Parappa the Rapper: Is It Still Fun Today?

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0:59Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash GameScoop. Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince dot com slash GameScoop. This episode is presented by Invincible Versus, available April 30th on Xbox Series consoles, PlayStation 5, and PC. Invincible Versus is a brutal 3v3 tag fighting game from Studio Quarter Up, Skybound Entertainment's first in-house game development studio, where you can play as your favorite characters from the Invincible universe. This game is designed to let you become a superhero in the bloodiest fight in the universe, made by a dev team of fighting game veterans and with the direct input from creator Robert Kirkman.

1:44Invincible Versus is full of the visceral, bloody combat and authentic depictions of destruction and chaos that Invincible fans know and love. Plus, a story by the creators behind the hit TV series. At launch, the roster includes 18 playable fighters, including Invincible himself, Mark Grayson, Omni-Man, Rexplode, and more. Pre-order the digital version now, and you'll even get Zero Suit Mark plus four color variants. Welcome back to Is It Still Fun Today, our show where we revisit classic games in order to answer the question, Is It Still Fun Today? I'm Damon Hatfield, joining me today, from GameScoop, are Nick Lamome and Sam Claiborne.

2:27And it's good to be here. And the host of Nintendo Voice Chat, Logan Plant, joins us as well. Hey, guys. We've got a really good one for you today. Well, I guess that's what we're about to find out. As we continue to celebrate IGN's 30th anniversary, we're revisiting games that were released the same year IGN was founded, 1996. A few weeks ago, we did the original Resident Evil. Check that episode out if you haven't yet. And today, I gotta believe, we are replaying the cartoonish wrap-em-up Parappa the Rapper, released in 1996 in Japan by Sony Computer Entertainment and developed by Nana On Sha, a studio that is apparently still in business but hasn't released anything I'm aware of in 10 years.

3:04Parappa is the first true rhythm video game setting the template of timing button presses along with symbols that drift across the screen that would be used in everything from Konami's but many series, Dance Dance Revolution, and of course, Guitar Hero and Rock Band. It also has a distinct visual style with humanoid animal characters that appear to be flat sheets of paper. one wonders if Nintendo got any ideas for Paper Mario. It was tricky for PlayStation to market the game because it wasn't really like anything that had come before, but Parappa was a big hit, particularly in Japan.

3:39And the character became somewhat of a mascot for PlayStation and would appear in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. So I had Parappa the Rapper. I loved it, but it's been probably 30 years since I played it. Nick, how about you? If you can believe it or not, this was, I've only played the first level of the game for probably hours and hours because I was packed with my PlayStation back in whenever I got it. Everybody owned Parappa. Yeah, it was included as part of a PlayStation interactive sampler CD, a demo disc. A demo disc, yeah. It was a purple disc, and I just remember playing through everything in there.

4:23They had Armored Core. They had Croc, Legend of the Gabbo. Was IQ on there? Intelligent Q? IQ was on there, yes. I mean, Tomb Raider had a silly, tiny little level on it, right? Yeah, Tomb Raider 2, I believe. And I remember it scared me because it was very claustrophobic. But I really gravitated towards Parappa the rapper as, you know, a 90s kid who grew up with Saturday Morning anime. I was like, this is reminding me a lot of like Pokemon and Dragon Ball in a way I don't really understand. Like I didn't understand the idea of, you know, Japan as a country. Well, especially Dragon Ball because vegetables and that one demo.

4:57But yes, there is this level of like, there's a through line in a lot of Japanese media in the early 90s where it was like, why are all these things kind of related in a way that I don't understand? So it was kind of coming to realization of that. And I think still to this day, I could probably rap every single part of a Master Onion song because it's just so ingrained in me. It's all in the mind. Kick punch. It's all in the mind. Yeah. So, yeah, that's all I've done with Pa Rapper the Rapper. But I have since, like, I've played Um Jammer Lammy and, like, Guitar Room Man and things of that nature.

5:31But I've never actually gone and played through the Pa Rapper games. You guys remember they did a game like this for the Wii that was about a marching band? What? Oh, yeah. Yeah. My sister had that when we were growing up. Yeah. That game. What was it called? I'll be showing the B-roll now, but I can't remember the name, but yeah, they did a game like that for the week. All right, Sam, have you played Parappa the Rapper before? Clearly I've never heard of this game. I spent this whole week playing Crash Bandicoot because I thought we were doing Crash. No. Yeah. I've, uh, I've played Parappa and, uh, demo disc was a formative memory of mine as well.

