Here it is! What you’ve all been waiting for! A PaRappa the Rapper FAQ! yay.

Warning: Unlike most FAQs which have the lofty goal of increasing your knowledge or skill in some way, this FAQ will actually make you worse at PaRappa the Rapper and will probably drop your I.Q. significantly as well. Here we go.

Background

PaRappa is a dog, but not just any dog, mind you. He’s a "Hip Hop Hero." Well, what the hell is that you ask? Well, it means (naturally) that he wants to have sex with a flower. That’s the hero part, because as we all know almost every hero throughout history has wanted to have sex with a flower at one point or another. Well what about the Hip Hop?!!? It of course means that PaRappa must rap his way through various improbable situations in order to prove his worthiness to the aforementioned flower, usually because he screws up in some fashion. OK, on to rappin’!

Rappin’

In order to be a really successful rapper and consistently achieve "cool" status you can’t just copy every damned word that the "masters" spew forth. This means you have to freestyle, chump. For example, the master says "I am phat but you are crap." Now you should say "Y-You are Phat-Phat but I am c-crap, crap" or something like this. This might net you lots of points or it might very well drop you to "awful." You never know. You see, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and so is phatness of rappin’ You might’ve just busted a dope rhyme that you thought was hall of fame material. But, alas, the computer says "The hell was that shit?!! You soundin’ almost as bad as Puff Daddy." At which point you are dropped to "bad" or "awful" and you say "Chocofmuck!!" On the flip side you can stumble and bumble around like a total moron and spit up off-rhythm, messed up, horrible, awful rhymes and sometimes the computer will be like "Yo! I’m feelin’ that shit, yo!" And you’re like "huh?" because you just accidentally dropped your controller and executed a bunch of really wrong raps, but now all of a sudden you move up to "cool." Sound frustrating or stupid or a little bit of both? Well, stick around because it gets worse.

Coolness

Besides being a Parker Lewis catchphrase, "coolness" is the goal of all PaRappa players. It is the state of having skills on the mic. In order to achieve coolness you must first complete the stage with a "good" rating. Then you get to go back and try your hardest to impress the computer who mostly has no idea what the hell it’s doing. Basically you have to somehow convince the "master" in any way you can that you are good at rappin’ Sound easy? That’s where you’re wrong. Once you achieve cool status, the master mumbles some gibberish about you being super dope awesome phat great wonderful, then flies off the screen. At this point you are left without any guidance and must rap as much shit as you can think of. One problem: Slip up just a little and your back to "good." Then the master comes back and says something to the effect of "You stupid piece of shit, I knew you would screw up!" This rhyming all by yourself thing would be no big deal if there were any established criteria whatsoever for "cool" rappin’ !! There isn’t, so your stuck with the computer’s arbitrary decision making. But I suppose that’s half the fun!... er, right.

Character

PaRappa: The hero. A dog who raps and says "I gotta believe!" more than he really ought to.
Sunny Funny: She’s a flower. Apparently she’s really hot, because everyone wants to do her.
Joe Chin: A dog. I think. PaRappa’s main competition in winning the hand (leaf?) of Sunny Funny. He’s a rich, snobby, choco-sodomizer and the "bad guy" if you really need a defined bad guy in your video games.
P.J. Berri: He’s a bear and a DJ and he eats a lot of food. OK.
Katy Kat: A blue cat who is the friend of Sunny Funny. According to the instruction "booklet" she is "hip and stylin’" Fan-Tastic!

Stages

This is where the rappin’ takes place. There are a whopping SIX stages in this super jumbo value game. I mean with that kind of length it could take you a good ten minutes to beat it so watch out, this game will eat up a lot of your time. yeah.

Stage1-Chop Chop Onion Master

PaRappa wants to become a tough guy to impress Sunny Funny so he goes to his local dojo where he must rap with onion man. This will of course let him kick everyone's ass, because when you're about to get jacked up by the school bully, you start bustin out raps... er, right. This stage is easy and should be a good intro to the world of rappin’ Achieving cool for some reason isn’t that easy on this stage, though. The computer rarely lets you get into the realm of coolness late into the stage, meaning youse gotta hold cool for a long time.

Stage2-Mooselini

What do you get when you cross Bullwinkle with Queen Latifah? You guessed it- Frank Stallone. No, you get Mooselini, the driving instructor. You see, PaRappa needs to get a license 'cause Joe Chin’s gots one and if PaRap wants to stay in the race for Sunny Funny, he’s gots to get one pronto! "No big deal!" you say. Well, you’re right. Not a particularly tough stage to beat on "good" or "cool."

