I always assumed Jet Moto was going to be a bad game. Sony’s first party output at the time just wasn’t exactly amazing. Typically these titles had some good ideas but were sorely lacking in content. Things have been fixed since then, but that doesn’t mean that many of their early PS1 titles weren’t rough. I always had interest in Jet Moto however, after playing the sequel on a demo disc. My friend and I literally ran through the one level included hundreds of times because we enjoyed the trick system and just performed flights of fancy for hours on end. I neglected to get this game because I figured we had enough fun with the demo so why pay forty bucks? Regardless, decades later I’ve decided to tackle the original release in all it’s glory. I was wrong to pass on it because the original Jet Moto is fantastic.
Jet Moto is an extreme sports racing game. Before I get too far into this review I need to cover what makes it unique. For one thing the vehicles here are fictional. Jet Moto takes place in the future so as to allow the developers to invent their own mode of travel here. What you ride is similar to a jet ski (and can perform largely the same tricks as one), but it hovers over the terrain. It handles like the aforementioned aquatic vehicle, but it can travel over land as well. This makes this game feel unique from something like Wave Race 64. If you’ve ever wanted to play a jet ski title with more variety then this is it. There’s also a lot of advertising here. The likes of Butterfinger and Mountain Dew paid top dollar to have their logos everywhere (there’s even teams based on them).
The advertising and brand placement is a little off-putting but not that much of a bother. Either way let’s move on to gameplay. Jet Moto is a fully 3D racing game using the aforementioned futuristic jet skis. You race three laps per course and compete against twenty different racers at once. That’s seriously impressive for 32-bit hardware, and understandably the AI is kind of mediocre. There’s also rubber banding which most gamers hate but I wasn’t too bothered by it. Each course is a seamless mix of land and water. Handling on each of these is surprisingly different in a few ways. While traveling across water movement is a bit more slippery, and on land it almost feels like you have more ‘grip’ on the ground. You can select between twenty different racers each with their own statistics. These are divided into teams with real world sponsors.
Jet Moto isn’t a game you can just jump right into and win in. The handling alone takes a lot of practice to master. As I mentioned earlier these machines travel like jet skis so at first it’s going to feel very unwieldly. It’s very touchy, and pressing any direction for even a fraction of a second too long can send you into the barrier. There are also a few mechanics in place to help you with these issues. For one thing you can lean your driver left or right with the shoulder buttons to turn more sharply. This is also pretty touchy so you need to be careful and balance the usage of this. To assist with the sharpest turns are magnetized poles highlighted with purple electricity. On these you can grapple to swing you around these turns.
These work incredibly well once you get used to them, but you’ve got to pay close attention to know when to let go otherwise they’ll hold you back. You can only use this until a meter at the bottom of the screen has depleted. Thankfully this recharges automatically so you never really have to worry about running out. The final feature in these hover jets is turbo. You get four at a time and each one gives you a temporary speed boost. The AI doesn’t seem to take advantage of these so it’s going to be a key to victory when racing against them. What’s nice is the fact that your turbo is recharged at the beginning of each lap. The key is in figuring out exactly where to use it because there aren’t a lot of straightaways without obstacles in most courses here.
The level designs here are absolutely amazing. I seriously was surprised about how much work went into them. Generally the play area is narrow but in some areas you’ll find wide open spaces which is a great change of pace. My favorite aspect of the level designs involve the jumps. You’ll find some areas have ramps, or even multi-tier areas you can travel across which act like shortcuts of sorts. While airborne you can rotate your entire craft to perform tricks or even aim the nose in specific ways to make for softer landings. There’s a surprising amount of strategy in these jumps and I got excited every time I saw a ramp in the distance. Stages also have very meticulous shortcuts which I always discovered completely by accident. These are very well designed and because the AI doesn’t use them give you a big leg up on them.
Jet Moto also has a fair amount of options under its belt. You can compete in single races or an entire season if you so choose. There’s also head to head multiplayer as well. Considering the vast amount of racers you’ll likely want to experiment with them all to see what works best for you. There’s also ten different courses (all are fantastic) which is quite a bit for a game like this. In terms of graphics they tend to be fairly similar to one another, but mechanically all are different. From the start you only have access to three of them in single races and must unlock the others by completing tournaments. The only issue I have is the fact that you can’t play co-op. The only option for multiplayer is one-on-one. They really should have opened up the main season mode to two players.
The graphics are kind of a mixed bag. The characters on one hand look great and animate with a fair amount of fluidity. Some areas of the courses also look really nice, but it’s the narrow scenes that suffer here. The developers tried to include things like foliage but it just looks like flat pixels mashed together. This was a common problem on the PlayStation hardware so I won’t fault it too much, but it can be pretty ugly at times. The hit detection is also off and replays of your wrecks look hilarious because of it. Your character ragdolls in completely unrealistic ways and I’ve seen the jet ski fly all over. The soundtrack on the other hand is sublime. Original compositions consisting mostly of, I guess you’d call it ‘surfer rock’ round out the music. It all sounds great and fits the action surprisingly well.