6:05I'm a huge Um Jammer Lammy fan. That's where I think the series really found me, but, uh, I need to play this to refresh my memory because I really don't remember a lot of the instances of what happens. I do remember it being annoying. I don't think I don't think their rhythm sections were that good. And that's the whole thing. Kind of like, I know, I know. But there's like a what you have to do is you have to like really learn the songs. And once you know the songs, you're much better at it than just watching the visuals. And I'm a little bit like like now that I know that I think I'll enjoy it more.

6:37But I remember at the time just not it being hard. Like I just remember being hard, whereas like Guitar Hero came out right after. And DDR was kind of ever present at the time. And there was all these like rock band and stuff like that. Like all those games like kind of made me probably better at this type of game. So like I also think like, you know, because this is the I can't think of another beat game, beat rhythm game that I played before this. So, yeah, I have memories of it being really funny and really cute and really accessible and ubiquitous because of that disc. And by the way, you know, getting AOL in every home on a disc and getting Parappa the Rapper in every home on a disc was like before we had social media, before we had, you know, a connected world.

7:20But that was the only way to do it. And it certainly worked because I think a lot of people know what this game is. Yeah, it's cute. And I think it's difficult. That's my memories of it. All right, well, Logan, I like that we're having the Nintendo guy on a PlayStation episode and you've never played Parappa, right? Never played it. No, very excited too. I love rhythm games. I love like Guitar Hero 3 is one of my favorite games of all time. That game's just amazing. Rhythm Heaven, Elite Beat Agents. Like there's so many great rhythm games. And so I'm excited to play the first one ever, apparently.

7:48I think that's really cool. And you're telling me that for 10 years they've been working on a Parappa sequel. It's going to be massive. Open world, climb everything. Yep. Rap game. All right. Well, we're off to play Parappa the Rappa. IJN gave it a nine out of 10. EGM gave it an average 8.25 out of 10 So it was very well received at the time It is time for us to find out Is Parappa the Rapper still fun today?

8:36And we're back. We have played Parappa the Rapper. We've rapped along. Nick and I played it, the closest thing to actual PlayStation hardware, right? Do you want to explain how we played it? Yeah, I was playing on a Mr. FPGA, which is emulating hardware stuff, and that was plugged into a RetroTink 4K. So we have 240i being upscaled to 4K60. Really, really pretty, and I like to capture with some CRT scan lines courtesy of the RetroTink 4K. And this is through a PlayStation? Correct. You hooked up a PlayStation to this? That is correct. Not like a three running a PlayStation 1 disc screen. Right.

9:15It is available today on PS4, which I believe is the way that Sam and Logan played it. But this version, unfortunately, has some latency issues. Is that right? Yeah, it was brutal, man. Well, it's too bad. I think that's a polished up version of the PSP remaster, which was put out in 2006 for the games. Which we gave a bad score to, right? Yeah, that was the one I think that we looked at in GameScoop. Chris Roper gave it a 5.4 or something like that. because the original is beloved. So it's a little unfortunate that there's no good, easy way to play it on modern hardware. However, we revisited it on original hardware.

9:49Is it still fun today? Well, it's charming. It's definitely charming. It's certainly charming. It's 10 out of 10 charming. I love everything except playing. Looking at it, listening to it, yeah. Listening to it especially. Yeah, so it's got loads of personality and style. The songs are good. It's the kind of weird game that could only come out of Japan, but it's still kind of amazing, I think, that it was greenlit, at least for Western audiences. So, like, most video games are like another game that came before it, right? New Game B is like Game A, and the publisher hopes that people who like Game A will buy Game B.

10:23Parappa is not like any other video game that came before it at the time. Even so much, Tyler, do you have this Next Generation magazine available here? Next Generation was trying to describe Parappa the Rappet to its readers at the time And by likening it to Simon, like the electronic game Simon. Oh, okay. You're not memorizing stuff. You are hitting buttons. Yeah, you are hitting buttons. You're repeating after it's given. Yeah, it's good. I mean, I guess you do memorize it in short term. Yeah. It shows it, then you repeat it. Then it shows it. Yeah, it is like that. Yeah, it says on the cover, yes, it's another one of those quirky Japanese games.

10:58Yep, it is that. It is that for sure. Well, I wish we could say that today because now we don't get to say that very often. I know. We say, wow, another rare quirky Japanese game we get to play here. Well, what I think Sony saw in it at the time is it's, you know, there's all this weird animation coming out in the 90s. Ren and Stimpy, Beavis and Butthead, and Aeon Flux. So it's like, you know, it's weird, weirdo animation that doesn't really make any sense, but is very amusing even to adults, right? And it has potty humor, too. It does have potty humor. A lot of potty humor. I'm a couple about it.

