Jet Moto

Jet Moto. Racing on the edge, and sometimes off. —Magazine ad for Jet Moto

Jet Moto is a racing video game series spanning 3 games that was developed for the Sony Playstation in the late 90s. Racers use a diverse array of hover bikes varying in mass, maneuverability, lift, and acceleration to compete against each other at high speeds over a variety of race courses that are intricately linked to their environmental settings. The complexity of successful strategies is increased by the inclusion of limited turbo boosts and magnetic poles at sharp turns to which the rider may 'grapple' while turning in order to slingshot around the corner. Many of the courses themselves present a significant challenge as well, requiring racers to navigate across bottomless pits on awkwardly placed platforms, monitor speed at jumps to avoid overshooting the landing, and slip through groups of oncoming racers to get to the next checkpoint (these are called suicide tracks).

Competitions are organized as single race events, multi-race championships, and solo practice.

Jet Moto is notable for is overt use of product placement, simulating the wash of posters and billboards plastered all over everything at major racing competitions in real life.

Tropes used in Jet Moto include:

• The Ace: The Max
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Planet X.
• Applied Phlebotinum: The Jet Moto bikes aren't exactly possible.
• Autobots Rock Out: The only kind of music you came across in the first game.
• Circus of Fear: Rollercide from JM2
• Convection, Schmonvection: The only penalty for riding over lava in Meltdown is that it will nudge you along the flow a bit.
• Cool Bike: The Jet Motos themselves.
• Cut and Paste Environments: The first installment of Jet Moto had three beach themed stages, three swamp themed stages and three snow themed stages. And Nightmare.
• Early Installment Weirdness: The first Jet Moto limited your turbo to four quick bursts per lap. The games that follow would all use a turbo gauge.
• Eternal Engine: Nightmare has hints of this.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Most courses in 3 were named with this in mind.
• Executive Meddling: Jet Moto 3's ludicrous speed is said to have come from executives ratcheting up the top speed on the bikes.
• Fake Difficulty: Jet Moto was a very glitchy game at times. Often one would race off a ramp and find themselves tripped up for no clear reason. As a result, players would find themselves back in last place almost instantly.
• Fragile Speedster: Wild Ride, Li'l Dave
• Franchise Killer: Jet Moto 3 sold poorly, and as a result a 4th sequel was canceled.
• Green Hill Zone: Joyride, from the first game.
• Hailfire Peaks: Meltdown from JM2 and Volcano Island from JM3 are Palmtree Panic combined with Lethal Lava Land. Meltdown also has hints of Green Hill Zone.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels:
  • Amateur, Intermediate, Professional, Master, Insane (only JM2)
• Jack of All Stats: The Max and Vampeera
• Loads and Loads of Characters: This series as a lot of characters to pick from, but the first Jet Moto stands out.
• Made of Explodium: In the third game, if you run into a wall hard enough head-on, your bike will explode.
• Nintendo Hard: Large numbers of ruthless opponents, lots of sharp turns, Marathon Levels, Bottomless Pits everywhere, etc., not to mention a lot of confusing course designs that usually take a few laps to get a handle on.
• Overly Long Gag: Just fall off the edge of Nightmare.
• Palmtree Panic: Cliffdiver in the first game, Meltdown in the second, and Volcano Island in the third.
• Platform Hell: Especially in Jet Moto 2. Many tracks require you to jump from platform to platform while trying not to fall into a bottomless pit. Not to mention avoiding getting clotheslined by checkpoints.
  • Ice Crusher is a major offender as well, being made entirely of platform-jumping and far too many Bottomless Pits.
• Product Placement - Like in professional racing sports, advertisements are all over the place. Mountain Dew, Butterfinger, and even Chef Boyardee. One course in the second game even uses the massive advertisements to hide a shortcut.
• Rocket Ride: Jet Moto bikes are essentially crotch rockets.
• Rubber Band AI: Jet Moto 2 has this.
• Scenery Porn: These games looked pretty beautiful for their time.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Ytic Tsol, Uhccip Uhcam, and Krapyks are later tracks in 3. Bonus points for being reversed versions of the tracks they take their names from.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Just TRY Cliffdiver with a character with low turning stats, like Blackjack or Mace... Then try it without using grapples on Master difficulty.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: All the games have at least one:
  • Ice Crusher, Snow Blind, and Willpower in the first.
  • Arctic Blast and Mach Schnell in the second.
  • Khumbu Ice Falls in the third.
• Spell My Name with a "The": The Max, The Hun
• Temple of Doom: Machu Picchu
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard
  • The second game is a unique case. All of the AI racers are based on different developer runs of each track. The different difficulty levels simply change the speed of the racers. Pro difficulty has most AI racers reaching above the top speeds of players. Insane difficulty is almost literally impossible without the the normally game-breaking bonus character, Enigma.
• To Hell and Back: Nebulous.
• Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Demonstrated with the collapsed freeways in Joyride and Hammerhead in the first game, but played out even further with Aftershock in the second, which takes place in Los Angeles, post-massive-earthquake.
• Underground Level: The Shaft in Jet Moto 2, and Catacombs in the third game.
• Vaporware: At least two sequels were in production, but thanks to Jet Moto 3's poor sales, they were canceled.
• Very Definitely Final Dungeon:
  • In the first game, Nightmare: a series of steel platforms miles above a major city. Especially jarring in that the other nine tracks were in very natural environments.
  • In the second game, Nebulous. One of the longest tracks in the series, multiple wall-ride segments, Platform Hell, and even a brief suicide portion. Even the course map looks daunting.
  • In the third, Planet X.
• Wrench Wench: Bomber
• You Don't Look Like You: The returning characters in the canceled sequels.