Jet Moto (PS1)
While a jet ski race with 20 participants might be extreme enough for some, the thrill seekers in Jet Moto’s version of the future wouldn’t settle for just racing across the water. Upgrading their jet skis into hover bikes, the riders of these new “jet motos” are able to expand their octane racing to driving across dilapidated highways and plunging down cracked icebergs, this enhanced form of competition including new exhilarating dangers and interesting new driving options.
In Jet Moto, or Jet Rider as it’s known in Europe, your hover bike never floats too high above the track, meaning there will be considerations for the terrain with even small waves making your ride hop. Breaking out of the mold of water riding though definitely expands the kinds of locations that can be featured across the game’s ten circuits. While it does feel like swampy waters are perhaps a touch overrepresented considering the design freedom, you will also be racing out in tropical waters, heading down a massive winding cliff path, and hitting a track that almost feels more like it was built for snowboarding with its massive slopes and ramps. The swamp tracks do at least diverge in design concept pretty well, and generally all 10 tracks feel distinct even if names like Willpower and Joyride aren’t evocative. You do get to see the track layout before each race though and this can definitely help with recognition while also showing off how creative the designs can really get.
Standard race courses in Jet Moto can have great ideas, areas like the plunge down large chunks of ice requiring you to adjust when you actually have traction so you don’t slip between the cracks, but some of the most interesting levels like Hammerhead mix speed with danger as you’ll constantly be doubling back over the same stretch of road. To complete the laps in such a level you first head to one end, flag the checkpoint, then race back over the track and right into the racers who were once behind you, meaning a head-on collision between first and twentieth place is an actual possibility. Only two tracks embrace this idea so it doesn’t lose its novelty, and while a set of ten tracks can sound lean, a few plays across them and you’ll definitely be adjusting your play style so you’re approaching the tracks in a different way. Some tracks feature multiple paths or shortcuts or feature large open areas where you’ll be weaving through hazards, the player given room to find their preferred route, while others can lead to huge crushes of jet motos as tight cramped turns require everyone to hit the brakes and work much harder to actually clear the turn without being thrown from your bike.
The player developing clear racing strategies for each course already helps Jet Moto feel like a racing game with more depth, but you also have the magnetic grapple placed over it, a sci-fi tool for keeping speed and taking tight corners available in all but one level. The magnetic grapple is a reddish beam of energy that you can activate whenever in range of a grapple point, its main purpose being to let you quickly whip around a corner without having to do a brake turn. Depending on the level though, the magnetic grapple’s use can feel quite different. On Joyride it mostly just helps you take turns without going too wide, but on some courses a good grapple will keep you from slamming into the wall. Cliffdiver’s winding road has a sequence of grapple points at every quick turn, but the beam has a limited amount of power so overusing it can leave you wanting on the next turn. Use the grapple beam when you hit a jump though and it can almost feel like you’re flying, this mechanic mostly used for slingshotting to maintain or increase speed finding more mileage as levels tweak its purpose.
There are a few other considerations on how to handle your jet moto. You get four turbo boosts per lap, meaning you won’t be too hesitant to use them and thus again considering the track design closely on when to utilize them or you might just blast through them trying to make up ground or avoid wasting them when they’re about to get restocked. Your bike’s light hover isn’t just a way to let it glide across different surfaces, it possible for the bike to tip far to the sides and eventually toss you if you don’t manage it right, and if you don’t use the grapple properly you can find yourself nearly bowling over after or even just slamming right into a wall. Luckily, if you do get out of bounds or are flung from your jet moto, the game will let you get back in the race, although with the high speeds and large field of racers you definitely won’t be playing carelessly for fear a first place slot can become sixteenth after a spill.
Your racer will definitely impact your options in Jet Moto, and while there are twenty unique racers to pick from, visually there are four types you’ll see on the track. There are four race teams, each one based a brand sponsoring them. The Axiom team is actually named for Axiom Design who helped create Jet Moto’s visual interface and K2 are a sports company, but team Butterfinger and team Mountain Dew show that some junk food still thrives in whatever future the jet moto racers find themselves in. There are Pepsi and Nestlé billboards as well, their presence in Jet Moto more to imitate real sports and their sponsors, but the bikes and riders wearing their team colors at least stick out from each other even if you can’t tell the exact racer behind the sports gear. Even though each team has five racers to it though, they don’t work together in races and they aren’t even equal in skill. A biker with greater mass can have an easier time knocking a light racer of their ride, but you’ll want good acceleration and handling to be able to cover the course. Lift is an interesting statistic though, because while a heavier vehicle can handle small bumps by just going over them, getting airborne off them can open new opportunities or potentially make you lose control if you don’t account for them. It does seem like there are definitely some clear best racers based on how weak some stat spreads are while others can favor more extreme playstyles like a fast rider with terrible handling, but one nice thing about racing against game-controlled racers is they don’t seem to have any artificial boosts.
