Parappa the Rapper is Shit (still love it though)

 

I have fond memories of Parappa the Rapper, as a kid I had a demo where I would play the first stage with the onion man over and over again.  I also have fond memories of playing the full game through during my first year of university but rhythm games have come a long way and going back and playing Parappa now feels like pulling teeth.

We do however, have to give the game some credit for being essentially THE FIRST rhythm game ever made and while playing it now feels terrible it and it's popularity essentially put the groundwork down for all the rhythm games that we enjoy today.  Also you cannot fault Parappa for it's music, the tunes found in each level are wholesome, catchy and stick in your head for YEARS.  I can still personally sing the entirety of stage 1 and 2 from memory and will, even today, find myself occasionally humming bits of the baking stage or the flea market.  Most of the content is Parappa is fun, bright, memorable and will never fail to put a smile on your face.

But it SUCKS as a rhythm game

Rhythm games are supposed to be a simple concept.  Music plays, notes appear on the screen and you make the inputs in time with the music.  This happens in Parappa, prompts appear at the top of the screen in time with the music and you push those buttons but it's basically a crap shoot if the game gives you a positive or a negative evaluation at the end of each bar.  I'm not bad at rhythm games, I play an absolute shit ton of them both at home and in my local arcades so I'm fairly confident that I don't just lack rhythm but after the first stage Parappa the Rapper just does whatever the fuck it was.

Out of curiosity I looked up videos of people getting Cool ranks in every stage and to my utter dismay it seems that getting good scores in that game have very little to do with the prompts.  Spamming inputs semi in time with the tunes is what seems to get you a good score and after the first displayed it almost doesn't matter what you do after that.  When you eventually DO get a cool rank the prompts just fuck off altogether and you are left do freestyle, which I suppose fits the theme of being a rapper but doesn't really make for a good rhythm game experience.

As a rhythm game Parappa the Rapper is fucking awful and it got away with it by basically being the only one of its kind.  That of course quickly changed but the catchy tunes and wholesome vibe of game basically left rose tinted memories in the brains of everyone that had a PS1 back in the day.  One thing I am probably going to do after this post though, is go and dig out my copy of Um Jammer Lammy to see if the timing problems that I have with this game, carried over to later titles.  It would be interesting to test it with Parappa 2 on the PS2 as well but I've not been able to find a copy of that.

Maybe I'm being a BIT harsh when I say it's shit because there is a lot to like about Parappa, it just sucks that it fails so hard at the one thing it's supposed to be good at which is being on rhythm