Why PaRappa the Rapper is a dawg even Eminem won't diss
PaRappa the Rapper (1997)
PaRappa the Rapper (1997)
“You have to self-improve if you want a girlfriend,” they told me. “Women like a man who’s going places.” What?! Could it be that I wasn’t quite the catch I thought I was? The catch that my grandmother always said I was?
There are a few times in life when you’re really brought crashing back down to earth, and this was one of them. Turns out ladies like a bit of ambition, an upwardly-mobile kind of guy. I didn’t know how to become that, so there was nothing left for me to do - except to try everything.
Knowing next to nothing about women, I cast my personal improvement net very wide indeed. I walked, I ran, I ate vegetables. I even contemplated a gym membership. I watched TV shows that only women could tolerate.
I tried to learn flirtatious body language - a farcical story in itself, best kept for another day. Above all else, I did my best to ignore that one tenet of advice that everyone receives at one point or another: be yourself.
Be myself? I’d been myself for years, and now it wasn’t working. This is why I had to step outside of my comfort zone and experiment. That’s what it’s all about to see what works, you know - experimentation. And on that note, when it comes to video games, they don't come much more experimental than PaRappa the Rapper.
If you were around in the mid-to-late 90s, I imagine you eventually acquired a demo of this game; it’s the one where you do rap battle with the kung-fu sensei onion. This is about as Japanese as it gets, but then it gets dubbed into American English with a selection of rappers doing the voicework, and the end result is a mad, paper-thin soup of nonsense.
This game chronicles the misadventures of a rapping dog named PaRappa, and his constant attempts to win the heart of his sunflower friend, Sunny Funny. Don't dogs urinate on flowers?
But anyway, you should see the cutscenes in this game - they're absolutely off their face, and if you're partial to shrooms then I'd advise you to steer well clear because you may never be the same again. But let's take a closer look to see how PaRappa self-improves, shall we?
Since PaRappa is quite relatable to any man out there who's ever resolved to self-improve, but moreso because this game is so criminally short, we might as well run through every one of the six levels here. That way, we can get a full insight into how PaRappa works to get the girl.
Even from the opening cutscene, when he's out at the cinema with friends and they all hit up the burger bar afterwards, he's on top of his mental game. While his pals order giant spicy fries, chunky burgers and lemon pies, PaRappa merely orders water. Figure-consciousness? That’s all in a day’s work for a self-improver.
Then we start the first level and, sick of being intimidated by local thugs, PaRappa decides to learn self-defence. I like this idea actually, because the game could easily have gone all childish and twee, trying to discourage violence against bullies.
But no, PaRappa knows that nice guys finish last and that he'd be all the more attractive to even a nice girl like Sunny Funny if he could throw hands and keep her safe. So he visits the dojo, and this is where you'll learn the gameplay - the master sensei spits a few lines, and then it’s your turn. You gotta believe, you gotta match their timing, and you gotta use the right buttons.
Nail all that, and you'll get through whatever nonsense lyric you're spouting. If you do well, then you'll be rappin' GOOD, and you get to live. Start spitting dirt though, and you'll drop to BAD, and then to AWFUL. When that happens, well, you won't be the most dateable dog in the world, put it that way.
Next, PaRappa needs his driver's licence. This is an important one, because you can't very well go out on dates by bus, can ya? I've tried it before, and it stinks. My best mate was right when he told me that a car is essential for courting. So PaRappa goes to the centre and - hopefully - aces his driving test.
So, PaRappa’s tough, skilled, and he’s gotten through level two. But when he takes Sunny Funny and friends out on a roadtrip, he gets distracted with his own thirsty fantasies, takes his eyes off the road, and before you know it he's had a head-on collision with an articulated lorry. Well, we've all been there.
Nobody is hurt, even though PaRappa's father's car quite literally disintegrates. But that's alright, he's just “gotta believe!” and after a 10-minute shift at a flea market with a reggae-loving lizard (the best rapper in the game), he's somehow recouped the costs of the written-off car.
I'll skip ahead to the fifth stage for a moment: our hero's finally managed to get Sunny Funny alone, and the scenario is one that probably every young man has fantasised about with his crush - it's just the two of you out in a balmy field, with the prettiest sunset you've ever seen, enveloped by a red sky, and it's almost impossible to make a balls of the whole thing.
Eventually it's time to go home, though I must say that after PaRappa's massive car accident in the third stage, if I was Sunny Funny I'd never again get into a car with him. Turns out this little pup is never far away from an accident, because now he's got to drop the proverbial kids off at the pool. That is, he needs to lay some cable. Or should I say, he needs to pinch a loaf. Know what I mean?
Talk about relatable: the Final Fantasy games had grandiose, tearjerking plots, sure. But they never had you deal with the heartbreak of badly needing the toilet when there's a massive queue. Anyway, PaRappa will have to rap his way past the queue into a pretty disgusting petrol station convenience. But any port in a storm, as they say. God knows what Sunny Funny makes of it all.
Going back to the fourth stage, we see PaRappa following a TV recipe and baking a cake for his belle. I suppose having a guy bake a cake is pretty progressive for 1997, although let me tell you that this is where things get a lot more difficult, especially if you're playing the PS4 Remastered edition of the game. I'm convinced the timing is absolutely broken here, because all the other levels are pretty easy, whereas this one is torturous.
So PaRappa can pass his driving test, hustle enough money to pay for a wrote off car and even do the hardest thing of all - hold in a vicious call of nature. But when it comes to baking a cake, he gets it wrong in seconds and the chicken lady instructor gets so angry over it that she gives birth. I just want to know why she's cracking eggs to make a cake if she's a chicken herself. Next time you hear somebody refer to someone as 'babycakes', be very afraid.
PaRappa's positive attitude is infectious, even if he does live in an actual dreamworld most of the time. Anytime he's confronted with any sort of hardship, problem or dilemma in life, he just says "I know, I gotta believe!" and then everything works out well - assuming he can beat his opponents in the ensuing rap battle. It really is like 8 Mile, if that movie were drawn in crayons.
Anyway, that's the whole game. Yes, I'm sorry to say that, as memorable and beloved as this game is, there's not much to savour. You can genuinely be done in twenty minutes, and even then most of your playtime will be spent on the wretched fourth level. The supposed Remastered edition is available cheaply, but even at 15 bones it probably isn't worth it.
It’s hardly a proper remaster, either. They only updated the graphics that you see during the levels, not the actual cutscenes, although it’s probably better that they left those hokey videos alone. There was going to an extra song added, but it was apparently cut from development due to "time constraints". What?! It's a remaster of a game that came out yonks ago. What time constraints? It's not as if PaRappa had to be ready for the holiday season or something.
No, the poor rapping dog hasn't been shown an awful lot of love in the last twenty years. He did get his own little anime series, if you can actually believe that, although I rather get the feeling that getting your own anime in Japan is a bit like pastors and evangelists in America getting their own show, or the top farmers in Ireland getting a radio series - in other words, it happens all the time, and there’s nothing special about it.
PaRappa and his antics are guaranteed to put a smile on your face, I can tell you that, alhough the game's wonky timing could just as easily wipe your smile and leave you frustrated. Still, I think this is a game that everyone should play at least once.
Just imagine it, if everyone out there could become a casanova dating god in thirty minutes, only needing some rapping talent and a bit of belief… all the gyms would go out of business overnight. Sounds great to me.
27 September 2024