PaRappa the Rapper

An example of gameplay in PaRappa the Rapper. The player must match the on-screen symbols with their button presses in accordance with the rhythm of the song.

PaRappa the Rapper is a rhythm game in which the main character, PaRappa, must make his way through each of the game's six stages by rapping. As the teacher raps, a bar at the top of the screen will appear, showing symbols that match up to the teacher's lyrics.[4] The player must then make PaRappa rap in response to the teacher by pressing the buttons with the correct timing to match the teacher's line.

During gameplay, a "U Rappin'" meter determines the player's performance, ranking it as either Awful, Bad, Good, or Cool. By consistently staying on beat, players will stay in the Good ranking area. If the player performs a bad line, a lower ranking will flash, and if the player performs badly twice in a row, they will drop to Bad, followed by Awful. To regain a higher ranking, the player must play well twice in a row to move up a rank. To clear a stage, the player must have a good ranking by the end of the song. If the player ends the song on a Bad or Awful ranking or drops below the Awful ranking at any point in the song, they will fail the song and have to start over. After the game has been cleared once, the player can attempt to achieve a Cool ranking. This is achieved by freestyling in a manner different from the predetermined lyric. If the player performs a successfully impressive freestyle when the Cool rank is flashing, they will enter Cool mode. In this mode, the teacher will leave the stage, allowing the player to rap freely and earn some large points. If the freestyling fails to impress twice in a row, the teacher will return and gameplay will resume in the Good ranking. Ending the stage with a Cool rank results in a special level ending, and clearing all stages on Cool Mode unlocks a bonus mode with characters Katy Kat and Sunny Funny.

Rank-changing aspects of a level are only apparent during the first of every two lines. If the player successfully times the first line of a pair but fails on the second, the rank meter will not blink Bad or Awful. Likewise, once the game has been cleared, a Good play is only necessary on the first of every two lines to be able to get Cool mode on the second line.

The player takes on the role of PaRappa, a paper-thin rapping dog, determined to procure the heart of a flower-like girl he has a crush on named Sunny Funny. However, he is intimidated by the presence of Joe Chin, a rich, self-centered dog going overboard making efforts to obtain Sunny's attention. In order to win Sunny, PaRappa learns to do karate at a dojo, and earns a driver's education course to get a license. However, when he crashes his father's vehicle, he has to earn money at a flea market to pay for this. When Sunny's birthday comes up, PaRappa has to get her a cake but ends up ruining it after an encounter with Joe Chin. He makes a new one by watching a cooking show and proceeds to eat a lot of it on the day. When spending some time alone with Sunny, he is suddenly overcome with the need to go to the bathroom and has to rap against his former teachers to get to the front of the queue. Then one night, PaRappa is invited to Club Fun, and asks Sunny to go with him, to which she agrees. PaRappa then raps on stage with everyone, rapping solo at the end of the song showing that he's showing interest in Sunny.

There are six songs, all in the style of rap:

Lead designer Masaya Matsuura

The game was designed by Masaya Matsuura, who at the time was a musician in the band PSY.S. Matsuura hated appearing in music videos and began working on interactive software as an alternative outlet.[5] Game development started in 1994, before the release of the PlayStation. At the time Sony Computer Entertainment was attempting to produce as many games as they could, which were worked on in two divisions. One division worked on popular genres and the other, internally known as "Division Zero", according to artist Rodney Greenblat, "just did whatever". PaRappa was a product of Division Zero.[6] Japan Studio assisted on development.[7]

Greenblat got involved with the project after an SCE producer suggested that he and Matsuura work together, having both expressed interest in working with the PlayStation console. Greenblat had already worked with other divisions within Sony and was fairly popular in Japan, particularly for his CD-Rom Dazzeloids.[5][6] Similar to the Paper Mario series, all of the characters appear to be two-dimensional beings cut from paper while the surroundings are primarily three-dimensional.[8] On his website, Greenblat remembers that making the characters flat was Matsuura's idea, after creating a mock-up with characters from Greenblat's Dazzeloids CD-ROM.[9] The game's title is a wordplay referencing the flat characters; "PaRappa" is a variant of the Japanese word for "paper thin".[8]

