PARAPPA THE RAPPER
Think PaRappa’s a bit crap? That’s the point…
Diving into PaRappa The Rapper 20 years after the dog first spat his lyrics into our ears on PS1 has confirmed something we’ve long suspected: the mascot’s a bit… well… rubbish.
Not him. Not his game. And certainly not his music, which has aged far better than the game’s cutscenes (they, bizarrely, haven’t been remastered). But as a rapper? He’s less Eminem and more Um-’n’um. How he isn’t branded “U rappin’ AWFUL!” and forever banned from picking up a mic again after botching that first Chop Chop Master Onion level is a mystery to us. Feel free to make all the raspberry noises.
“He’s a little bit ahead of the beat on some notes; a little bit behind the beat on others,” admits Worldwide Studios Software Development’s senior director, Dave Thach, making us feel much better about all those attempts we fluffed back in the day. How do you fix that timing to please newcomers but not completely change the beat and kill off veterans’ muscle memory? Well, that would suggest there was something wrong with the timings in the first place…
“If we tune it to match, then we’re breaking the game. That was never [creator] Matsuura-san’s intent. He wanted it to be more like a performance. Like improvisation. It’s purposeful.”
So what’s the secret to fixing PaRappa? It’s to leave his vocal “talents” well alone and instead introduce a pad vibration element, which generates a call and response effect matching the true beat. “We want it to feel like the controller is singing to you,” explains Thach. Sure enough, the feature does make it easier – and keeps the terrible raps intact. Brill.
HE WANTED IT TO BE MORE LIKE A PERFORMANCE. MORE LIKE IMPROVISATION.