The story of Sega has always been one of counter-culturalism and defying the status quo. In late 80s and early 90s, Nintendo held an iron grip on the video games industry. They sported a soft and approachable veneer to consumers through a series of charming and inoffensive titles like Mario and Donkey Kong while pressing their boot to the throats of distributors and retailers behind closed doors. In the aftermath of the 1983 video game crash and the borderline authoritarian regime of the Big N under President Yamaguchi’s leadership, it felt like a fool’s errand to try and enter the scene as a competitor. You either pulled out of the industry entirely, or fell in line with Nintendo’s draconian rules. Despite this, one lone company had the rebellious spirit to spit at the feet of giants.

Sega created a mascot and a brand that was the antithesis to everything that Mario and his parent company stood for. Where the red plumber was portly, slow, and affable, Sonic the Hedgehog was a fiendishly fast blue little vagrant. Nintendo was gaming royalty, so Sega positioned themselves as the scrappy and blisteringly modern go-getters who were too cool for Mario’s 'fun for the kids' shtick.

Sega built a veritable empire with this cheeky attitude, but it was fated to fall. Their market share in the console space shrank with every successive launch until the Dreamcast went out of production in the early 2000s. This leaves Sega, and by extension, Sonic with something of an identity crisis. How does a brand that defined itself by its defiant attitude continue when it now exists to serve its former competitors? It would be like a moody teenager proclaiming how moronic and out of touch their parents are before having to shamelessly ask for gas money. When people say Sonic had a rough transition to 3D, I think they tend to overlook that it wasn’t just because of the mechanical challenges coming from a new dimension to traverse. The greater challenge was a failure to reconcile his new place several tiers down on the gaming totem pole. I think that there’s only one series that really managed to convincingly carry on the tradition of Sega’s counter-cultural spirit, and that’s Jet Set Radio.

Sonic was birthed from many brains looking at everything Mario did and doing the exact opposite. Jet Set Radio feels like it comes from a much less petty place. It doesn’t act in opposition to any one series, instead it forged a unique identity by representing the trends of the era without ever being subservient to them. It antagonizes the police ike GTA without ever stooping to its vulgarity. It shares The Wind Waker’s gorgeous cell-shading, but its angular, heavily outlined world distances itself from Zelda’s cutesy aesthetic. It taps into the cultural zeitgeist of extreme sports and graffiti art but uses its Looney Tunes-esque cartoon silliness to create a world that is more radical and engrossing than its real world inspirations. Jet Set Radio exists at a point of intersection between so many spheres of inspiration that it defies simple categorization and creates an inimitable style all its own. 

The story of the game also positions the player to protest against oppresive forces rather than portly plumbers. It doesn’t have the cynicism of a GTA or a Jak 2 which sneers at the overly twee games of the 8 and 16-bit eras, instead that ire is directed towards things worth mocking- the police and large corporations! JSR jumps miles ahead of the meta-textual irony of Sonic and the popped-collar bad boy cool of future open world crime games. Its not interested in that kind of corporate posturing that invites you to sit at the cool kid’s table because you bought their product, instead it reminds the player that existing outside the mainstream is about authenticity. You rebel and fight so that the forces of evil don’t dictate the conversation about what art is and isn’t acceptable.

 Jet Set Radio really was a series that was too cool to live. It represented the last flickering flame of a titan of the industry who was slowly losing touch with who they were. It represented an evolution in the company’s relationship with the player. You weren’t just meant to sit stupefied at how cool Sonic was, you were encouraged to realize how cool art and self-expression was, and how it’s your civil duty to clown on anyone who would get in the way of that. By avoiding the pitfall of being overly-aware of industry trends, Sega created a timeless classic with a message that lands just as well as it did back in 2002. Jet Set Radio is the true successor to the philosophy of 90s Sonic and Sega: effortlessly way past cool.

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