Christmas 1997 was a turning point in my gaming life, though I didn’t realize it at the time. My then-girlfriend (now ex, obviously) had gotten me this weird-looking PlayStation game with a paper-thin rapping dog on the cover. “The guy at the store said it was different,” she explained, clearly unsure if she’d made a terrible mistake. That game was PaRappa The Rapper, and holy hell, was it ever different.
I remember staring at the case for a good minute, wondering if this was some kind of joke gift. I was 19, deep into my Final Fantasy VII obsession, and here was this cartoonish dog wearing an orange beanie. But hey, relationships are about compromise, so I popped it in while she watched, expecting to play for maybe 15 minutes before suggesting we go grab dinner.
Three hours later, we were both still on the couch, her laughing hysterically at my increasingly creative swearing as I failed, for the twelfth time in a row, to properly rap about making seafood cake with Cheap Cheap the cooking chicken. “Crack crack crack the egg into the bowl!” she’d sing along, absolutely delighted by my misery. I wasn’t just bad at this game—I was spectacularly, catastrophically terrible.
For the uninitiated (you lucky souls), PaRappa The Rapper was one of the first rhythm games to hit the mainstream. Created by Masaya Matsuura with characters designed by Rodney Alan Greenblat, it featured this weird, flat world where everything looked like it was cut out of paper. The story—yes, a rhythm game with an actual story—followed PaRappa, a love-struck puppy trying to impress a sunflower girl named Sunny Funny by learning various skills from a series of increasingly bizarre teachers.
The gameplay seems simple on paper (ha): your teacher raps a line, then you repeat it by pressing buttons in the correct rhythm. Each stage has its own song, and you progress through ranks of “Bad,” “Good,” and the elusive “Cool” based on your performance. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, it wasn’t. At least not for me.
The first level puts you in a karate class run by Master Onion, an anthropomorphic onion with a blue afro. (I’m not making this up, I swear.) “Kick! Punch! It’s all in the mind!” he’d rap, and I’d have to press the corresponding buttons in time. I eventually got through this stage after about an hour of trying, my thumbs already developing blisters. My girlfriend kept saying encouraging things like, “Maybe you’re just not musical?” Thanks, babe.
The timing mechanics in PaRappa were simultaneously simple and infuriating. The game showed a line at the top of the screen with icons flowing from right to left, and you had to press the matching button when the icon passed under a marker. But the window for “correct” timing felt microscopic. Too early? Bad. Too late? Also bad. And sometimes, even when I was SURE I’d nailed it perfectly, PaRappa would stutter through his line like he was having some kind of seizure.
Level 2 introduced Instructor Mooselini, who taught driving. “Check and turn the signal to the right!” The song was catchier than it had any right to be, and somehow I managed to squeak by with a “Good” rating. False confidence is a hell of a drug.
Then came Cheap Cheap the cooking chicken in Level 3, and my relationship with PaRappa nearly ended right there. That damn seafood cake recipe broke me. The rhythm suddenly got more complex, with button combinations that felt like playing finger Twister. I remember telling my girlfriend, “I think the game is broken.” She just patted my head sympathetically.
My roommate Tom walked in during my fifteenth attempt. He watched for about two minutes before saying, “Dude, you are horrifically bad at this.” He then picked up the controller, played through the level perfectly on his first try, and walked out without another word. I nearly threw the PlayStation out the window.
But there was something weirdly compelling about PaRappa that kept me coming back. Maybe it was the absolutely bonkers story, which somehow involved a rap battle against Joe Chin (PaRappa’s rich rival for Sunny’s affections) and eventually had you rapping at a flea market to earn money for car repairs. Or maybe it was the music, which was legitimately catchy in that “I can’t get this out of my head even though I want to” kind of way.
By Level 4, you’re learning to bake a cake with Master Chop Chop, a… I don’t even know what he was supposed to be. Some kind of insect chef? The song got faster, the button combinations more complex, and my self-esteem plummeted further. I spent an entire Saturday on this level alone, sustained only by Mountain Dew and stubbornness.
