TGS 06: PaRappa the Rapper Hands-On

TOKYO--The recently-announced PSP remake of Sony's PlayStation rhythm game, PaRappa the Rapper, is on display at the 2006 Tokyo Game Show. This one-level demo being shown gives a pretty clear picture of the single-player game.

The demo level is the first level of the game, where Chop Chop Master Onion--the karate dude with an onion for a face--tells PaRappa things like "kick, punch, it's all in the mind!" But let's back up for a second. If you aren't familiar with how PaRappa the Rapper works, it's a fairly basic rhythm game that has you repeat a button-pressing cadence. The teacher of the level raps a line, and the game shows you which buttons to press. Then, you repeat the line by pressing the buttons shown on the screen in time with the music. You can also throw in a few extra presses here and there, which can get you a higher grade if done properly.

The PSP version of PaRappa has the same stylized look that was found in the original game, though the graphics have been smoothed out quite a bit. The edges of the characters are no longer jagged, and the game has been tweaked a bit to account for the wider aspect ratio of the PSP's screen. The audio and music in the demo level is just how it was in the original, though everything sounds like it's playing back in a higher bitrate, as opposed to the occasionally muffled sounds of the original game.

The game is said to have an all-new multiplayer mode for up to four players, but the version being shown at TGS is this basic one-level demo. So we'll have to wait to see what, if any, changes are in store for this classic console rhythm game.