Let me start this preview with a story, this should, hopefully, explain why I hate bloody roller-blades and other wheeled feet-ornaments, without annoying any of you skater types. Right. It all started when I bought Jet Set Radio for my lovely Dreamcast. It was a great game where I could blast around a futuristic city called Tokyoto on my super-charged roller blades, spraying graffiti on any surface I could, whilst avoiding the police. It was great, I really did enjoy it, it was fun and it looked cool… as did the roller-blading aspect, something I had never before considered. So when one of my older (and less sensible) friends bought a pair of powered roller-blades, I had to give them a go, after all it looked so cool and easy on JSR…However, I soon discovered that it’s not easy in the slightest. After I flew arse upwards straight into a ditch, ending up covered in foul smelling muck and also stalling the stupid bloody boots in the process. I decided that this whole blading thing is not all it’s cracked up to be. That, my friends, is why I stick wholly to pretending that I’m good at blading, using my console and not the real thing, which often results in personal injury.

So then, now that you can all accuse me of being completely useless at roller blading, let’s look and see if my favourite blading game has grown much in it’s transition from Dreamcast to the all new, heavy hitting Xbox. Well… of course it has, it’s bigger, smarter and apparently a lot more fun (we’ll see about that). Let’s have a sneaky peak of what to expect when it finally launches…

Jet Set Radio Future or Jet Grind Radio Future, if you prefer is being handled by Smilebit, who plan to give fans and newcomers alike a game to savour. As you can most probably tell, JSRF is set, wait for it... in the future, the world of tomorrow. It’s still all based in Tokyoto, that funky Neo-Tokyo city of the original, just it’s now a few years ahead. New towers, buildings and landmarks have sprung up around the city and the whole setting has a Futurama/Jetsons feel to it. The characters have also been ‘futurised’ and now look even stranger than before, and that’s saying something!