No. You can't make me approach PaRappa with any degree of objectivity.
Let me tell you what PaRappa the Rapper is.
The PlayStation was such a revolutionary console, and not just because it did 3D pretty good. It was the first significant challenge to Nintendo's vision of the industry. Sega, SNK, NEC, whoever - they were just trying to adopt the established playbook for another audience. Sony didn't want to do that. They had a reputation to uphold. They were a gateway between music, film and art into the household. They'd follow through on that trajectory on their first dedicated videogame platform. They wouldn't only seek out innovative, talented game developers in Japan, Europe and America to define the console. Music and art would need to play a substantial role in shaping the PlayStation.
Masaya Matsuura and Rodney Alan Greenblat were two weirdos who could only have been who they were in nineties Tokyo and New York. Experimenters, producing quirky little projects with no obvious utility or market, and selling them to whoever could be convinced to put them in shops. Nothing speaks to how different the PS1 was to the PlayStation brand of today more than the fact that they not only funded PaRappa's production, but published it in Japan, America and Europe.
PaRappa can't compete against the pounding thrill of modern rhythm games. Its gameplay is very rudimentary. Just copy the phrases your teacher says. The feedback on what you did right or wrong isn't well illustrated, especially since the game encourages you to experiment with your own rhythms. Buttons are displayed on a phrase bar, and there's little on-screen indication of when you're jumping to the start of a new bar. It doesn't really matter how badly you do throughout each level, as long as you nail the last couple of bars. There's a ton of trial and error in PaRappa, and I can't blame anyone for finding it too frustrating to stick with. In a way though, that's part of the charm, and that's everything that the game has going for it.
The game's sense of humour is incredibly tame, and equally weird. Visions of toilets flying out the car stereo, and the pump over here coming with a truck. It provokes a reaction from anyone, and for me at this point, it's pure love.
PaRappa is an idyllic vision of summer in young adulthood. Sitting outside the donut shop, planning birthday parties. Sitting on the hill in sunset. All incredibly innocent, benign and lovely. PaRappa's journey of being taught to repeat single phrases, until he's eventually performing entirely original phrases, on stage. It warms my heart.
You can't overlook the overwhelming sense of 1996 weirdness in its visual presentation, either. It's odd to see PS1 textures with varying line thickness at all, instead of rigid pixels, but the pre-rendered stuff invokes the game with a sense of scruffy, handmade breeziness. They've crammed as many different kinds of objects as they could into the cutscenes, with (then) high-poly, shiny models, the flat characters, low-resolution backgrounds and even a cut to live action footage of a rocket launch as PaRappa shits himself. It's fiercely distinct. Uncopyable. Other aspects of the follow-ups and rereleases have improved different aspects of PaRappa's formula, but none have come within a mile of the PS1 game's charm.
It's not a game worth taking seriously, and I love it more for that.
Let me tell you what PaRappa the Rapper is.
The PlayStation was such a revolutionary console, and not just because it did 3D pretty good. It was the first significant challenge to Nintendo's vision of the industry. Sega, SNK, NEC, whoever - they were just trying to adopt the established playbook for another audience. Sony didn't want to do that. They had a reputation to uphold. They were a gateway between music, film and art into the household. They'd follow through on that trajectory on their first dedicated videogame platform. They wouldn't only seek out innovative, talented game developers in Japan, Europe and America to define the console. Music and art would need to play a substantial role in shaping the PlayStation.
Masaya Matsuura and Rodney Alan Greenblat were two weirdos who could only have been who they were in nineties Tokyo and New York. Experimenters, producing quirky little projects with no obvious utility or market, and selling them to whoever could be convinced to put them in shops. Nothing speaks to how different the PS1 was to the PlayStation brand of today more than the fact that they not only funded PaRappa's production, but published it in Japan, America and Europe.
PaRappa can't compete against the pounding thrill of modern rhythm games. Its gameplay is very rudimentary. Just copy the phrases your teacher says. The feedback on what you did right or wrong isn't well illustrated, especially since the game encourages you to experiment with your own rhythms. Buttons are displayed on a phrase bar, and there's little on-screen indication of when you're jumping to the start of a new bar. It doesn't really matter how badly you do throughout each level, as long as you nail the last couple of bars. There's a ton of trial and error in PaRappa, and I can't blame anyone for finding it too frustrating to stick with. In a way though, that's part of the charm, and that's everything that the game has going for it.
The game's sense of humour is incredibly tame, and equally weird. Visions of toilets flying out the car stereo, and the pump over here coming with a truck. It provokes a reaction from anyone, and for me at this point, it's pure love.
PaRappa is an idyllic vision of summer in young adulthood. Sitting outside the donut shop, planning birthday parties. Sitting on the hill in sunset. All incredibly innocent, benign and lovely. PaRappa's journey of being taught to repeat single phrases, until he's eventually performing entirely original phrases, on stage. It warms my heart.
You can't overlook the overwhelming sense of 1996 weirdness in its visual presentation, either. It's odd to see PS1 textures with varying line thickness at all, instead of rigid pixels, but the pre-rendered stuff invokes the game with a sense of scruffy, handmade breeziness. They've crammed as many different kinds of objects as they could into the cutscenes, with (then) high-poly, shiny models, the flat characters, low-resolution backgrounds and even a cut to live action footage of a rocket launch as PaRappa shits himself. It's fiercely distinct. Uncopyable. Other aspects of the follow-ups and rereleases have improved different aspects of PaRappa's formula, but none have come within a mile of the PS1 game's charm.
It's not a game worth taking seriously, and I love it more for that.