Jet Set Radio Arrived on a Dying Console and Still Changed How Games Looked

Jet Set Radio released for the Sega Dreamcast in 2000 (as Jet Grind Radio in North America), developed by Smilebit and published by Sega. Players skated through a stylized Tokyo as members of the GGs, a gang that tags territory with graffiti while evading a private security force and a corrupt police captain. The hook was its look: flat, outlined cel-shaded characters moving through environments that resembled a comic book in motion, paired with a soundtrack by composer Hideki Naganuma that mixed genres as freely as the game mixed art styles.

It arrived at a hard moment for its platform. The Dreamcast was losing the console race to Sony’s PlayStation 2 by the time Jet Set Radio released, and Sega’s hardware business overall was in its final stretch — the company would exit the console market entirely by 2001. The game is reported to have sold modestly, a pattern shared by several Dreamcast titles that are now remembered more fondly than they sold. A sequel, Jet Set Radio Future, followed on Xbox in 2002 and fared similarly: strong critical reception, limited commercial traction.

The visual approach outlived the sales numbers. Cel-shading as a mainstream technique is frequently traced back through Jet Set Radio’s influence, and the game’s HD re-release in 2012 — on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 — introduced it to a generation that had only heard about it secondhand.

Opinion: Naganuma’s soundtrack deserves as much credit as the visuals for why the game still feels distinct 25 years later — it’s one of the few game scores where removing the music would genuinely change what the game is, not just how it feels.

Jet Set Radio is a useful case study in a recurring pattern on this list: a strong creative idea, a weak commercial moment, and a reputation that only caught up once re-releases gave new audiences a fair chance to find it.