If there’s one thing we could all use right now, other than universal healthcare, it’s a new Jet Set Radio. But given that the series is extremely, extremely dead, that’s unlikely to happen any time soon. Luckily, it looks like Team Reptile is out here to deliver the next best thing in Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, which looks like a love letter to the long lost Sega franchise.
Right now all we’ve got is a 14-second teaser trailer and screenshots, but aesthetically, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a dead ringer for Jet Set Radio. The cel-shaded art style, the skating and grinding around the city, and of course, spray painting graffiti all make it near indistinguishable from Jet Set Radio in a way that will fool even the most devout fan. But it’s not just what we can see, the brief 14-second clip is set to music by Hideki Naganuma, who did the music for bot Jet Set Radio and its sequel Jet Set Radio Future.
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While details are scarce at this point, here’s Team Reptile’s rundown of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk from the game’s Steam page:
“Team Reptile brings you Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, 1 second per second of highly advanced funkstyle. In a world from the mind of Dion Koster, where self-styled crews are equipped with personal boostpacks, new heights of graffiti are reached. Start your own cypher and dance, paint, trick, face off with the cops and stake your claim to the extrusions and cavities of a sprawling metropolis in an alternate future set to the musical brainwaves of Hideki Naganuma.
Facts:
– In the game you can choose a character from your crew and explore the three-dimensional streets freely.
– Each stage is a neighborhood that represents one time of day.
– You can grind, slide, jump, trick and airdash to move around
– The goal is to get your name up, your name up on the wall. Every stage has many spots to find where you can paint graffiti.
– You will encounter a lot of weirdos.”
As of right now, there are no plans to add multiplayer functionality, as the game is “focused on single-player,” but Team Reptile leaves that window open by saying it has “no further comment as of yet.” The Steam page says the game won’t be coming out this year, but the YouTube description of the trailer gets a little more specific by saying the game will be out next year. It’s not exactly narrowing it down that much, but at least the game isn’t too far away.
While there hasn’t been a new Jet Set Radio game in 18 years (16, if you count the GBA “remake” of the original), the first game was ported to several modern devices in 2012, including the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Vita, and mobile devices. And it’s still pretty good, although the sequel Jet Set Radio Future is better, and trapped on the original Xbox. If you’ve never experienced the series and want to know what all the hubbub for a spiritual successor is, it’s certainly worth checking out.