Stage3-Prince Fleaswallow

PaRappa, the consummate screw-up, goes and crashes his dad’s car. But’s that’s no problem because "He’s gotta believe!" He’s gonna need to believe if he thinks he can raise enough money to buy a new car at some run-down flea market. The guy he works with (Prince Fleaswallow) is a cross between Shaggy (not the one from Scooby-Doo) and Dig’em of Honey Smacks fame. This stage is very annoying due to the fact that some genius made all the parts of the rap correspond to the same damned button. This means that instead of stuttering words, PaRappa just keeps going with the line and ends up repeating part of it. Combine this with the fact that Fleaswallow’s dancehall flows take up the whole line, giving you no room to freestyle, and you’ve got yourself a shitty stage. The thing that allows you to achieve coolness is the fact that there is a place right at the end where you can easily achieve "cool" if you get to that point with a "good" rating. Just throw in a little spice to Fleaswallows lines (i.e. screw ‘em up to all hell) and you should get a "cool." As soon as you achieve cool or shortly thereafter, the stage will end and Fleaswallow will tell you how wonderful you are. And of course you are because you figured out how to master this annoying stage. Dope!

Stage 4-Cheap Cheap

"Cheap Cheap Cheap’s the name of my soul." Cheap Cheap, a chicken with a TV cooking show, tries to teach PaRappa how to make a cake for Sunny Funny (because, you guessed it- Joe Chin is giving her a cake). Many people who first play this stage feel it’s cheap cheap due to the fact that this is the first stage where you have to freestyle in order to finish with a "good." It’s a real pain in the ass because Cheap Cheap is not a particularly good judge of rappin’ skillz. Most likely you will come up with plenty of dope rhymes but still get shafted. That’s life, kid. On the bright side you can put your controller in a rock tumbler and still have a chance at big points.

Stage 5-The Toilet Stage

PaRappa’s gotta go real bad but for some weird reason there’s a line of four people who also have to go. What’s even weirder is that they are the four masters from the four previous stages. Pretty big coincidence, huh? Anyway, you must outrap all those herbs for the right to use the toilet. This is a fairly easy stage to achieve cool on because there are four different rappers, so chances are one of them suits your style (or lack there of).

Stage 6-The Finale

All right, the game’s pretty much over because PaRappa has Sunny. Well then why the name of Godhand am I still playing this game? Because PaRappa got invited to rap with some world renowned champion MC. The guy’s name is MC King Kong Mushi. You think his name is lame, wait till you see what he looks like. I can’t really tell what animal he is. He looks sort of like a spider but has only six appendages so I guess he’s some sort of generic bug creature. Needless to say he’s not a very cool final boss. This stage can be a pain because it’s really long and if you do lose it tends to be at the end, meaning you’ve got to endure the whole thing again (lame chorus and all). It’s a pretty big bitch to achieve cool in as well, mainly because you will usually have to hold your coolness for a long, long time. However once you complete the stage on cool, you’re in for a treat. Your reward for getting cool on the last, longest, and most difficult stage? Something really good, right? The super secret ending, right? You’re right! You get the super secret ending where everybody’s naked and PaRappa beats Joe Chin to death with a crowbar. Actually I’m lying. You get nothing. That’s right nothing. The ending is exactly the same. SWEET! You do however get something awesome if you manage to complete all six stages on cool. What is it? Keep reading.

"Secrets"

This game is just JAM-PACKED with secrets! I bet you want to know them all too? Well here are a few "secrets". Oooooohhh.

The Ninja and the Fly-Eater.

The little instruction sheet/poster/worthless piece of paper that comes with the game has a little section titled "hidden character." Pretty exciting isn’t it? It makes you think that there is a whole new hidden stage with a hidden master. Too bad, Algus, but there ISN’T! What the scroll of wisdom is actually referring to is the fact that if you mess up bad, weird stuff happens on the screen. For example, on the third stage when you drop to "bad" that big sombrero falls on PaRappa’s head. The ninja is a guy that pops out of the floor when you hit a wrong note on the first stage and the fly-eater is referring to Fleaswallow’s appearance in the background of the second stage. Wowee Zowee! Those are some fine secrets!

Bonus Stage!

Good news! There is a bonus stage in this game that can be accessed by completing all the stages on cool. However, I’m not sure "bonus" is the right word because it comes from the Latin for good and this stage is anything but good. After all the frustration and honing of rappin’ skills you really deserve something special, so here it is! Man, is it phat?!? It consists of Sunny Funny and Katy Kat dancing on a platform! Woofrickin’Hoo! Awesome! That’s just what I wanted after spending hours making a dog rap "cool." But wait there’s more! You get to rotate and zoom in and out as well as change their clothes and dance moves! I was so excited after seeing this stage and I’m sure you will be too. This is how you deal with the "excitement": Say "Hmmmm. How am I gonna take this shitty stage? Yeah, I know! I gotta believe!" Then open up the PlayStation, take out the game and use it as a frisbee in a game of catch with the wall (do this at your own risk, not many walls are good at playing catch).

Fin

Well that about does it until PaRappa 2. Thanks for reading this short, weird FAQ about a short, weird game. And remember whenever you have any problems in life just immediately stop what you’re doing and say "I gotta believe!" Then start rapping. Everything should turn out just fine.

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Written by Evk and posted on 03-11-00. Actually it was written by Evk's cousin but I don't care enough to make him a new graphic, besides which I don't know his name. Don't you just get to suffer now?
This article is ©2000 Nick Hammer.
Evk@salamando.net