Parappa the Rapper (SCEA/SCEI, Music/Rhythm Game, PSX)
Written by: Jani Luostarinen(joulupoika6@hotmail.com)
Table of Contents:
0. Document history
1. Basic info
2. Info on "Cool" and the "hidden level" (SPOILER ALERT)
3.General tips and comments, and a note on beat count
4. Second line Cool patterns
5. In-Cool patterns
6. You gotta believe!
0. Document history
V1.0 - 11/25/97
- Some general tips and comments
- 2nd line Cool patterns for all 6 Stages
- 3 in-Cool patterns
- Some info on the "hidden level"
1. Basic info
This is a simple informational guide for Parappa the Rapper
(music/ rhythm game for Sony Playstation). Along with some general
comments and suggestions, I'll be listing some patterns to help
get you up to the Cool rating, and some patterns to use in order
to keep your Cool...
2. Info on "Cool" and the "hidden level" (SPOILER ALERT)
The first time you play a level, the highest rating you'll be able to
achieve is "Good". However, after you've successfully completed
a level, you can go back and play it again (via Stage Select in
the Options menu), and now you'll be able to achieve "Cool"
(which, btw, is more difficult than simply maintaining "Good";
"Cool" is, after all, the highest rating in the game... =) ).
Achieving "Cool" will change the stage scenery (or at least the
visual context), and the instructor for that level will withdraw
(after saying a few words of praise), allowing you to rap
freely. And so long as you don't rap badly, you'll be able to
continue with your "Cool" rating. If you finish a level on
"Cool", you'll get a crown marker for that level on the Stage
Select screen.
** SPOILER ALERT **
Getting all six crowns will enable an extra stage (of sorts) called
"KT & the Sunny Funny Band" (name parody of "KC & the Sunshine
Band", btw), which will appear on the Stage Select screen.
Basically, it's just Katy and Sunny dancing to some music, on a
little circular stage, in front of an audience. You can change
their costumes (3 costumes each; triangle (Sunny) or X (Katy)
button), change their dance style (6 styles each; square (Sunny)
or O (Katy) button), zoom in and out (R1/R2 and L1/L2), and move
the camera angle around (d-pad). Nothing too spectacular, but
kinda cute, nevertheless.
3. General tips and comments, and a note on beat count
If you play the game as a simple "repeat verbatim" game (the "Simon
Says" style), you'll probably notice that the game starts
getting a lot stricter with timing starting with Stage 4
(cooking). So once you figure out the precise timing point(s)
the game looks for (pay more attention to the timing bar than
the actual music), you can probably make your way through all
the rest of the game. Of course, I think it's much more fun to
embellish upon the themes and patterns presented... and as an
added bonus, if you embellish well, the game seems to be a lot
more lenient with your exact timing. =)
Anyway, one very simple pattern which seems to work fairly well is
just to follow the beat-count pattern (or half-beat count, if
you count each star on the bar as one beat (4 beats per line))
through the entire line. So instead of trying to follow the
non-standard beat given, you can stick with something a lot
easier to do! Of course, this doesn't work on every line, but
it does make a lot easier the lines it does work on...
Here are the four-beat and eight-beat counts, btw, in case
you're not quite sure what I'm talking about here:
The timing bar in the game uses a four-beat line (each of the stars
on the line counts as a beat; ignore the two dots before the
first star, since they don't really count as part of any beat
(they're actually a redundancy of the latter half of the last
beat of the previous line...)), but since I think a lot of
people might find an eight-beat line a bit more intuitive, I'm
going to use that for the patterns I present in this file...
So anyhow, getting back to the pattern I mentioned above, it would
go: "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight" for the
eight-beat count, and "one, and, two, and, three, and, four,
and" for the four-beat count. As I've already stated, it
doesn't work for everything, but it does help on some of the
more difficult lines in Stages 4, 5, and 6...
Oh, one last thing I thought I'd mention here, since the instructions
(U/C) weren't as specific as they could have been on the
subject, was the effect holding Left or Right on the d-pad will
have while rappin', and the specific difference between the
two... Holding Left will get Parappa to repeat the *first*
word/segment of the phrase assigned to the button you press,
whereas holding Right will get Parappa to repeat the last word/
segment he just completed with that button. I think strategic
use of this "repeat" function can have a bit of an impact on
your score, but I haven't fully looked into the matter yet...
It's certainly not necessary in order to complete the game (even
with Cool ratings), but I do think it makes some of the improv
bits a bit more fun...
4. Second line Cool patterns
Okay, I'm listing some patterns here that I've gotten to work on the
second line of each level, in getting me to Cool. To get
halfway to Cool, just do the first line normally (or embellish,
if you want). Obviously, these patterns aren't absolutely
guaranteed to work, or anything. They're just patterns that
seem to work a good amount of the time for me. Most of them
seem to have a fairly good success rating... though I'm still
looking for slightly better patterns for Stages 4 (cooking) and
5 (bathroom)...
If any of these patterns give you trouble, just try slight variations
on them. Timing groups of clustered notes slightly closer (or
slightly farther) sometimes works...
Oh, one last note. Do note that some of these patterns actually
start *before* the "Given" line count ends...
Key: s, t, o, x = [square], [triangle], [O], [X]
Uppercase Letters = Given pattern
lowercase letters = Parappa's pattern
Stage 1 (training)
bar: * . . . * . . . * . . . * . . .
beat: 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 .
Given: O [o o]
do: o o o o o
Stage 2 (driving)
bar: * . . . * . . . * . . . * . . .
beat: 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 .
Given: T T S t t s
do: t t s s s s s s
Stage 3 (selling)
bar: * . . . * . . . * . . . * . . .
beat: 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 .
Given: O O O O O O o
do: o o o o o o
Stage 4 (cooking)
bar: * . . . * . . . * . . . * . . .
beat: 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 .
Given: X X X S R L
do: x x x s s r r r l l or:
x x x x s r r r r l l
Stage 5 (bathroom)
bar: * . . . * . . . * . . . * . . .
beat: 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 .
Given: L L L L L
do: l l l l l l l l l l or:
l l l l l l l l l l
Stage 6 (rappin' on stage)
bar: * . . . * . . . * . . . * . . .
beat: 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 .
Given: O O
do: o o o o o o o
5. In-Cool patterns
Once you get to Cool, you can actually just use a repeating pattern
to maintain your Cool rating (or you can free rap more
creatively, which can be pretty fun). Here are three patterns
I've found to work fairly well in-Cool...
The first pattern is probably the easiest to do. The third pattern
seems to score the best (of the three listed above), though. Or
you can mix and match...
Note that in some of the levels, some of the buttons will sometimes
have multi-syllabic segments for a single button pressing... so
if you're just going for a particular beat (like one of the ones
listed above), you can use the "repeat" function (Left or Right
on the d-pad; see section 3 of this document for more
information) to stay on a particular segment of the line (one
with one (or two) syllables), to make things a little less
confusing, so you can stay with the beat a bit more easily.
This also applies to the normal game (not just in-Cool), btw...
6. You gotta believe!
Well, hope all that helps! Comments/additions/whatever are certainly
welcome! Good luck! And above all, have fun!
