How game developers worldwide are reliving Y2K Japan, from Jet Set Radio to Dance Dance Revolution

The makers of Unbeatable, Hyperyuki and Denshattack discuss their influences, from trains and Digimon to music and the Dreamcast

Image credit:Acclaim, Inc

Many of today’s game designers have, like me, grown up with Japanese Y2K style - the style of the late 90s and early 2000s that gave us not only fear of the end of the world due to a calendar change, but also the WipEout series, futuristic PlayStation 2 ads, and fashion that incorporated everything from glitter to holographic fabrics and cute crop tops.

In a media landscape that seldom shies away from homages and sequels, I’ve waited a long time for the influence of childhood favourites such as Dance Dance Revolution and Space Channel 5 to pop back up. After all, plenty of Western developers have taken inspiration from Japanese role-playing games, giving us Sea of Stars , Undertale and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 , to name a few. Recently, I found some really cool games by Western developers that are living the Y2K dream with me, so it was time to dive into their inspirations and compare some childhood anime with some nerds.

One such developer is David Jaumandreu, studio director at Undercoders, who are making Denshattack - a game that asks the brave question “what if Tony Hawk’s, but with trains?” From the name (densha is a Japanese word for a train) through the colourful Jet Set Radio -influenced style, bursting with speed lines and manga sound effects, to its tracks set near Japanese landmarks, Denshattack proudly wears its love for the country on its cab.

Jaumandreu remembers the time anime became mainstream on Western television as pivotal to his development as an artist, with series such as Dragonball, Captain Tsubasa and Dr. Slump airing in his home in Catalonia, the UK and many parts of Europe for the first time in the 1990s. As regards video games, there was of course no way of avoiding Japanese games as soon as you chose to – gasp! – play on console.

This is no accident, as from 1980 onwards, Japan started to invest in a national branding strategy, first at home and then abroad. These efforts culminated in the coining of the term ‘Cool Japan’, inspired by the UK’s Cool Britannia marketing push in the mid-90s. I only remember these very early efforts at marketing Japan abroad as a recipient, but the Cool Japan strategy is still very much alive. As recently as 2024, the Japanese cabinet office outlined different initiatives that have already been funded, such as events, support for the localisation of different pieces of media including games and anime, and providing funding for Japanese companies to expand abroad.

It was during Jaumandreu’s first trips to Japan that he got to experience the country’s extremely efficient rail system and discovered the Densha de Go - “Let’s go by train” - arcade cabinet, a conducting sim with its own train driving peripherals.

Image credit:Taito / Square Enix

Japanese trains are an important part of Cool Japan marketing – not many countries have a railway network that’s as wide and effective as Japan’s, and there’s undoubtedly something about the sleek lines of the Shinkansen highspeed train as it winds its way through the country. Train lines are so well-marketed in Japan that I wouldn’t be surprised to meet more developers who feel about them the way Jaumandrei does. There are themed calendars. There are anime mascots . The film adaptation of The Exit 8 led to several railway companies claiming to have found the station the game was based on - despite developer Kotake Create never revealing the station that inspired them - and offering Exit 8-themed AR experiences.

Anwar Noriega, CEO and co-founder of Mexican studio Wabisabi Design Inc, also traces his artistic development back to the original Cool Japan era. “Many of our happiest childhood memories are of coming home from school, turning on the TV, and watching anime like Captain Tsubasa, Saint Seiya, Dragon Ball , Sailor Moon, and many others,” he says.

Wabisabi are working on Hyperyuki (Hypersnow), a Y2K-inspired homage to extreme sports games like SSX Tricky. “For us in Latin America, creating a game like Hyperyuki is a love letter to all the joy and inspiration Japan gave us growing up,” Noriega goes on. “Anime are a major influence, specifically sports anime, where a single sport becomes the heart of the entire world. We wanted Hyperyuki to feel like a videogame adaptation of a 90s snowboarding anime that never actually existed.”

My third interview partner is RJ Lake, director, writer, composer and jack of all trades at DCell Games. Their debut project is Unbeatable, which RPS reviewer Leigh Price hailed as “a raucous, scrappy rhythm game with a surprisingly heartfelt story to tell”. RJ wrote so lovingly on Digimon films in his response to my queries, that I genuinely hope someone else commissions him on the subject. But more importantly for us, he highlighted the importance of music to capturing the feeling behind Y2K art.

