Music has become an integral part of the gaming experience in recent years, and developers are increasing their focus on the audio aspect of their titles. Top-quality musical artists are signing on to contribute to game soundtracks quite frequently now, and hearing licensed music in a game is becoming more common all the time. The music featured in Jet Set Radio Future is instrumental in setting the tone and attitude of the game, and is a great listen outside of the game to boot. Grand Royal presents a limited selection of songs from the Sega game on their last release ever, Jet Set Radio Future Original Sound Tracks.

Most of the songs on this OST are catchy house and J-pop tunes, with many new mixes of old Jet Set Radio favorites. Hideki Naganuma of Wishmaster contributes a number of excellent tracks, such as the hypnotic "Fly Like a Butterfly" and "Teknopathic", along with the disturbingly upbeat "Oldies But Happies" and "Like This Like That". The OST even features a new mix of "Let Mom Sleep", which you might recognize as the theme song from the original Jet Set Radio. There are a pair of quirky rock songs from Guitar Vader here as well: the warm-and-fuzzy "I Love Love You (Love Love Super Dimension Mix)" and the annoyingly cute "Baby-T". A couple of up-tempo electronic tunes, "Sneakman (Toronto Mix) and "Bokfresh", round out the eclectic playlist. Oh, and "What About The Future" rocks my nuts off as well. There are a few songs that lag behind the quality of the others: "Shape Da Future" never really appealed to me, and "Humming The Baseline" just sort of wanders aimlessly. There's nothing here the Skip button can't cure though.

Overall the soundtrack is great, but the one crucial drawback is that many of the best tunes in the game are missing from this CD. There are 30 tracks to listen to while playing Jet Set Radio Future, but only 18 of these appear on the soundtrack. Many of these are remixes by the Latch Brothers, like "Latch Brothers Bounce", "Count Latchula" and an oh-so-funky remix of "The Answer". Also noticeable missing are rocking tunes like "Statement of Intent" by Bis, "Birthday Cake" from Cibo Matto and "I'm Not a Model" from Russel Simmins, all of which add quite a bit of variety to the soundtrack. Without these tunes the album feels unbalanced, with an unhealthy focus on the tracks from Japanese artists. The CD presents the tunes in a no-frills format, while the game will actually mix tracks together to form a more cohesive and enjoyable listening experience. In addition, listening to these songs on CD doesn't come close to matching the experience of hearing them in the 5.1 Dolby Digital format that is output by the Xbox. Of course that's not really a fault of the CD, but this is still an observation worth mentioning.

In the end this is a solid CD offering, but without the complete library of songs this doesn't come close to matching the experience of hearing them in the game. Wether you pick this up depends on your level of obsession with the game (or your level of disposable income). If you have the means, I'd recommend recording the audio straight from your Xbox and mixing your own CDs, but the Original Sound Tracks should be enough for less discerning Jet Set Radio fans. It's a bit steep at $28, but if you're import-savvy you might be able to acquire it for less.

Track Listing:
1. The Concept Of Love
2. Fly Like A Butterfly
3. Funky Dealer
4. Shape Da Future
5. Teknopathetic
6. Oldies But Happies
7. Like This Like That
8. I Love Love You
9. Baby-T
10. Humming The Baseline
11. Rock It On
12. Sneakman
13. What About The Future
14. Bokfresh
15. Let Mom Sleep
16. That's Enough
17. Sweet Soul Brother
18. Grace & Glory
19. Jet Set Medley Future
20. Jet Set Station #2
21. Jet Set Groove #3
22. Jet Set Groove #4