11:33Yeah. I also think that the CD format at the time, compared to something like the N64 that was cartridge-based, the CD format was much cheaper to manufacture. So I don't believe this was a full-cost game. I've got to fact-check that, but I believe it was a much cheaper game. Granted, I think it was like$49.99 or$39.99, so it's still kind of pricey. But regardless, it wasn't like a full-priced piece of software, which I really appreciate the experimental nature of it. But then again, if I was a kid and I got this maybe an hour of play time, I probably would have been a little bit sad. If you just play, there's six levels, six songs.

12:11You know, each song is three to four minutes. So there's just, even if you play through the whole thing perfectly, it's only like a 30 minute game. And you will spend hours upon hours just repeating at least one stage where you're like, what did I do wrong? Which one? Which one was it, Nick? The chicken stage. For me, it was the chicken stage. Level four. Yeah. I'd see.

12:35Every single day, stress comes in every way. I ain't got no time for nobody. My style is rich, dope, fat, and rich. We'll make a cake today that looks rich. Crack, crack, crack the egg into the bowl. Crack, crack, crack egg into the bowl. M-I-X the flour into the bowl. M-I-X the flour into the bowl. That one didn't give me much trouble. It's the one after that where you have to go to the bathroom and you have to revisit all of the masters that you've gone up to. at this point. I don't know. It's just like...

13:20The game just hit a brick wall for me at that point. It just seemed to not work anymore. Well, that's the thing that I had a hard time trying to figure out. I was like, I know I have rhythm. I know how to dance. I can sing. I can do all these things. I've played guitar here. I've done all these things. But I think one thing that's interesting to go back and reflect on is this being the first rhythm game, right? Where the thing that you take for granted in modern rhythm games is that you get to see the thing play out. And the timing window to begin playing is usually a little bit more forgivable.

13:51Yeah, more than the smallest part of the screen. is the it's the smallest thing and immediately you the like your little paw wrap of the wrap a rhythm indicator will leave the screen after the teacher's ads and it enters the screen right at the start you have to hit the key right it doesn't give you any indication that you're gonna hit this button first you know it just kind of here you go have fun and the rhythm on it is completely wrong you don't actually i don't think i ever had success like in the later stages just hitting the button when the game told me to i always had to hit it like at a different pace and sometimes like the chicken level for example i just needed to mash the l and r buttons after every single verse in order to get my bad up to good i was like i don't this doesn't sound good at all but you had you had that on the like close to original hardware too because i didn't know if that was just kind of the janky ps4 version that sam and i played because i actually found more success, and this is like a bad indictment for a rhythm game, muting the sound and just looking at the symbols.

14:54I should have tried that. And then I passed every level on my first try doing it that way, which is a shame because the music's awesome, but it's just totally out of whack. So you want to learn a new language, but you're struggling to get beyond the basics. Stuck on free apps aimed at cheap dopamine highs? Well, then it's time to try Babbel, the language app that makes grammar fun and is really worth your time. Learning a language with Babbel is all about small steps, big wins, and progress you can actually track and feel. Their bite-sized lessons fit easily into your daily routine and are also easy to remember.

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17:35I'm like, that's actually really cool if that were true. And then that would add to the idea of like, you know, the game wants you to learn the songs and it wants you to feel the kind of the hip hop vibes of each song and how they're different. And then like, and if that, that as a goal is so much cooler, I think then the idea of like Guitar Hero, which is like, click the buttons exactly right. That's cool. They just didn't pull that off. But that's still fine because I don't hate this game. It's just it's not much of a game because it didn't solve. It didn't do either of those. It's in between them for some reason.

18:10And so there's a through line that I want. There's a quick story here where the PSP game was famous for breaking things and being out of sync. And if you look up the conversation from that time and what it stretched out to you through the port is that that one is the PSP version ported to the PlayStation console and then it's still broken. That's the still broken storyline. Now, what Nick is just telling you, though, is that it already had a problem with that chicken stage. And I think that was known at the time, too. I remember that being a thing. So then there was a previous story, which was, whoa, they didn't fix that stuff when they ported it to PSP.

18:53Whoa, they made it worse. then they didn't touch it when they put it on playstation so like man and then proper two actually got a like an emulation port so it doesn't have that issue but that's all to say like prep has been done dirty and like there needs to be like somebody should do a mod fan fix just like do one or the other like make it like lenient and let you rap a little bit and listen to it or make it like you know right to the beat perfectly for the button pressing that's my ted talk yeah i don't know why that latency issue hasn't been solved uh on the ps4 version maybe it needs to be handled by Nona Un Shah, the original developer and like I mentioned before they appear to be in business but haven't put anything out in a long time.

