PaRappa the Rapper is considered to be one of the first modern rhythm based video games. It was developed by NanaOn-Sha and released in North America on July 14, 1997. Created by music producer Masaya Matsuura in collaboration with artist Rodney Greenblat, the game features a unique 2d kind of paper cutout like visual design. It sold 1.4 million copies total, won several awards in its time and spawned two follow-up titles; a guitar-based spin-off titled UmJammer Lammy and PaRappa the Rapper 2.

Pros:

For its time this game was quite ground breaking, a rhythm based game this successful was unheard of (if it even existed before this). These days we kind of take it for granted since there are several games our there that have some kind of mini game rhythm challenge found in them, but this was the game that set up the system for all of that more or less. The tunes are quite good, memorable and will easily give you an ear worm quite quickly. The visual style of 2-d paper-like characters in a 3-d environment was unique in its time and I have rarely seen it since. The game play is pretty straight forward, hit the correct buttons at the correct time and it gets progressively harder. The levels are all based around the main character “PaRappa” trying to gain some skills to get a girl, except for the toilet level that if you lose you shit yourself, which is an important lesson to learn before you start dating I guess…

Cons:

The game is littered with rather long, pretty terrible, cut sense that are built to give you the love interest storyline, so I get why it’s there, but they all could have been a lot shorter. The game is rather short too, only 6 levels, and if you are any good with a PlayStation controllers layout and some basic rhythm this game could be a cakewalk. However, there is a very serious input lag that happens with flat screen TVs (it only properly works on tube TVs) that will severally screw with you if you have any existing sense of rhythm. The only way to beat it on a flatscreen is to try to follow the music, not the icon on the screen and pray that you got it right. My friend Alex spent many frustrated hours trying to beat this game on a flat screen and actually managed to eventually get all the way to the last level and then like some kind of savant my little brother (who had never really played the game) beat the last level and thus the game on his first try. It was a bitter sweet moment that perfectly reflects how “luck” is something you actually need to count on when playing this on a flat screen.