“Our game has some very obvious influences; there’s the nods to [now defunct anime studio] Gainax stuff, especially FLCL and how that anime incorporated [Japanese alt-rock band] The Pillows,” he says, “But Digimon The Movie, which is this lovingly strange bastard object grab-bagging three theatrical short films and stitching them together with a lot of music licensing, is legitimately a massive touchpoint for UNBEATABLE and how I think about how music and image can change contextually.”

Of course music would be important to a rhythm game, but the significance and influence of Y2K music goes beyond rhythm games. A lot of Y2K fashion, for example, is the mainstream evolution of stuff you saw at raver parties in the 1990s. In a similar fashion, Y2K nabbed graffiti from New York hip hop culture, which had grown from a black subculture to a large, commercially successful genre of music. You can see the hip hop influence in the Jet Set Radio logo, for example. Sony had a graffiti ad campaign for the PSP that famously backfired with the culture . Parappa the Rapper, the game that’s widely cited as the first rhythm game, lovingly taps into the popularity of hip hop at the time, as do Tony Hawk’s and SSX Tricky, two of the arcade-style sports games that inspired the gameplay of Hyperyuki.

Image credit:Sony Computer Entertainment

However, neither Hyperyuki, Denshattack nor Unbeatable take cues directly from hip hop. Instead, their developers point to another big name of Y2K rhythm gaming: Dance Dance Revolution.

For me, DDR always stands out as one of the things coverage of Cool Japan would point to in order to illustrate how ‘weird’ and kooky Japan was. Footage from Japanese arcades often showed young men fighting for their lives on a dance pad, doing something that only very generously could be called dancing.

Image credit:Wikimedia Commons

While the idea of having the Rockband peripherals sounded cool and gave you social currency on the schoolyard, Dance Dance Revolution was for nerds. But DDR popularised the genre of rhythm games that you play using peripherals - Red Octane, the company that worked on Guitar Hero together with Harmonix, and which was recently revived , got their start as the manufacturer of peripherals for rhythm games such as Konami’s Guitar Freaks, a direct genre successor to DDR. So it wouldn’t be out of place to say that without DDR, there would be no Guitar Hero, and while peripheral rhythm games based on licensed music have largely run their course, the style of DDR lives on.

“DDR’s sound choices had roots in a lot of new jack, rave, house, trance, and club music of the early 90s that was really popular among Japanese producers at the time,” says Lake. “It’s what filters into a lot of non-‘traditional’ (i.e. classically inspired) game soundtracks over there well into the early 00s; you get this on the Sonic CD soundtrack, Initial D Arcade Stage, the music in Ridge Racer, and so on.”

Image credit:D-CELL GAMES

Hyperyuki, too, calls on Y2K electronic for its soundtrack. “The soundtrack leans heavily into late-90s electronic music—Drum & Bass, Jungle, Garage, Techno,“ says Noriega. “We’re incredibly happy to be collaborating with talented artists who share the same passion for that era. Many of them are influential figures in the underground electronic scene and have performed at major festivals such as [electronic music festival] Mutek.“

Even Denshattack seems slightly influenced by rhythm games, seeing as it’s a game about avoiding obstacles at the right time. Wait, does that make platformers secretly rhythm games, too?

“We’re fans of rhythm-based games and there’s definitely an influence of them in Denshattack, but not in the traditional “hit the notes” sense,” Jaumandreu says. “The first layer of the gameplay is basic driving and that has a very rhythmical feel: reading the terrain, avoiding obstacles, drifting and braking at the right moment. The intention is to put players into a kind of flow state and, on top of that, have a secondary layer of player expression by tricking.”

Image credit:Fireshine Games

Going beyond Dance Dance Revolution, it’s important to discuss the impact of Japanese arcades at large in the Y2K context. These days, we often call games ‘arcade-style’ if they’re easy to pick up and put down, with some genres offering arcade modes for quicker bursts of play. But for much longer than in the West, arcades in Japan were a driver for certain game franchises and genres. In a culture where people don’t really visit each other at home and the size of apartments often doesn’t allow for desktop PCs, arcades were often the way people played their games, and even when consoles started taking over the market, there would still be games that simply didn’t feel the same when played at home.