19:33To Sam's point one thing, I believe I was going down a rabbit hole researching why the games are the way they are in terms of how they play and as Sam said the PS4 release of Power App of the Wrapper is a port of the PSP version of course but it's also emulating the PSP on the PS4 So there's like an added layer of latency there too, I assume. So it's very interesting. And I believe a bunch of people like decompiled it and discovered, oh yeah, this is just the PSP port being emulated. So that's super fascinating. And again, to Sam's point, it seems like every single level is just, the rules are a little bit different this time.

20:10Maybe you press the button a little bit later. Maybe you press it a little bit sooner. That's why I don't call it latency. It's desynced. Yeah. It has some kind of syncing problem that maybe is, you know, original or something, or maybe they even pushed it around. Whoa, do we lose Damien? Well, we lost the camera. There, I'm back. Hey, they might have, they might have, you know, never had this synced properly, but they might have also desynced it to give it a little bit more. This is, this is the argument that people say about Resident Evil. Well, they, they, they lock the camera and do it that way.

20:43So you can't turn around easy because it makes it scarier. like it is possible in theory that they would push things around a little bit so you had to feel it a little bit but boy add latency and a level of emulation and like all this other stuff and like that's where it doesn't work but i think again like getting back to the idea of like did they try to make something unique and then were they trying this the first time it wasn't supposed to be just a button tapper that's cool like rhythm heaven heaven is a button tapper right like it's it's totally accurate well there was not that they were so close though because like obviously this This is the first step of like, let's try a rhythm game.

21:16But then, you know, to varying degree, I think the game is super charming and I like everything else around it. But Um Jammer Lammy is so much better. And that would be their follow-up to this. So it's like, oh, they were so close. They just did a little more time. I mean, they were the first ones to do this. Sort of like rhythm game, which is why it's interesting. There's no tutorial inside the game. Nope. It just throws you into the first song and you kind of have to figure it out. Yeah. The Onion Man kind of explains the tutorial. Yeah, in his lyrics, which is interesting that you just need to listen along.

21:46I feel that way with the Driver's Ed one, too. There's a line in that song where the teacher's like, hey, you're going to repeat right after me. And then it's kind of two beats instead of four beats that you know you need to be listening to to repeat back. So it is kind of a learn-as-you-go thing, like learn by failure, which I think is interesting. But what I think is cool is I have a concept here that's worth exploring in that after you beat them all, the one time it wants you to go back and get cool mode by freestyling. I think there's something really neat to a rhythm game about, hey, these are the buttons you need to hit, but as long as you're hitting them on the beat, you can play whatever rhythm you want and then introduce your own button presses as long as it's buttons that are in the phrase.

22:25That's super cool. And I could see a modern Parappa that doesn't kind of play really badly being a really cool concept to revisit because other rhythm games don't really do that. So I'd like to see this come back and I like the concept, but I was only able to get cool mode on one level because it's so arbitrary how you trigger that. It's like some people on Reddit are like, oh, just button mash like crazy and you'll get it. And some people are like, you need to hit square eight times in this bar. It's just super all over the place. Logan, that reminds me of an Ocarina of Time where you can just take out the Ocarina and play whatever you want.

22:55Yeah. And they gave you the pitch bending in that mode and stuff like that. They actually mess with it. And I think you can use the D-pad in Barappa to kind of change stuff. And I don't really... yeah the cool mode thing is if this game worked it would be it would be a cool mode but it is i do like the the state of the level being affected by your meter in the game i think that's really fun and exciting did you check the toilet on the left did you check the toilet on the left okay okay you win and again the the best thing this game has going for it is it's beautiful and weird kind of upsetting art by Rodney Greenblatt is his name.

23:36I really like that art style combined with Masaya Matsuya's music. I think it's really fun, and it's a peanut butter and jelly style situation. That all works for me. But all that said, the one thing that is nightmare fuel for me in this game is Pa Rappa's dad. His dad is so scary to me. He's going to bite him? My dad's going to bite me. he's so visually different from everyone else in the game it's like he came from the the evil dude and roger rabbit's like uh you know some of the designs like were pre-existing and then some were made for the game so it's like that's why they really don't match up and then there's the there's the 3d elements and the cut scenes which were like really futuristic and cool at the time right and then there's the 2d elements but they this game really did like the paper mario thing where they really mashed them together and it looks like an adult it's like an adult swim cartoon yeah before adult stoner.