patterns you can make, but the more graffiti designs you unlock, the more patterns you can get to show off more graffiti. With new graffiti patterns being displayed netting you a boost bonus to cause your character to zip around the level, it’s a system that promotes exploration. You can even spray over patterns you already placed down to increase your score, perfect for missions where you need to get a high score.
Graffiti patterns aren’t the only thing you can find in the world. There are even characters you can unlock if you’re able to spot them in the world dancing. That dancing part is important, as that is the only way to determine if they are an important character or just some random background NPC. But there are even more things you can look around and pick up. By riding around, you can find CDs that unlock more music tracks for you to listen to while out on the town, skateboards, roller skates, and bicycles for you to collect and customize. Oh yeah, you have more than just rollerblades this time around as going on a skateboard, or a bike is also an option. Each character you unlock has their default starting ride, and…that’s all that there is to them. There is one point where you need to switch to Bel to talk with someone, but aside from that, they’re just different skins and voices, alongside a unique graffiti spray for each one when spraying a small area with each one having its unique letter they spray.
Alongside making your mark with spray cans, you will be hounded by the police throughout the journey. At the start, it’s just foot soldiers chasing after you. Soon enough, snipers, attack helicopters, and even mechs will be after you. There are a couple of ways to avoid them. Of course, you can just keep riding your way around, trying to avoid them. They will keep chasing you as long as you’re still living, but if you never stop, you will generally be safe. They won’t even follow you into the graffiti-spraying quick-time-events, so unlike Jet Set Radio, you don’t have to worry about them catching up to you. Alternatively, you can find a porta potty and quickly change your clothes. No matter where the cops are, even if they see you doing this, they will immediately forget all about you and you will be in the clear.
The final option here is to engage them in combat, and that is where the wheels of this ride start to come off. You attack by using the same buttons you’ve been using for tricks, and despite the variety in how enemies look, pretty much all of them go out in the same way. You have to get up to them and mash your attack buttons at them and when the option shows, spray graffiti at them. Some of them have some minor differences like the turrets shoot chains at you to try and bind you up, but if you keep attacking other enemies while chained up, the chains will break eventually. Or you could just boost to break them. There are only two enemies that force you to do something else. First are the armored guards. You also need to boost through the guards with the riot shields, but after that, you can just keep attacking them until they put their shields back up again. The other one is the mechs, which, while unique and take advantage of the grinding mechanics, are unlocked only after beating the game. The game does have some good post-game content; unlocking more characters, different spots to skate and graffiti, and challenges to do, so you will be skating into them and having to deal with them.
The bosses are the other part where you will be using combat alongside your skating. It’s the only part of the game where the combat feels good since you’re going to be racing around the arenas to reach them. You will be jumping over gaps and mines, grinding on arms that have conveniently placed rails and around the arena, and trying to get to them to spray paint them to beat them. It brings to mind the final boss of Jet Set Radio, which is pretty fun and enjoyable and tests your skating skills. It forgoes the usual button-mashing gameplay for a system more in line with the main gameplay style.
Yeah, I keep comparing the two, and I do prefer the original Dreamcast game. As nice as the open-world aspect is for Bomb Rush Cyberpunk, the snappy nature of the arcade style of the stages in Jet Set Radio just feels more enticing to play. Also, the latter feels much more challenging and engaging to beat. Bomb Rush Cyberpunk never really offered much of a challenge with how many ways you can escape the threat of law enforcement through clothes or just outskating them and doing the graffiti events without them interfering. The characters also had different stats in the first game, giving them all their unique play styles and letting you experience and see which character is the best for each level. On the topic of complaints, on the Switch at least, it crashed a fair couple of times, even when I wasn’t doing anything that different from what an average player would do. One crash occurred even when I was doing a regular story objective, so that’s something to look out for.
Despite my obvious love for Jet Set Radio, Bomb Rush Cyberpunk is still a worthy successor. It’s still a blast to skate around a colorful place to some funky beats and spray graffiti all over the place in defiance of the law. The combat may not be that good for regular enemies, but the bosses are pretty fun to fight. The controls are just a blast in general, making the simple act of moving around fun, and the act of retreading old grounds to get stuff you missed during the story mode a fun post-game incentive. I don’t think I prefer it to its roots, but what it is by itself is still a unique piece of art worth checking out.
