Series: GamePro Presents, 4

Craftsmanship: 9.0 / 10
- Great sculpt and pose
- Not much articulation, and only one real pose, but it's a nice enough pose
- No accessories (aside from the base)

Playability: 2.5 / 10
- Needs the base to stand?
- Basically no playability
- Useless articulation

Related Links:
- Review: Jet Grind Radio (DC)

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Beat (Jet Set Radio Future)

by Joyride Studios

I would begin this review with a short intro to the character and some background, but I've got to be honest here - I have no idea who "Beat" is and what Jet Set Radio Future is about, aside from the fact that this figure looks crazy enough to be fun. It's a guy on jet-powered roller blades wielding a spray can and a bizarre set of

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headphones, what's not to like? Fortunately, just opening the nifty packaging by Joyride Studios gives you a nice little intro to the figure and the game, currently available for the XBox. JSFR is all about blading from turf to turf, trying to take over Tokyo by spray-painting graffiti and tags everywhere while avoiding the fuzz, and Beat is one of our main characters. Like

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the other Joyride figures, the packaging is well designed enough to give you a background on the figure if you don't know the game or characters. With that out of the way, let's look at the figure.

Beat is about 6 1/2" tall, sculpted nicely in a cartoon-anime style as depicted in the game. His costume is simply detailed but nice enough.

I like the little details on the sculpt, like the little control pad on his gloves and the designs on the rollerblades. I also like the jet shooting out of one of his blades, in translucent yellow plastic. The colors are bright and make the figure look appealing. Unfortunately, some of the most interesting parts of Beat are lacking because they aren't removable - Beat holds a spray can which you can't take out of his hand, and has some funky headphones and sunglasses that really should have been removable, but they're not.

The nice look of the figure is also hindered by the comparatively poor articulation. Beat has 10 points of articulation, most of them useless because of the generic skating position that he's typically forced into (as depicted above). This is essentially the only pose Beat can get into thanks to a terribly annoying peg extending from one of his rollerblades (which pegs into the base and keeps him standing). Although the pose is awesome for display, it's not worth the price of playability, which is lost from the figure because of this pose. The peg means that Beat can't stand without the base, and it's downright annoying.

This could have been a really fun figure, too - with the right design (in articulation and poseability) you could have him skating all around your room and house tagging everything. Instead, he just topples if you try to take him off the base, and he can't skate anywhere. A better figure would have had a peg that clipped onto his blades to keep him on the base, that could be taken off to play with him. In addition, the wheels don't spin, which is rather disappointing. Another detail, which would have made the figure nicer is to have the jet shooting out of his blades removable, and have one for each blade.

Beat only has one accessory, his nice little base, a section of road with a little handrail type bit. It's suitable enough for him to be displayed on, and nicely detailed, but it could have been fun to make him skate on it and grind on the handrail, but I guess not. More accessories would have been nicer too. Overall, fans of Jet Set Radio Future will like Beat; he's is a nice display piece but definitely not for someone who wants to play with him.

- Shocka
(April 26, 2003)