PARAPPA THE RAPPER REMASTERED
This bum note’s hard to believe
Yes, he’s back. One of the first rhythm action games released in the West – and the first to bring the genre to a wide audience – the likes of Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution owe a debt to PaRappa. It’s a shame the bar-spitting beagle hasn’t starred in many games since.
But this 4K remaster, made to celebrate the original’s 20th anniversary, isn’t the new PaRappa many fans were hoping for. In fact, it isn’t really the old PaRappa many were hoping for either. There’s only really one area in which the game impresses, and that’s the brilliant graphics: you’ve never seen the paper-thin pup so sharply defined.
Everything else is a disappointment, though. The cut-scenes all come from the PSP version1 and are extremely low-res, it still only has six levels, and very little else has been added. No behind-the-scenes galleries or videos to celebrate the game’s past 20 years, no new songs, nothing (except for the PSP version’s alternate backing tracks).
Worst of all, there’s input lag. Years ago, we were all playing on CRT televisions, and when we pressed buttons the response was near-instant. These days every TV has some form of input lag, and for a rhythm game – especially one with such harsh timing – not having a calibration setting is criminal. The infamous fourth stage, 2 which used to be merely tricky, is now infuriating as you try to second-guess how early you have to press buttons for them to be registered properly.
PaRappa will always have a place in my heart, but if the original game was Snoop Dogg, this disappointing upscale is Lil’ Bow Wow.