After deciding on designing a music game Matsuura went through multiple ideas such as having a game centered around singing or playing the guitar.[10] Matsuura was particularly inspired by the musical practice of sampling and claimed "the most interesting thing about sampling was people's voices", and thus wanted to create a music game using actual voices and by extension one based around rap.[5] By the time Greenblat began working on the game, the basic structure of the game had formed. Greenblat would create characters based on outlines created by Matsuura.[6] Several of the main characters were already designed and owned by Greenblat, including PJ Berri and Katy Kat. One of the first designs Greenblat created specifically for the game was that of the main character, PaRappa, who initially took the form of a shrimp.[5] Occasionally Greenblat's designs would cause the game's story to change. Greenblat noted that he ended up having more input because the other team members felt that some of his characters exceeded their expectations, which prompted the writers to adapt to his characters by changing the story itself. For instance, after Greenblat came up with the idea of an onion for the Karate teacher character, the idea was changed to make him an onion master.[6] The game's soundtrack was made using samplers rather than MIDI synthesizers, which were common at the time.[10] Initially all of the teachers' songs used sampled vocals. These could, however, not be used in the final game and were redone "while maintaining the concept of each tune".[5] The lyrics were written in Japanese by Matsuura and then translated by rapper Ryu Watabe while he was freestyling.[10] All of the music was recorded at a studio in New York.[4] The game also is one of the first PlayStation games to use in-game motion capture in order to portray more realistic character movement.[11]

Promotion for the game proved to be somewhat of a problem. Before this, there had been no similar games, and the team struggled with what genre to market the game as. Many staff members at Sony felt that PaRappa did not qualify as a game and Matsuura himself recalls initially being unsure as well.[5] The game, however, became massively successful, which prompted SCEA, despite having a strict policy against 2D games, to release the game in North America. According to Greenblat, SCEA did not know how to market the game and aimed its marketing primarily at children, a demographic he noted would have trouble completing the game.[6]

PaRappa the Rapper sold 761,621 copies in Japan during 1997, making it the 7th best-selling video game of 1997 in that region.[37] In May 1998, Sony awarded the game a "Platinum Prize" for sales above 1 million units in Japan alone.[38] As of 2003, the game has sold 1.47 million copies in Japan[39] and 214,398 copies in the United States,[40] for a combined 1,684,398 copies sold in Japan and the United States.

The game received near-universal acclaim from critics, who hailed PaRappa the Rapper as a unique game with irresistibly catchy songs.[17][24][31][33][41] Dan Hsu of Electronic Gaming Monthly commented, "Several of the tunes are so catchy, you'll be singing them for days."[17] Hsu also made it his pick for "Sleeper Hit of the Holidays".[42] IGN wrote that "while the words may seem a little strange ... this just adds to the quirky nature of the game. The music is top-notch as well."[31] GamePro concurred: "The melodies are funk phenomenons, and the raps are so silly, they'll make you laugh in spite of yourself."[41] The graphics and animation were also widely praised.[17][24][33][41] GameSpot remarked, "All of PaRappa's characters are comically animated paper dolls moving against colorful 3D backdrops, a simplistic and charming visual design that never would have worked but for the game's theme and some brilliant camera motion."[24] Multiple critics also commented on the well-crafted story[17][24][33] and charming title character.[17][24] Next Generation summarized that "The game is so well-produced and carried out that you won't even notice that the gameplay itself is based on the most primitive of concepts. Simply put, style over substance has never been better done than in PaRappa."[33] The one common criticism was that the game is too short.[17][31]

At the inaugural Interactive Achievement Awards in 1998, PaRappa the Rapper won the awards for "Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Design" and "Outstanding Achievement in Sound and Music"; it also received a nomination for "Interactive Title of the Year".[43] Electronic Gaming Monthly awarded it "Most Original Game of the Year" and "Best Music", and the character PaRappa "Best Mascot" (beating out Lara Croft and Crash Bandicoot, both of whom had critically acclaimed games released that year), at their 1997 Editors' Choice Awards.[44] In the final issue of the Official UK PlayStation Magazine, the game was chosen as the 3rd best game of all time.[45]

PaRappa the Rapper Remastered received mixed or average reviews. It was praised for keeping the charm of the original game while improving on the graphical quality but was criticized for only improving the graphics of the gameplay and not the cutscenes. Caitlin Cooke of Destructoid wrote that "The remastered version does not include a calibration setting. This works very much against PaRappa's favor as there's an extremely noticeable lag throughout each of the levels, causing havoc when trying to hit the notes on time."[46] Stuart Andrews of Trusted Reviews wrote: "I love PaRappa and his 'I gotta believe' attitude, but this early rhythm action game no longer holds up."[47]

In 1999, Next Generation listed PaRappa the Rapper as number 36 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that "PaRappa has to be played to truly understand how wonderful it is, and it appeals to both young and old, men and women, hardcore gamers and people who have never held a controller before in their lives."[48]

• Official website (in Japanese)
• PaRappa the Rapper at MobyGames
• PaRappa the Rapper (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia