Parappa the Rapper by Mike Sholars: Book Review

I didn’t have a playstation and my parents never listened to rap or hip-hop music so it’s no wonder that I never heard about the videogame Parappa the Rapper until my mid-20s.  I note with some embarrassment that my first exposure to the game was the show Robot Chicken which Sholars mentions in his book.  The fact that he points out most of the instances on that show are problematic don’t really help me going into this review.

Parappa the Rapper is book number 30 in the Boss Fight Book series and I picked it up recently to add to my ever-growing stack.  Written by Mike Sholars who is a writer, editor, podcast host, and journalist his work has appeared in Kotaku, VICE, Polygon, and HuffPost.  He’s also an avid fan of the videogame Parappa the Rapper and his book is a beautiful and careful examination of why the game means so much to him and to the history of gaming.

Parappa the Rapper is a narrative-driven action/rhythm game, meaning that the gameplay involves the player matching button presses to symbols on the screen.  Sholars points out that Parappa is also effectively a musical, most of it being rap and so success in the game is being able to press the right button at the right moment in order to acquire the right amount of points and not disrupt the flow.

Sholars offers a good summation of gameplay in his book when he says:

Nothing in PaRappa‘s gameplay is meant to mimic the act or mental process of rapping, but the button inputs all help the player become immersed in the context of each rhyme, and in the greater rhythm of each song’s flow. It’s not a rap simulator it’s a drumming-a-beat-on-a-cafeteria-table-during-lunch simulator. Success or failure is a matter of following the programmed flow in rhythm, but high-level play can only be achieved by going beyond the written instructions.(45)

Videogames like Rockband and Guitar Hero would effectively create the simulation of playing music, but Sholars does point out through his book that Parappa managed to accomplish a lot of similar gameplay before these games became popular.  

And, let’s be real, before they also largely dropped off the face of the earth.

Sholars’s book digs into the elements of rap music, and as a reader I appreciated how passionate he was about the genre.  Each reference in his book was never an obligation to connect the game to the genre which inspired, instead it was a keen reminder of it.  Sholars actually knows who Wu-Tang Clan is, and he uses this band’s music to explain how Parappa’s aesthetic never talked down to its audience.  Rap as a genre of music has at times become a sort of decoration in videogames, and so when Sholars is able to demonstrate that Parappa is trying to use and celebrate the artistry of rap it places the game in an important position in the context of videogame history.

Another place where Scholar’s book really shines is when he discusses how Parappa presented race.  He points out in one passage the experience of being a person of color who plays video games:

At a certain point you wonder if there’s a reason no one like you exist in the stories you love.  When you meet Barret Wallace with his gun arm in Final Fantasy VII, you’re unaware that he’ll become the standard counterpoint used against you whenever you bring up the lack of diversity in games for decades to come.  You become so starved for fleeting moments of validation on screen that you would latch onto side characters that remind you of yourself (if you tilt your head and blur your eyes).  You accept the characters you’re given, no matter how flat or broadly-sketched they may be.  (21).

I went into the book with the knowledge that there were few, if any, major characters who were black in the video games I have played in my life.  The difference became, after reading this passage, and the rest of the book, was how I began to understand that reality.  As of this writing, I can’t even think of a game I’ve played where the protagonist was black or latinx.  A lot of the games I played growing up were Nintendo titles, games that I love and adore, and also games that were largely populated by white characters, animals, or monsters.  Even when I began shifting to the Playstation most of the games I had and played with any regularity were populated almost entirely by white protagonists.  And as for the PC Games I played, all of them were Real-Time Strategy games in which case I was largely leading and directing troops, most of whom were European.

I had to process that the media I consumed was mostly white.

In and of itself this is not a bad thing.  It is a problem however because I’m not the only person who plays videogames.  Scholar’s book provided an important voice that I have not seen much of in the discourse about video games, and he writes it with an honesty that left me moved intellectually and emotionally.  In one particular passage he narrates the injustice one of the voice actors for the game experienced during the production of the game.  Sandra Williams, the actor who provided the voice for Instructor Mooselini, was effectively cheated out of $4000 payment for her work in the game by a producer who absconded with the funds.

This story, quite frankly, pissed me off.  As it should to anyone who has a soul.

Scholar’s provides sections of interviews he did with Williams, and speaking to her comes away with an important reflection.

Talking to Sandra Williams, I realized I had never talked to a Black woman who was involved in creating a major video game before. Every time I’ve watched behind-the-scenes video or interviewed a developer, I was facing those same dimly-lit rooms full of White guys I imagined as a kid. (67)

This was another moment for me to realize, I never remembered black women in video games growing up.  There was Impa in Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, but she was one fictional character, and she wasn’t given lines of actual dialogue.  Despite the fact that I live and work in a region that has a strong african american population, I never had a teacher who was black until college, and even my current job has few people of color on staff.  Videogames have been a significant and important source of media for me in terms of my emotional and intellectual development, and that media was largely devoid of black people.  

Sholars book made me stop and consider how I was exposed and shown people of color in games, which was, honestly, not at all.

It’s the strength of this book that Sholars uses these realities to reveal his own experience with isolation as a gamer, and hope for better representation in the next generation of games.

Scholar’s book examines Parappa the Rapper through a personal and critical lens to understand it as a unique game, not simply because it was visually distinct.  Each level is unforgettable (especially that damn chicken level) because of the characters that Parappa encounters, and even more so how the music in their levels builds the narrative of the story.  Parappa the Rapper is a game about recognising and overcoming personal insecurities as the protagonist tries to find strength within himself to overcome real world obstacles like getting his driver’s license, crashing his Dad’s car, making a cake for his crush’s birthday, or holding in a poop.

These are realities everyone can relate to, and Sholars observes his own struggles were reflected in the game:

The worst part of my own years as an out-of-place teenager where the Carrie-adjacent levels of bullying. An untreated, mental health issues I had to endure.  But the second worst part was feeling completely abandoned on a cosmic level when all this shit was going down. 

Then I played for Parappa.  And the games lovingly crafted title character was close to how I saw myself.  Closer than anything and come before and closer than most things since.  But the reflection of my problems wasn’t as important as a solution to those problems the game offered–I gotta believe.  (176).

Parappa the Rapper is a game that wins a player over due in no small part to its unrelenting optimism.  It never becomes so positive to the point of becoming unrealistic.  This may not seem terribly important, but if I look at the game Parappa the Rapper alongside it’s contemporaries, it was a videogame that offered a narrative of optimism through attaining personal agency and overcoming insecurity.  Rather than just shoot an enemy to overcome an obstacle Parappa danced and sang, which, granted, from afar sounds like the plotline of an episode of Glee.  But unlike that program, Parappa leaves players with a sense of joy, and a desire to return and listen to the songs again and again.

A book should ultimately speak for itself, and a review of a book should only ever offer a reader enough incentive to pick the book up for themselves to come away with their own thoughts.  I have yet to read a bad Boss Fight Books book, and Scholar’s book is yet another great addition to the series. His passion, his analysis, his investigations, his methodology, everything is well executed.  By the end of the book I wanted to play Parappa the Rapper, not because I only knew it through Robot Chicken, but because Sholars made me believe.

And as he demonstrated, that’s all it takes to make a character memorable, and important.

Joshua “Jammer” Smith

10.13.2023

Like what you’re reading? Buy me a coffee & support my Patreon. Please and thank you.

https://www.patreon.com/jammerdraws