PaRappa The Rapper 2

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***PaRappa the Rapper 2*** (パラッパラッパー2 Parappa Rappā Tsu) es un videojuego de ritmo para PlayStation 2. Salió a la venta en Japón el 30 de agosto de 2001, en Norteamérica el 21 de enero de 2002 y en Europa el 5 de abril de 2002. Fue relanzado mundialmente en Playstation 4 el 14 de diciembre de 2015, introduciendo su soporte 1080p y soporte 4K en Playstation 4 Pro. Es la secuela de *PaRappa the Rapper]'*, aunque en realidad es el tercer juego de la serie, tras *Um Jammer Lammy]*. Aunque el juego cuenta con una serie de nuevos elementos de juego, no fue tan bien recibido por la crítica y no consiguió unas ventas similares a las de su predecesor.

## Plot

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The story line of *PaRappa The Rapper 2* centers on PaRappa, who has recently won a hundred years supply of noodles from a burger shop coupon and has grown tired of eating them. When Sunny Funny serves him noodles when he and PJ are at her place to eat, PaRappa couldn't believe hard enough to eat all those noodles, prompting Sunny to call him a baby and leading him to question his maturity. As PaRappa tries to find an alternative meal at Beard Burgers, he learns that someone is mysteriously turning all the food in Parappa Town into noodles. After taking a brief lesson in 'Romantic Karate' from Chop Chop Master Onion, PaRappa and his friends get shrunken by his father's invention (**because he cut corners, creating a shrink ray** **instead**), so he helps coach them back to normal size with the help of Guru Ant. PaRappa and PJ get drafted into the army and must complete a military boot camp training course with Instructor Moosesha. He then becomes an amateur barber after customers are being given afros by Hairdresser Octopus, who is caught under a hypnotic tune. After freeing Hairdresser Octopus, PaRappa and his friends discover an 8-bit video game called Food Court, which was being used to control Hairdresser Octopus. PaRappa wins the game and the gang finds out that sweets overrule noodles, creating a reversal using reverse engineering.

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PaRappa and his friends launch a sweet-based attack on the Noodle Army, and soon confronted their leader, Colonel Noodle, who is actually Beard Burger Master's son who had became sick of eating burgers. PaRappa convinces him that noodles aren't the only food around. The game ends with a final party with returning hip-hop master MC King Kong Mushi, and PaRappa learns that Sunny Funny already likes him the way he is, no matter what. Things go back to normal and PaRappa can eat anything... except cheese, of which he's won another 100 years supply.

Promotional art shows that after the events of the game, Beard Burgers started selling noodles as well as burgers.

## Stages

* Stage 1: Beard Burgers, a Parappa Town Tradition! (Toasty Buns)
* Stage 2: Strictly For Adults (Romantic Love)
* Stage 3: HEY! Grab That Remote Control!! (BIG)
* Stage 4: We'll Turn You into... a Real Man! (Sista Moosesha)
* Stage 5: You Don't Want Her to Go Through This, Do You?! (Hair Scare)
* Stage 6: Parappa Papa's Pastime is Perfected! (Food Court)
* Stage 7: Noodles Are the Flow, Noodles Are the Groove! (Noodles Can't Be Beat)
* Stage 8: Final party! (Always Love!)

## Gameplay

The game plays similar to its predecessor and features 8 stages, although (in all stages apart from stage 8) before the chosen stage starts there is a practice segment where the player has a chance to practice a small snippet of the song with PaRappa's talking stereo player; Boxy Boy. After this, the stage will start. In the stage, the teacher will give a line of rap and PaRappa will have to repeat it, or freestyle to the beat. If he messes up his line twice in a row, he drops a rank from Good, to Bad, to Awful. Performing well two times in a row will bring the player up a rank. Players lose the level if they drop below Awful, or finish the level in the Bad or Awful state. *PaRappa 2* handles this a little differently to its predecessors, as upon dropping a rank, the teacher will say "Getting Worse" , and the song will go back two lines, and sometimes altering the lines to make them easier to play so the player can get back up to Good mode, and the teacher says "Getting Better" . If the player improvises a rap successfully two times in a row, it accesses Cool mode, where the teacher leaves PaRappa to do freestyle by himself. If PaRappa can reach the end of the level in Cool mode, he'll earn a Cool ranking for that stage. This unlocks music tracks available to listen in a music player available at the end of the game.

Between every two levels (except for level 8), there is a minigame in which 'Kotamanegis' (little onions) from Chop Chop Master Onion's dojo hold up plates for PaRappa to break. Hitting the plates earns PaRappa extra points to add to his previous level's score, while hitting the Tamanegis when they are not ready deducts points.

When a level is completed, a versus mode is unlocked, playable with a friend or against the computer. In this mode, the two players are given a line to rap, and each player must try and improvise to get a higher score than the previous one. Beating their opponent earns a point, and three points win the game.

