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PaRappa The Rapper Creator Interviewed

Posted by Zonk on from the whip-out-the-beatbox dept.

Gamasutra has an interview up with Rodney Greenblat, graphic designer of PaRappa The Rapper. The article refers to the popular character as Sony's "Almost Mario", and digs into the rationale behind the game and its sequel. From the article: "In the case of Chop Chop Master Onion, he was just supposed to be a karate teacher. I came up with lots of designs of what a karate teacher might be, but the onion thing they just loved, so they changed the whole thing so he was the onion master. It just worked out perfect. I don't think they had an idea of what the driving instructor might be, and I just thought it would be so funny if she were this big moose, and I was thinking of Queen Latifah in a certain way."

2 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. Almost Mario?!? by natron+2.0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I do see it. Sure Parappa was a huge hit in Japan and has a small following here is the states, but I could never see him leading the Sony console line in adverts and such. I guess a mascot for the Playstation systems was never a big issue from the get go. Remember that scary Polygon Man they used when the PSX was first released. He did not last long...

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    [n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
  2. Re:Improvisation scoring? by Strell · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In my experience, it works best with Umjammer. I love the game and I played it to death, and still occassionally go back to play it just for fun.

    The improvisation never seemed to be understood. I used to check gamefaqs and try random searches on the net, but people basically discovered the same thing I learned on my own - you can hit less buttons to change up the rhythm, use different buttons, etc. But the actual mechanics are still very much a mystery. For example, play any of the Umjammer levels with Rammy and put her on level 4. It's insane what the computer does. And no matter how many times I watched it, I could never figure out what the hell it was doing. I assume it's just sequencing and that a human could figure it out, but it was far beyond me.

    Anyway, Umjammer is by far my favorite. I think the guitar mechanic works far better for free styling than rapping ever did.

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    I'm not scared of anonymous cowards.