The thing about PaRappa that really messed with me was how the difficulty didn’t progress in a linear way. Just when you thought you’d gotten the hang of it, the game would throw a curveball. Level 5 had you rapping with MC King Kong Mushi (Sunny’s dad) about using the bathroom at a gas station. Yes, an entire level devoted to having to pee. The 90s were weird, man.
The final stage involved rapping at a concert, essentially combining elements from all previous levels into one marathon of button-mashing madness. I never legitimately beat this level. I’d like to say I did, that perseverance paid off, but nope. My friend Alex came over and did it for me while I was in the kitchen making nachos. When I came back, he had somehow achieved “Cool” status, which let PaRappa freestyle beyond the basic call-and-response pattern. I felt like I’d hired someone to take my final exam.
The “Cool” rating was PaRappa’s white whale for me. I achieved it exactly once, on Level 1, possibly by accident. The screen changed, the background got all psychedelic, and suddenly I could freestyle instead of just copying Master Onion. I panicked and immediately dropped back to “Good” ranking because I had no idea what I was doing. It was like being handed the keys to a Ferrari after barely passing your driver’s test in a Corolla.
Looking back, I think what made PaRappa so challenging for me was that it required a different kind of gaming brain than I’d developed. I was used to RPGs and adventure games where timing wasn’t critical—you could take your time, think through your moves. PaRappa demanded immediacy and rhythm, neither of which were my strong suits. (Just ask anyone who’s seen me dance at a wedding.)
The cultural impact of PaRappa is easy to overlook now, but it was huge. It helped birth the rhythm game genre that would later explode with Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Its unique visual style—that paper-thin, 2D characters in a 3D world look—influenced countless games and animated shows. And phrases like “I gotta believe!” became mini catchphrases among the PlayStation crowd.
For all my frustrations with it, PaRappa holds a special place in my collection. It sits on my shelf between Parasite Eve and Persona, a colorful reminder of gaming’s weird experimental phase in the late 90s. Sometimes when I’m home alone, I’ll boot it up and try again, convinced that as a grown-ass adult, I should be able to master a game about a rapping dog. I’m still terrible at it.
My ex and I broke up about six months after that Christmas, for reasons entirely unrelated to my PaRappa inadequacies. (At least, that’s what she claimed.) But she let me keep the game, saying, “You should probably practice more.” Twenty-some years later, I’m still working on it.
The game got a sequel in 2001—PaRappa The Rapper 2—which I bought on release day in some kind of masochistic ritual of self-punishment. It was more of the same, just with updated graphics and new songs about…bugs in hamburgers? Like I said, the 90s were weird, and the early 2000s weren’t any better.
There was also an anime adaptation that aired in Japan, which I imported on DVD during my “spending way too much money on obscure gaming collectibles” phase. It was exactly as strange as you’d expect, featuring PaRappa and his friends getting into various adventures that somehow always culminated in rap battles. The DVDs sit unwatched in my collection, another testament to my complicated relationship with this franchise.
Sony remastered the original PaRappa for PS4 a few years back, and I bought it immediately, convinced that with age comes wisdom and rhythm. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. If anything, my reflexes are worse now. But there’s something comforting about failing at the same game across multiple decades. It’s like visiting an old friend who still thinks your jokes are lame—familiar in its disappointment.
For new players curious about PaRappa, I’d say it’s absolutely worth experiencing, if only as a weird artifact of gaming history. Just don’t expect to master it easily, especially if you’re rhythmically challenged like me. And maybe don’t play it with a significant other watching—relationship advice from someone who’s been there.
To this day, whenever I hear “Kick! Punch! It’s all in the mind!”, I get a little twitch in my left eye. I gotta believe…that some games just aren’t meant for everyone, and that’s okay. PaRappa, you paper-thin nightmare dog, you won this round. But I still have the game, and someday, maybe when my reflexes have deteriorated to the point where they accidentally loop back around to being good again, I’ll achieve “Cool” status on every level. Probably not, though. Probably not.
