Parappa the Rapper Cover Arts

 


Parappa the Rapper is a video game about a dog named Parappa who solves his problems through rapping, whether it's about him learning karate, getting his drivers license, or going to the bathroom. It's known for being the first rhythm game and for it's weird and unique visual style that makes the characters look like they came from a pop-up book, so I figured why not give my thoughts on the covers that released in some regions? I'll only cover the ones from the PlayStation 1 since future ports just use the original ones.


This is the original cover released in Japan. We see Parappa and his friends having a good time alongside PJ DJing. The bosses are in the background (except for King Kong Mushi  who's at the bottom left) crossing their arms in disapproval and Joe Chin in the background riding his cool car. I like this one as it reminds me of a children's story book with all of the characters and bright colors. I didn't notice it until writing this, but there's a flying toilet in the background above the logo. It just shows you how weird the world of Parappa is. 


This is the one that released in North America with Parappa smiling on a yellow background and the logo color being changed to neon green instead of the multicolor one from the Japanese release. Despite how simple it looks, I kind of like it. The yellow background makes me curious if it was inspired by the album "3 Feet High and Rising" by De La Soul? 

Finally, we have the PAL release. It's similar to the NA one with just Parappa in it except the background is orange and they added the subtitle "The Hip-Hop Hero". I'm not really a fan of this one, which might be weird since I liked the NA one for its simplicity. The reason why I don't like this one that much is because they reused the art of Parappa from the Japanese version and I don't really like orange background. This cover art reminds me of the crappy Mega Man X ones that released in Europe, except the art of Parappa looks good.

Overall, I prefer the Japanese version since I love how weird and colorful it looks. I wish the other regions kept the Japanese one in future re-releases but I guess the NA one is iconic to fans over there. Which one do you prefer? Do you like the colorful JP one or do you like the simple covers released in NA and PAL regions? I'd love to know.

Comments

  1. Objectionist!June 25, 2023 at 10:18 PM

    It's weird, the PAL version takes the Japanese art and takes away the shading. That, and the eyes aren't doing it for me. And maybe the colors are too desaturated in the PAL cover too, since the Japanese box has all this color and stuff going on.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. CanoJune 25, 2023 at 10:25 PM

      It's very strange. I wonder if this cover was rushed?

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Absent-minded Giovanni

Image
  Hello, it's been over a year since I last posted. Going through school, having a job, and overall losing a bit of interest made me put the blog in a bit of a hiatus. Since I'm currently done with summer classes, I decided that now would be a good time to get back to blogging. I'd like to discuss the animated Soviet short "Absent-minded Giovanni" . A few years ago, I first learned about this short from a Twitter account that posted Soviet animations and was drawn to its unique art style. The backgrounds resembling abstract paintings and the characters having two colors on their faces reminded me of the ENA web series by Joel Guerra  , which makes me wonder if it was an inspiration. Maybe I'll make a post on the ENA series one day.                                                                                                                    They look similar, huh? On to the animation itself, the story starts off with Giovanni, the puppet boy, asking his mo
Read more

Seriously Ridiculous: Spider-Man 2099

Image
  In any form of media, whether it be from a show, movie, or video games, there will always be a character that's on the serious side. Usually they're not meant to be taken as a joke, but sometimes the things they do are so ridiculous that you can't help but laugh at them. This was originally going to be a list, I decided to turn this into a series since every character I can think of has so much going on for them. For the first post in the series, I'll go over Miguel O'Hara (AKA Spider-Man 2099) from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Before he made his debut in Across the Spider-Verse, he was featured in the post credits of the first film, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The post credit shows Miguel preparing to enter a different universe for the first time and lands on Earth-67, the universe of the Spider-Man 1967 series. I'll put the clip here in case if you haven't seen it. The fact that Miguel is already pissed off at the Spider-Man accusing him o
Read more

The Barbie Movie Review

Image
  The Barbie movie is one of the strangest films I've seen recently. The movie, a fantasy comedy of pink girls toys going to the real world, released the same say as Oppenheimer, a film about the man who created the nuclear bomb that hit Japan during World War II. This would influence the "Barbenheimer" memes since those two movies have completely different tones and colors. Seeing these memes influenced me to watch the Barbie movie as well as seeing the really weird early trailers that didn't really tell you what it was about.  I can say after watching the movie that it's one of the best films I've seen this year. Everything about it was great from the humor, the themes, and the surprising amount of dread and depression Barbie goes through. I never thought I'd love a movie about a girl's toy line, but I was wrong. The movie plot's so strange too. The beginning of the film starts off with Stereotypical Barbie having the most pretty pink perfect day
Read more