Jet Moto does need to keep processing power down so they are subject to simpler physics, the game also restricting multiplayer to only two human racers (outside using a cheat code) because it really wants the player to have more advanced mechanics to engage with. However, in a single player race against 19 computer controlled bikers, you may see a racer placing high a few races only to tumble down the rankings, it seeming like the game has some favorites for who to win but not forcing it. Moreover, you can get large leads that the game won’t artificially try to correct, letting your skill on the track be proof you earned that high spot. One nice thing about the AI racers sometimes having off races and performing poorly is it makes the game’s Full Season mode feel more feasible. Full Season has you race across every track you’ve unlocked back to back, the player only starting with three courses unlocked but by beating Full Seasons on the right difficulty you unlock new batches of tracks to make Full Season tougher. When you finish a race in Full Season mode, you’ll get points based on your positioning, first place earning a hefty 25, but even down at 15th place you still get a point, and the point spread in between is where it starts to show you don’t need to win every race to win the season. 10 points for a spot like sixth place isn’t great, but it’s still enough to stay competitive, especially if whoever beat you does poorly in future races. This means some of the more demanding tracks aren’t huge dealbreakers either, the complicated and difficult design of Cliffdiver likely to be a tripping point but one you can still bounce back from and take first in the season overall.
Outside of Full Season’s Championship Circuit, you can also set up some Custom Circuits to race for fun. An Elimination circuit thins the field after every race based on how well players placed in that race alone, and since you can pick how many tracks you tackle and their order, you can determine whether that’s a scary prospect for you or not. Rally is a tougher challenge, your time in each race added up so any slip up can end up dragging down your end of circuit score. Championship mode is basically just a customizable Full Season mode with the same point system, although you can also adjust things like the number of races or enable the unlockable Stunt Race mode for it. Stunt Race isn’t as exciting as it might sound though, it giving you the ability to earn more turbo boosts by doing tricks but the opportunities to do them can feel spread out and the boosts not as impactful for it. Other than the simple Practice mode for just learning the ropes, these modes do feel like a fine way to add some more ways to race after clearing the unlockables, the game still competitive enough on the right difficulties that these custom circuits can feel like close contests dripping with adrenaline.
THE VERDICT: Jet Moto’s choice to let jet skis leave the water and head wherever they like ended up producing a racing game with a good degree of track individuality and mechanical substance. Ten courses can sound a little small, especially when you see swamp water rather often, but each course embraces different ideas and shakes up how you approach them. Whether you’re liberally using your grapple to stay on track or being thrown into the oncoming traffic that is every racer behind you, every level manages to stand out while asking for different approaches than the others, and with AI racers that are the right level of competent and fallible, it’s easy to get hooked on the high speed extreme racing the game offers.
And so, I give Jet Moto for PlayStation…
A GOOD rating. Jet Moto makes the right decisions to make the game as designed work, which can at parts patch up some of the rough elements. A few tracks seem to even give the max difficulty AI racers trouble because the turns are so tight or throw everyone together, and while the injection of chaos as everyone tries to manage it keeps things competitive, it does feel like areas like Cliffdiver could be cleaner without sacrificing their distinctive features. The last unlockable course, Nightmare, feels a little aimless in direction despite its unique magnetic grapple mechanic of potentially swinging like a vine while racing there, so while these moments hold Jet Moto back from being even more exhilarating, the race tracks in Jet Moto still really steal the show with how well they can keep things fresh and varied. The magnetic grapple already opened up some level design concepts based on how you take turns, but Jet Moto goes a bit further and concocts levels like Ice Crusher that are purely about adjusting your course properly as you slide down the chunks of ice. Giving you turbo boosts every lap adds a way to come back from slip ups while also introducing a broader range of strategy than how you intend to take turns, but learning the courses still feels worthwhile and gratifying as you can start performing better in the Full Season without needing to be perfect to keep up.
When you see Jet Moto’s first race track and see how much it looks just like a jet ski course but with a few bits of land to go up onto, it can seem like the sci-fi bikes are just there to look neat. As you unlock more advanced levels and find greater reason to embrace mechanics like the magnetic grapple though, it becomes clear that Jet Moto isn’t just a gussied up jet ski racer. Creative course design introduces thought and planning into the high speed 20 person races, and while some tracks have their rough patches, conquering a circuit still feels well-earned because of the interesting systems added to the action.