"Love, Friendship and Diarrhea...!!!"

PaRappa the Rapper is by far one of the most innovative and addictive games that i have ever played before. A great creative and original game that Sony could show Nintendo what the PlayStation could do.

What it is about:

Parappa is a young and cute two-dimensional puppy moving around in 3-D environments. His ultimate goal is to become a hero in the eyes of his beloved dream girl, Sunny Flower. Along the way, he has to learn new things to get closer to Sunny Flower by impressing her and take her away from her love rival, Joe Chin.

There are a total of six stages. For example, in the first stage, Parappa has to learn martial arts from Chop Chop Master Onion, and in the fourth stage, Parappa has to learn how to bake a cake to celebrate his girlfriend's birthday. So, how do these things work?

Taking stage 1 as an example:

Chop Chop Master Onion will start rapping various lyrics which Parappa must copy perfectly. When Chop Chop performs, a bar with joypad button symbols will appear with a sliding marker. When the marker passes over a new symbol, he will perform the move. When the marker reaches the end, it will be Parappa's turn to perform and your objective is to hit the correct joypad button as the marker slides over the corresponding symbol. If you do correctly, you will score points for that, but if you rap wrongly, marks will be deducted. How this works is truly amazing and like i said before,'' Simple but how can such a no-brainer be such a hit?''

The graphics are simply gorgeous. Amazing and excellent! Every single button that you press, will affect every move that Parappa is going to perform. If you do well, you may even get a chance to develop your own style, cool isn't it?

What makes Parappa the Rappa so memorable are the musics and the intriguing storyline. Humour is where the secret lies! The musics are all top-notch quality and together with the touching story, you will be touched by Parappa's true affection for Sunny Flower. Replayability is simply excellent. Along the way, you learn martial arts, get a driver's license to take sunny flower for a ride, earn money to pay for the damages of the car, baking a cake, or even fight for a toilet with all your masters, or even perform a dance at a party. The game may seem a bit short to have six stages only, but you can actually replay the whole game again to get all 'cool' ratings to watch secret endings. Yes, Multiple endings- but to get a 'cool' rating isn't that easy to get as you think.

Parappa the Rapper is truly an unique game that requires hand-eye-ear coordination and the delivery of the story is an immersive experiencing that must be seen, heard and played in order to appreciate the game.

What are you waiting now? Go and grab a copy of the game now and also remember to buy the soundtrack. It's awesome.

My Personal Thoughts:

Once a while, a sleeper hit comes out like this and makes a stir with everyone. Parappa the Rappa's success was overwhelming in Japan. In fact, Parappa the Rappa has sold over 800,000 copies in Japan. It's a big phenomenon. Now, the question is whether to release Parappa the Rappa in US? Sony did hesitate about bringing Parappa the Rappa over as they feared that US audiences might not like it as it did in Japan. Luckily, Parappa the Rappa managed to be released in the United States and had an impressive sales.

I can't really believe it that there are actually some reviewers who gave Parappa the Rappa a score less than 5. [Not to mention anyone!] However, i have to stand on to my opinion and disagree with them.

Yes, the only downside of Parappa the Rappa is that the game is too short. But, as i have mentioned before, there are multiple endings. But do you think it is easy to rap correctly? Sounds easy but to get a 'cool' rating, obviously, you need to put in a lot more efforts. Replay value is excellent.

Even if it wasn't just to see the ending(s) again, the top-notch music provides an additional reason to play it over and over again. Do you know? That driving instructor sounds almost, if not exactly like rap-star-gone-actress, Queen Latifah?

The characters are two-dimensional who move around in 3-D environments. [Like a floating colourform or whatever!!!] Honestly speaking, i thought this was something very fresh. I will rather watch Parappa rapping and enjoying the top-notch music, than stare at the deformed polygonal characters like Cloud in Final Fantasy VII. [Perhaps, i shouldn't use that comparison.]

The reason why it scores very high is not because it is made by Sony. Originality is definitely one of the reasons why the game scores but that's not the main reason. As i have mentioned, it's the way the story is being delivered. For those who have just bought it, and played it for only a few minutes and thought that it is a childish games, will obviously not enjoy it. It's more like a music sim game genre or whatever. Parappa the Rappa paves the way for many other music sim game. Talk about games like Dance Dance Revolution, Bust A Groove, Umjammer Lammy and so on. Sure, the concepts are different but don't these games bear any similarities as Parappa the Rappa- it's a 'rap' game.

Only when you are able to appreciate both the story and music, then you can find true 'beauty' in it. All i want to tell you is, ''You gotta believe!'' [Understand why it scores a straight 10s' from me?]

Story : 10.0/10.0
Graphics : 10.0/10.0
Concept : 10.0/10.0
Control : 10.0/10.0
Music : 10.0/10.0
Sound : 10.0/10.0
Gameplay : 10.0/10.0
Replay : 10.0/10.0
Challenge : 10.0/10.0
Overall : 10.0/10.0

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 04/15/00, Updated 12/16/02