Actual arcade-based games had to be colourful and loud enough to stand out inside a jet hangar, and they had to feel good enough to make you want to come back for more. Japanese arcades are a place that simply need games to be at their most exuberant - both fun alone or with friends, and different from everything else clamouring for your attention. You can see this spirit in the boldness and liveliness of the games discussed here, even though they were developed for living rooms and bedrooms.

If any game is associated with the Y2K style, it’s Jet Set Radio, Smilebit’s Tokyo skating sim for Dreamcast from 2000. (Side note: 2023’s Bomb Rush Cyberfunk has been called a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio, but when I contacted them for this piece, Dutch developers Team Reptile said their influences lie closer to home.) It’s not often that a 25 year-old video game is still turning heads, and so I asked all three developers why they think that is.

Image credit:Sega

“The race for photorealism in games has become less important,” Noriega says. “The technological leaps simply aren’t as dramatic as they once were, so players are connecting more with stylised, expressive art directions. Stylistic games tend to age far better. That combination makes this visual direction not only appealing, but timeless.

“We wanted to build a larger-than-life world where snowboarding is the centre of everything, almost an obsession. From that idea, we designed characters with big personalities and exaggerated features, echoing the playful, slightly irreverent spirit of late-90s games, where developers weren’t afraid to get weird or whimsical.”

Noriega and Jaumandreu both point out that instead of going the way of more realism both in graphics and gameplay, which the Dreamcast hardware would have allowed for, many games of the era were instead whimsical and stylised, proving that the idea of good graphics didn’t have to equal hyperrealism.

Image credit:Acclaim, Inc

“I think Jet Set Radio was one of the first games that understood video games as a creative medium, where raw graphic power could be invested into creating a unique artistic identity rather than only emulating reality with precision,” Jaumandreu says. “For quite some time, triple A games were the driving force in the post Dreamcast era and realism was favored as a standard style and moving away from that was seen as a risky option. I guess that with the emergence of indie games and the democratization of game development, we’ve come to a point in which creators can make bolder choices in their artistic direction and there’s a sector of gamers that appreciate it.”

Lake also mentions the power of nostalgia on both a visual and a textual level, which brings me to the thematic similarities all of these games share with Jet Set Radio and its like. There’s a certain emphasis on freedom here, and not just visually: all three games talk about being different, exuberant, about taking on the establishment. To me, there’s a counterculture element to the resurgence of Y2K in games and in pop culture that feels timely, as people lose faith in institutions and artists see the art theft machine automate their work away.

“Games of that era had this mix of anti-establishment attitude and playful absurdity that felt liberating, celebrating self-expression, colour, rebellion, and style,” Jaumandreu says. “I guess it works because it’s all about breaking the norm, right? People fighting against control naturally stand out from the crowd and break expectations. We think audiences are craving that again – something optimistic, expressive, and stylish in a world where many games lean darker or more realistic. That mix of resistance and wackiness is strangely timeless.”

Lake echoes these thoughts, but qualifies that looking back can be counterproductive. “It was important to me that in pursuing the aesthetic choices we were making we weren’t doing so flippantly or just as a veneer, so it’s a bit about a missed feeling, but in a very specific way,” he says. “Unbeatable is kind of about nostalgia on a textural level, too, and even the ways that yearning for what came before can be a double-edged sword.”

Image credit:D-CELL GAMES

Much as they are dedicated to a particular time, I’m not sure you could accuse any of the above games of being captivated by nostalgia. All clearly show that even when you take an established formula, there are still always new things you can do with it, or facets to highlight. Hyperyuki is bringing Y2K to extreme sports games, resulting in a completely new feel for the genre. Unbeatable combines a narrative adventure with a rhythm game that is meant for both newcomers and genre aficionados, and Denshattack shows off Japanese trains in a way you’ve never seen them before.

There’s a lot of talk in games about repeating winning formulas to get the next Clair Obscur or similar, but talking to these developers, I think the games that took from what came before aren’t doing that out of calculated desire to produce a hit, but out of genuine love for an era and a commitment to its lingering imaginative possibilities.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

PC , Nintendo Switch

Dance Dance Revolution

PS2

Denshattack!

Video Game

HYPERyuki: Snowboard Syndicate

PC

Jet Set Radio

Nintendo GBA

Unbeatable

Video Game

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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