It's a stretch to imagine gamers raised on Doom rapping along with a little 2-D cartoon dog to lyrics like "Don't get cocky / It's gonna get rocky / We gonna move down to the next ya jockey now!" But judging by Sony's Christmas promotions push, it might just happen.
Parappa the Rapper, already a hit in Japan and to be released in the States on Friday, is likely the most strangely nonsensical game ever to hit the PlayStation. Created by artists Rodney Alan Greenblat and Masaya Matsuura, Parappa attempts to bridge the generational and gender gaps in gaming, as well as import Japanese kitsch to an American audience.
"At first in Japan everyone thought it was a silly game for kids, since the threshold was really low," explains Japanese game creator Masaya Matsuura. "But as people played with it they began to see its attractiveness, and then they understood what the game was all about.... It's about learning the rhythm. The situation will probably be the same in the States."
Parappa (meaning "paper thin" in Japanese) is an oh-so-cute dog in a woolly cap that wants to win the love of Sunny Funny the flower. He does this by learning from "masters" - karate lessons from an onion, cooking lessons from a chicken - who also educate him in the mysteries of rap. The player has to learn the rap rhythms to make it to the "free-style" level, where Parappa gets to cut loose. As PlayStation Magazine put it, it's a "hip hop Simon Says."
Parappa looks like a kids' cartoon, but it's actually quite challenging to play. Part of the intent of the game was to bridge that gap between adults' games and children's games - in part why Sony brought in Rodney Alan Greenblat as the designer. An American artist who had much success in traditional galleries and museums in the '80s, Greenblat produced several underground CD-ROM hits in the '90s, like Dazzeloids. In every format however, Greenblat distinctively mixes colorful children's-book graphics with upbeat, sometimes political subtexts.
Explains Greenblat: "I don't really think about kids or adults when I'm doing something.... I never really differentiated, and it seemed that every time I tried I really would run aground. If I tried to make something for kids, I'd get off track with all this political rhetoric. If I tried something for adults, I'd end up with all this goofy stuff."
Greenblatt works primarily in Japan right now - his characters grace everything from lunch boxes to promotions for Puffy, the Japanese Spice Girls. He explains that the Japanese are more accepting of his work, since they understand that something can be both serious and silly, while American families perceive things that are "frivolous' as having little merit - especially during the current Barney-backlash.
"Adults and kids accept all kinds of things. The problem is parents: Parents want something for the kids that has value," Greenblat says. "I think kids get value out of a lot of things - they can get value out of a TV commercial - but parents don't see it that way. They want to see math, they want to see language skills, they want to see phonetics."
The game has already sold nearly a million copies in Japan, along with Parappa collectibles and an album, and Sony is planning a huge "live" Parappa rap concert in a Tokyo club in January, where gamers will "compete" to create the coolest rhythms. It's hard to imagine something like that happening in the States - as Greenblat and Matsuura point out, Japanese culture has always embraced "cuteness" (think Tamagotchi, Tokimeki, or anime), while American tastes in games run a bit more toward grisly, fantastic realism. But judging by the overwhelmingly positive reception Parappa has received so far in the US media, that seems to be changing.
"I think there's a lot of interest in Japanese pop culture right now.... I don't know why, except that it's a weird reflection of our culture, American culture twisted around in a Japanese way," Greenblat believes. "It comes back to us in a different way, and that's kind of fun."
In the case of Parappa, what's been twisted is America's own rap music. Created by a "proud urban white kid" and a Japanese musician, Parappa mutates hip hop's self-important social messages into a funny cartoon world that parodies rap and all its trappings. That, the creators say, is what has granted Parappa such a diverse audience.
"Various generations of people, old and young, men and women - everyone can enjoy Parappa's rhythm and make their own beat. If it was 'real black street music' it would limit the demographic," explains Matsuura. "If there's a message behind the lyrics, it's global or cosmopolitan. For US people, if they know it uses rap, they think it belongs to blacks. But in Parappa it belongs to everyone - black or white or yellow."
