Concept art for Jet Set Radio (2000 | Published by Sega for the Dreamcast)
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Development on JSR was led by director Masayoshi Kikuchi with art direction from Ryuta Ueda. The team took inspiration from late-1990s Japanese pop culture—drawing on the playful energy of PaRappa the Rapper, the anti-establishment spirit of Fight Club (1999), and the aesthetics of 1980s American hip-hop, including graffiti culture. The game’s environments were modeled after Tokyo’s Shibuya and Shinjuku shopping districts, featuring graffiti by real artists such as Eric Haze, who also designed the logo. Jet Set Radio was the first video game to use a cel-shaded art style, developed as a stylistic reaction to what the team saw as an overabundance of sci-fi and fantasy themes in Sega’s other titles.
