Christmas 1997. Sarah thought she was being clever, getting me something “different” from the usual gaming suspects. I’d been banging on about Final Fantasy VII for months, probably boring her to tears with my theories about Sephiroth, when she handed me this bizarre PlayStation game with what looked like a paper cutout of a dog wearing a beanie. “The bloke at Game said it was revolutionary,” she said, clearly second-guessing herself already.
PaRappa The Rapper. I mean, what kind of name is that for a game? I was 23, working my first proper IT job in Manchester, and here’s my girlfriend giving me what appeared to be a children’s toy. But you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when you’re still figuring out this whole relationship thing, so I slotted it into the PlayStation expecting maybe twenty minutes of mild confusion before suggesting we head to the pub.
Four hours later, we’re both still planted on my grotty sofa, Sarah in absolute stitches watching me fail spectacularly at making a bloody seafood cake with some demented chicken called Cheap Cheap. “Crack crack crack the egg into the bowl!” she’d sing, taking the piss out of my increasingly creative swearing. I wasn’t just rubbish at this game – I was monumentally, historically terrible.
See, rhythm games weren’t really a thing back then. We had Beatmania in the arcades, but that was proper niche stuff. PaRappa was something else entirely – this weird Japanese creation by Masaya Matsuura with art by some American called Rodney Alan Greenblat. Everything looked like it had been cut out of cardboard and animated by someone having a particularly vivid fever dream. The story, and yes there was an actual story, followed this lovesick puppy trying to impress a sunflower girl by learning random skills from the most bizarre collection of teachers imaginable.
The concept seemed dead simple: teacher raps a line, you copy it back by pressing buttons in time. Each level had its own mental song, and you got ranked on how well you did – Bad, Good, or Cool. Easy enough, right? Well, it bloody wasn’t. Not for me, anyway.
First level drops you into a karate class run by Master Onion. Yes, an onion with a blue afro teaching martial arts. “Kick! Punch! It’s all in the mind!” he’d rap, and I’m supposed to hit the corresponding buttons in rhythm. Took me nearly an hour to scrape through this supposedly tutorial level, my thumbs already getting sore. Sarah kept offering helpful observations like, “Maybe you’re just not very musical?” Cheers love, really boosting my confidence there.
The timing mechanics were absolutely ruthless. You’d see these icons scrolling across the top of the screen, and you had to press the right button when they hit this marker. But the window for “correct” felt microscopic. Too early? Rubbish. Too late? Also rubbish. And sometimes, when I was certain I’d nailed it perfectly, PaRappa would stutter through his lines like he was having some sort of breakdown.
Level two introduced this moose driving instructor, and somehow I managed to stumble through with a Good rating. False confidence is dangerous – suddenly I’m thinking maybe I’ve cracked it, maybe I’m actually decent at this rhythm game lark.
Then Cheap Cheap showed up in level three, and nearly ended my gaming career right there. That seafood cake recipe broke something inside me. The rhythm got more complex, button combinations that felt like playing Twister with your thumbs. “This game’s broken,” I told Sarah. She just patted my head like I was a confused child.
My flatmate Dave wandered in during attempt number fifteen. Watched for about two minutes, said “Mate, you are absolutely shocking at this,” picked up the controller, sailed through the level perfectly first go, then buggered off to make tea. I seriously considered chucking the PlayStation out the window.
But there was something weirdly addictive about PaRappa that kept dragging me back. Maybe it was the completely mental story – you end up having rap battles with this rich kid rival and somehow wind up performing at a flea market to raise money for car repairs. Or maybe it was the music, which was genuinely catchy in that annoying way where it gets stuck in your head for weeks.
Level four had you learning to bake with Master Chop Chop, who I still can’t identify – some sort of insect chef? The song got faster, the patterns more complex, and my self-esteem plummeted further. Spent an entire Saturday on this level alone, sustained by nothing but instant coffee and sheer bloody-mindedness.
What really wound me up about PaRappa was how the difficulty curve made no sense. Just when you thought you’d figured out the pattern, it’d throw something completely mental at you. Level five had you rapping about needing the toilet at a petrol station with this character called MC King Kong Mushi. An entire level about having a piss. The late 90s were a strange time in gaming, I tell you.
The final concert level combined everything from the previous stages into one marathon of button-mashing hell. I never legitimately finished it. I’d love to claim persistence paid off, but no – my mate Chris came round, completed it while I was making sandwiches in the kitchen, and somehow achieved Cool status, which let PaRappa freestyle instead of just copying. Felt like I’d hired someone to sit my A-levels.
That Cool rating was my white whale. Achieved it exactly once, on the first level, probably by accident. The screen went all psychedelic, suddenly I could improvise instead of just repeating Master Onion, and I immediately panicked and dropped back to Good because I had absolutely no clue what I was doing. Like being handed the keys to a Ferrari when you’ve barely passed your test in a Fiesta.
Looking back, PaRappa demanded a completely different type of gaming brain than I’d developed. I was used to RPGs and adventure games where you could take your time, think things through properly. This required instant reactions and rhythm, neither of which were my strong points. Anyone who’s seen me attempt dancing at weddings can confirm this.
The cultural impact was massive, even if it’s easy to forget now. PaRappa basically invented mainstream rhythm games – without it, we wouldn’t have had Guitar Hero or Rock Band years later. That paper-thin visual style influenced loads of games and cartoons afterward. “I gotta believe!” became a proper catchphrase among PlayStation owners.
Despite all my frustrations, PaRappa sits proudly on my shelf between Parasite Eve and Persona, a colorful reminder of gaming’s experimental phase in the late 90s. Sometimes when nobody’s around, I’ll boot it up and try again, convinced that as a middle-aged adult, surely I can master a game about a rapping dog. Still terrible at it.
Sarah and I broke up about six months later, for reasons completely unrelated to my PaRappa inadequacies. Well, that’s what she claimed anyway. But she let me keep the game, saying I “probably needed more practice.” Twenty-odd years later, still working on it.
The sequel came out in 2001 – PaRappa The Rapper 2 – which I bought on day one like some sort of masochistic ritual. More of the same, just with updated graphics and new songs about… bugs in hamburgers? The late 90s were weird, but the early 2000s weren’t much better.
There was even an anime series that I imported on DVD during my “spending ridiculous money on obscure gaming collectibles” phase. Exactly as mental as you’d expect – PaRappa and his mates getting into adventures that somehow always ended in rap battles. Those DVDs sit unwatched in my collection, another monument to my complicated relationship with this franchise.
Sony remastered the original for PS4 a few years back, and I bought it immediately, thinking age might have brought wisdom and rhythm. Spoiler: 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 rubbish – familiar in its disappointment.
For anyone curious about PaRappa, it’s absolutely worth experiencing as a weird piece 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 your partner watching – relationship advice from someone who’s been there.
To this day, hearing “Kick! Punch! It’s all in the mind!” gives me a little eye twitch. I gotta believe… that some games just aren’t meant for everyone, and that’s perfectly fine. PaRappa, you paper-thin nightmare dog, you won this round. But I’ve still got the game, and someday, maybe when my reflexes have deteriorated so much they accidentally loop back to being good, I’ll achieve Cool status on every level. Probably not though. Definitely not.
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
