“You wanna be big?” That’s how this rap song — composed by Masaya Matsuura and titled Big — starts. It’s silly line from an equally silly game, PaRappa the Rapper 2. In this song, a pint-sized Guru Ant (Dean Bowman) tries to teach PaRappa (Dred Foxx) to be confident and strong through a simple repeat-after-me session. And, well, there’s several miscommunication in the whole process.

PaRappa the Rapper 2 is, thematically, about growing out of childish selfishness, and becoming a mature person. Still, the whole game is narrated in a Sunday cartoon fashion. It begins when PaRappa, who’ve won a month’s supply of noodles, become fed-up by his girlfriend one day when she served some pasta. She exclaims, “you’re a baby,” and PaRappa…doesn’t take that comment lightly. At one point, he goes back to his father’s (an inventor) office for guidance. Instead, he gets shrunk into a size of an ant by his father’s shrink-ray. Guru Ants finds him scared and frightened, and mistakenly believes that PaRappa’s problem is merely confidence. While calming PaRappa, the guru himself becomes frightened when the shrink ray blows him (“A trick with a twist!?”) and PaRappa up to planet size, then back to an ant again repeatedly.

PaRappa the Rapper 2‘s prequel was a highly popular Simon-says games, and the grandfather of Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero. Like those series, the game had you repeat the button-presses described by the “teacher” with the correct timing. Unique to this series is the ability to improvise the rap, allowing you to score more points. With vibrant paper graphics like Paper Mario, and a completely cartoony lyrics, it’s hard not to smile when playing this comical game.

PaRappa the Rapper 2 was released for the PS2. No other port exists.

Extra!

Title: Prince Fleaswallow’s RAP
Game: PaRappa the Rapper
Composer: Masaya Matsuura, Yoshihisa Suzuki
Vocals: Lenky Don, Dred Foxx
Comments: Prince Fleaswallow is teaching PaRappa how to work in a flea market.

Title: Instructor Mooselini’s RAP
Game: PaRappa the Rapper
Composer: Masaya Matsuura, Yoshihisa Suzuki
Vocals: Sandra, Dred Foxx
Comments: Instructor Mooselini is examining PaRappa for his driver’s license.

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Here’s a happy circus music from Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg: Jack-in-the-Box!, composed by Mariko Nanba and Tomoya Ohtani. It’s a relatively simple composition that experiments with many circus-related sound effects. It also doesn’t sound creepy, even when it’s dark.

The plot behind Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg is simple: Morning Land, the parallel universe where its always morning, and its denizens consists almost entirely of chickens and roosters, is overtaken by the dark and evil crows. Meanwhile, back in the other universe, Billy Hatcher and his friends finds a beaten chick. Quick to identify the culprit, Billy handily defeats the crows flying nearby. Apparently, this is enough to convince the Holy God of all Chickens, Menie-Funie. He transports Billy to Morning Land, and instructs Billy to use the giant eggs to squish all enemies, and bring morning back to Morning Land.

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg is a platformer designed by the creators who made the Sonic series horrible: Yuji Naka and Shun Nakamura. Believe it or not, the game is actually really good. Part of it may have to do with a gameplay that, also believe it or not, have similarities with Katamari Damacy. When Billy picks up an egg abundantly scattered around the level, he can use it to make taller and longer jumps, as well as defeating enemies by rolling into them. Picking up fruits will make the egg larger, and once it reaches its size limit, you have an option to hatch it. A hatched egg provides either pets or items. Pets are used offensively to destroy enemies with great power and range. Items can replenish your health (the only way, I might add), provide another life, give you new abilities, and so forth. Both pets and items can also be used for puzzle solving as well.

The other big part that makes Billy Hatcher fun, of course, is its design takes from Super Mario 64. Billy has to collect Courage Badges, the game’s equivalent of a star, to progress further to the next level. This means you’ll be revisiting the same level often, with various different missions such as racing, defeating a set number of enemies, and hatching a specific egg. Additionally, many flaws from the Sonic games has been ironed out in this game. The character’s speed, for example, has been slowed down significantly, so cheap deaths are rare. Since the level isn’t designed like a race track, you have more control over the camera, and thus, less likely to encounter it getting stuck in inappropriate places. Lastly, the physics and components are very responsive. The only element I found annoyingly glitchy were the parallel rails.

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg was released for the Gamecube. No other port exists, although there are rumors a sequel may be in consideration.

Extra!

Title: Lullaby Of Snow Mountain
Game: Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg
Composer: Mariko Nanba, Tomoya Ohtani

Title: G.I.A.N.T.E.G.G! ~Opening Theme~
Game: Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg
Composer: Mariko Nanba, Tomoya Ohtani
Comments: The children are spelling out, GRAB EGG.

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As far as I know, we only have one J-Pop music in this series (and the first one is more J-Jazz than -Pop), so lets bump that one more. Here’s Lights, sung by Eri Nobichika. The song appears in the excellent Tetris-based puzzle game, Lumines.

Like Tetris, Lumines involves placing 2 x 2 blocks of 2 colored bricks falling from the top of the screen in a specific formation. This case, it’s placing the same colored bricks in a 2 x 2 square. To complicate the things further, there’s a vertical beat bar that periodically moves across the screen. The 2 x 2 combo doesn’t disappear until that beat bar passes over it. In fact, you can add onto that 2 x 2 with more 2 x 2 formations for bigger points, before the beat bar passes through all of them. Therein lies the secret of Lumines: to get a better score, you have to form your combos to the beat of the background music.

Playing Lumines is like having a sensory overload, especially the visuals and audio. Like Bit.Trip Runner, each action creates its own sound to blend in with the techno background music. With strobe-light and colored-laser visuals, the entire game makes you feels like a DJ mixing music in a hip-hop party. Seeing your quick-thinking translate to a multi-colored spectacle is an exhilarating — and sometimes frustrating — experience.

Lumines was originally released for the PSP. Copies are available for PS2 as disc; the PS3 and Xbox 360, via download; and PC and iOS devices, via Steam and App Store respectively.

Extra!

Title: I Hear The Music in My Soul
Game: Lumines
Composer: Eri Nobichika
Vocals: Eri Nobichika

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