Parappa the Rapper

Jul 16, 2007

Parappa is my homeboy (homedog?). I won't clutter this review with tales of videotaping my game sessions, buying Japanese soundtracks and the like; suffice it to say I'm down with Parappa. Thus, you can label me one of those extremely pumped to hear of his PSP resurgence -- joining another music-game pioneer in Gitaroo Man. While it's great to play through the game again and be able to do it on the go, this isn't quite the re-release I was looking for.

For those poor uninitiated, Parappa the Rapper was essentially the first rhythm/music game to hit the masses. You portray a cute, flat cartoon dog trying to garner the affections of a cute gal. Obstacles pop up, but through lyrical prowess and a can-do spirit, Parappa perseveres. He learns to drive, pawns goods, and even battles for bathroom privileges. It's a brilliantly adorable tale with plenty of subtle nuances and quirky characters. The art style is still unique to this day, and the music will go down as one of the best original scores in the history of gaming.

The gameplay of Parappa has now become a video-game staple: It's button-pressing Simon-says. First your "teacher" spits a line, then you repeat back by tapping the corresponding buttons in time. A meter tracks your progress, though scoring can be arbitrary at times. There's a little wiggle room for freestyling, but you'd better know your stuff.

If there was a knock on Parappa, it's how short the game is. With a mere six stages, a skilled player can get through the whole shebang in about 40 minutes. Replay comes from a simple desire to hear the kick-ass songs again, or wanting to either do better or worse to see how it affects the game. For example, during Cheap Cheap the Cooking Chicken's stage, she's rapping at you from a television. If you start to falter, she'll flap out of the TV and accost you face to beak. Getting a "Cool" rating is the game's holy grail, and won't be easy to attain.

The script hasn't flipped much on PlayStation Portable. The widescreen presentation feels natural, and the graphics look a tad sharper -- with crisper lines and such. A few seconds of loading before a chapter's cutscene will carry you through the song and ending cutscene, which is more than reasonable. However, the button icons are a little too small.

Like a re-release of a popular album or a greatest-hits collection, you'd hope Parappa tossed in some extras. There are a few, but it's actually a disappointing assortment. You can play remixed versions of the songs, but it requires going online and downloading them to a memory stick. I refuse to believe these couldn't fit on the UMD itself. The new mixes aren't even that great -- though perhaps those who don't have the original songs ingrained in their head will be more receptive.

Multiplayer options are a nice touch, with up to four-player ad hoc support. The songs aren't really that conducive to competition, however, so it's not a big boost to the package's value. Game-sharing allows several people to download a demo at once, but you probably know whether you'll like the game or not already, and I don't consider free friend demos a "feature."

What really bothers me is the way the game basically eliminates other means of replayability. For example, if you play a stage individually (or remixed), it won't count on your high score list. Even if you achieve the lofty "Cool" rating, you won't be treated to the new cutscene that accompanies it. That forces you to replay the entire single-player campaign -- though, again, it's only about 45 minutes long. However, when prompted to save, if you use the same file that you beat the game with, it will erase all your previous stats, essentially making you start over. What an awful, awful design decision!

Parappa the Rapper is definitely worth another few play-throughs. However, it's depressing how little Sony added to this package. After all, this is an uber-short PSone game, ported to a console that has shown it can faithfully reproduce PS2 titles. Why not include the woefully-undervalued Um Jammer Lammy, or the inferior-but-still-enjoyable Parappa 2? Or heck, since Sony wants us to take PSP seriously, why not actually include some brand-new content? At least give us an online leaderboard or a music-player feature! With a $30 price tag, Parappa is at least $10 too high. Die-hard fans will find it worth the value, but others are suggested to wait until the price goes down.