Upon completing the game, PaRappa's hat changes color to represent an increase in the stage's difficulty, going from Blue, to Pink to Yellow. When playing through the game again, the lines are remixed. Completing the game with the Yellow Hat unlocks a music player where you can listen to any level with a Cool Rating on, along with the full version of the Stage 8 Intro song "Come a Long Way", while completing the Vs. CPU mode on all difficulty levels unlocks the final song, **Say "I Gotta Believe!"** (performed by De La Soul featuring Double). The player can change his hat color on the title screen by rotating the analogue stick, but the line changes will remain, meaning the player will have to start a new game from scratch in order to play the songs in the original layout.

## Evaluation Meters

There are three colors of meters with two characters each. Each color of meter has a different pair.

* Blue (Beard Burger Master and Colonel Noodle) Imitation (How closely the player follows the teacher's lines)
* Orange (Chop Chop Master Onion and Hairdresser Octopus) Free-Style (How much freestyling the player does)
* Purple (Guru Ant and Instructor Moosesha) Funky Flow (The amount of "swing" your rap has)

## Playstation 4 Version

On the 15th of December 2015, PaRappa The Rapper 2 was added to the PSN store for PS4 as part of Sony rolling out PS2 games for PS4. It's emulated, not remastered, which means the game is almost exactly the same as the PS2 version. The only differences are that it has been upscaled to 1080p and you can earn PS trophies (though no platinum). Some users have experienced lag with modern TVs, but others say there isn't. Though it doesn't make the game unplayable.

## Censorship

Similar to *Um Jammer Lammy*, this game has a little bit of censorship here and there when transitioning from Japan to the U.S. (but not as extreme as the aforementioned game). These include:

* In the Stage 1 song "Toasty Buns", Beard Burger Master's line "We cook the best, **tastes better than wine**!" was replaced with "We cook the best, **you better get in line**!", this was because the ESRB didn't want a wine reference in an E-rated game.

* In the Stage 3 song "BIG", Guru Ant's line "I am the **lord**, everybody knows my name," was replaced by "I am the **man**, everybody knows my name,". The reason for this was that the ESRB didn't want any religious people getting offended. This also happens in the Stage 6 song "Food Court", but, strangely, while the audio is censored, the subtitles say "I am the you all know my name, (NOW!)".

* Here's a non-lyrical change: In the Stage 4 song " Sista Moosesha", one of the Double-Dutch machines depicts a woman in a bikini. This graphic was changed to depict her in a full dress. Not a lot of people notice this one, probably because this particular change is so minor.

## Trivia

* One of the reasons practice segments (with Boxy Boy) were added to *PaRappa The Rapper 2* is because Rodney Greenblat had difficulties completing stages in *Um Jammer Lammy*.
* Boxy Boy has some unused additional practice dialogue.
* The VS mode tunes of stage 8 are different from what the stage provides in story mode.
* The beginning and the ending of the game has a remixed version of Sunny Funny's "Come a Long Way".
* This is the only game where Chop Chop Master Onion is not the first teacher in-game.
* Pronouns in their lines such as "I" with "you" change during the actual play. Parappa will keep these lines unchanged (i.e. he will say "Get **me** out of this and now push the button" instead of "Get **you** out of this and now push the button".)
* The themes that play during the stage selection are music box renditions of songs in-game.
	+ Town Hall - Come a Long Way (more specifically the parts where no lyrics are being sung)
	+ Stage 1 (Beard Burgers) - Awful theme of Toasty Buns
	+ Stage 2 (TV Fun) - Awful theme of Romantic Love
	+ Stage 3 (Parappa's House) - Awful theme of BIG (more specifically the parts when Lesson 2 and 4 begin)
	+ Stage 4 (Special Armed Forces Training building) - Awful theme of Sista Moosesha
	+ Stage 5 (Hair Salon) - Awful theme of Hair Scare!
	+ Stage 6 (Parappa's Basement) - Beginning segment of Food Court.
	+ Stage 7 (Noodle Syndicate HQ) - Awful theme of Noodles Can't Be Beat (more specifically the part when Parappa and Colonel Noodle are rapping)
	+ Stage 8 (Final Stage) - Unused Awful theme of Always Love! played at the beginning of the stage's VS. Mode.
* The song "Toasty Buns" has been reused and remixed into *Food Court* as the main pitch and in a couple of parts in "Always Love!". Even the music box themes are in the "Toasty Buns: pitch. It's the most used song in the game.
	+ The backtrack for "Toasty Buns" is also used in the Stage 5 cutscene for the "Hair Scare!" song.
* Data in the McDonald’s Happy Disc reveals that this game was intended to have a 2 Player mode like *Um Jammer Lammy*, but was either scrapped due to technical difficulties or time constraints. The files for it contains a very buggy meter with unused textures for PaRappa and all of the teachers.
* Somehow, the mouth of Hairdresser Octopus is completely open on the title screen of the game.

## References

1. ↑ TCRF
2. ↑ PTR2 McDonald's Demo BETA hats (Blue, Pink, Yellow & more)