Parappa the Rapper is a game with a paper-thin style, in which you play as a dog in a vest, jeans, & a beanie, who has a teddy bear friend, & really fancies a flower named Sunny Funny, whose dad is a flower pot, & said dog (Parappa) learns karate, gets a driving license, crashes a car, makes money at a flea market, buys a cake that then get knocked onto the ground by a taller dog named 'Joe Chin', yes, goes onto a cooking show to make a seafood cake, eats way too much of that cake, has to rap for the singular toilet in a fuel station bathroom, & then, for no reason whatsoever, performs on a stage with a cross-breed of The Evil Grimace & a spider. oh, Japan. they never disappoint.
the music that goes along with all of this fits like the 4th-or-so shoe you try in the shoe shop, if you know what i'm SAYING! whether bouncy, lowkey, relaxing, or synthy, there we go, new word, it's all so memorable, & just great. & then the lyrics. i love them. they are so perfectly cheesy, though there are some occasional bars in there. & that becomes more of a thing in Parappa 2, which i do plan to talk about in the near future. & while the paper art style & the music are pretty bloody amazing, the most important part of a rhythm game, or most games really, falls rather short. the controls. in the original PS1 release (this game got remastered twice on future PlayStation consoles), it feels like a lottery whether or not the game will pick up your inputs. & most of the time, when it does, there's the smallest bit of delay on it. so, even if the line you rapped was said by Parappa just in time, the game doesn't always recognise that as correct timing for your button presses. for being a rhythm game, there's a serious lack of rhythm in this game. don't tell me it's because it's an old game, Super Mario Bros 3 was made 8 years before this game, & that controls fine. maybe it's just part of being an early rhythm game, but it's still there, & open to critique. something good in Parappa the Rapper upon replaying it, if you play a version with good control, is COOL MODE. yes, cool mode. if you rap a song well enough, or tap a bunch of buttons in-between prompts, you can enter Cool Mode, which allows you to freestyle. well, using lines from the song, but in the way you want. so, yeah, that's cool. no pun intended.
in summary, if you play the PSP or PS4 remaster of Parappa the Rapper, it's a great experience, even if it is a very short one, being about an hour in length. unless you get stuck on the bloody chicken. personally, i find it easier to get into a short game, usually, so this is great. but the PS1 game, while okay, is a bit rough around the edges, so if you want a way to play this landmark title, steer clear of the original, & you'll be golden.