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A single needle-electrode plasma jet driven by a home-made microsecond pulse power supply is studied. The electrical characteristics and optical emissions of the plasma jets driven by positive- and negative-polarity pulses are compared. With the same magnitude of applied voltage, the plasma jet driven by positive pulses shows a higher discharge current, a higher optical emission intensity and travels to a longer distance. The temporal-spatially resolved He (706.5 nm), N2 (337.1 nm) and (391.4 nm) emissions behave differently in the plasma jets driven by different polarity pulses: They appear to be discrete emission packets in the positive plasma jet, but continuous emission in the negative plasma jet (under the time resolution in this study). The emission front propagates at a faster speed in the positive plasma jet than in the negative plasma jet. The different behavior of the plasma jets is attributed to the electric field distribution under different polarity pulses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]