Shaun Watson reviews…

PaRappa the Rapper

Sony Playstation Entertainment System video game review
PaRappa the Rapper
(Action/Puzzle, 1 Player)

INTRODUCTION
Once upon a time, there was a thing called hip-hop. Hip-hop was good, because it did not infringe upon the world at large with sappy pop hooks or massive metal guitar riffs. It was also good due to the fact that it appealed to the ethnic inner-city massives who took it as their own thing, not to be mistaken for pop music. And then the world began to incorrectly link hip-hop with not only people of color, but inner city crime as well. With a triad of trouble afoot, the Man sought a way to squash hip-hop. Through the interference of record companies, hip-hop was spliced into the parent and its offspring Rap. Rap didn't heed the word of the elder Hip-hop and began to talk about that which needed no conscious mouthpiece: the concept of crime. Thus began the rift between what was Hip-hop and what was Rap.

Things went from bad (meaning bad, not bad meaning good)to worse in the coming years, with the Los Angeles Riots highlighting the need for a stronger, pointed message than the words of the forefathers. Enter "Gangsta Rap", a form of Rap that's like a cigarette without the filter. It was misogynistic, homophobic, materialistic and ill-planned as a way to discourage violence and crime through overexposure. All the hatred spit out in rhyming prose to a sweet baseline from the days of our grandfathers was aimed in the general direction of their perceived enemy of White America. The sad thing is that Gangsta Rap behaved like the gangsta's attack of choice, the drive-by shooting: it had a habit of hitting unintended targets.
The unintended targets: the children of White America.
It's unknown whether the children of White America were being used as pawns against their parents or if it was a mistake in getting through to them instead of the parents. While some members of the Rap community would take steps to have their life imitate their art, White America was listening and was more than happy to make it a part of their daily newscast. And suddenly, Rap became cool for everyone…but for all the wrong reasons. The gates to what makes Rap tick were opened and now there's another offensive string of Rap: Rap/Rock. Who could have known that Rap would grow into the abomination we hear and praise so often? Only Hip-hop did, and it tried to come back and claim its moral grounds. Unfortunately Rap had a stranglehold on beats and rhymes in their origin country of the United states, forcing Hip-hop to find greener pastures in foreign lands.

Hip-hop has flourished in other countries like Germany, France, the United Kingdom and has done especially well in places like Canada and even the Arab country of Yemen(where the only acceptable music is drumbeats and the word is king). Of these countries, Japan stands out because it has the wackiness to inject humor into a socially conscious medium without degrading it. Rap and Hip-hop are fighting over control of the Land of the Rising Sun, the details of which can be read in the game context of the PlayStation game, PaRappa the Rapper.

In the game PaRappa the Rapper, you play the titular character PaRappa. He's a hip-hop dog who's in love with the local beauty named Sunny. She's a sunflower. In his effort to raise a band and impress the girl, he becomes involved in scenarios to reach his goal. While many of the activities in the scenarios are physically oriented, PaRappa's forte' is rappin' to the beat. Thus, the only way to complete the scenarios presented to the gamer is to rap to the preset beat markers in a timely manner. Failure to do so results in a poor rating, by which a satisfactory rating is rewquired to pass all scenarios. An added bonus to the scenarios is the freestyle option when your rappin' rating goes beyond "U Rappin' GREAT!" So long as you rap to the beat, you can rap what you feel for bonus points.

PaRappa is an animated video game tale created by Rodney Alan Greenblatt, an American expatriate living in Japan. He is responsible for the artwork in PaRappa the Rapper, as well as the PaRappa spin-off game, UnJammer Lammy(a story about a ewe who dreams of rockstardom). His ideas of merging music and story into an interactive experience has been duplicated in the more recent incarnation of the PS2 titles Gitaroo Man and Mad Maestro.

Above: A PARAPPA THE RAPPER alarm clock.

The feel of PaRappa is a silly one, due to PaRappa's adventures involving an onion-headed Kung-Fu master(called Master Chop Chop), a chicken chef with her own TV show, a moose that works at the DMV and a materialistic Rastafarian frog(my personal favorite). All of these characters have their own flavor to them, making this game a distinctive if not singular experience. The extensive advertising behind PaRappa was grand and it was featured on a PlayStation demo disc, as well as in several commercials featuring the characters spouting lines from scenarios: The Rastafarian frog says "In the rain or in the snow/Got the got the funky flow" and PaRappa's exclaim of faith in his rappin' abilities is "I Gotta Believe!" Despite the want from both quotes to be THE line from PaRappa the Rapper remembered, only Master Chop Chop's line of "Kick Punch/It's all in the mind" stands the test of fleeting interest.

The limited graphics and processing power of the PlayStation are the only limits to the original PaRappa the Rappa reaching a 10; PS2's PaRappa the Rapper 2 may change all that. For now, PaRappa the Rapper gets a rating of 9.

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