Graphically, there's no anti-aliasing so the old PS1 sprites are now showing their age. In fact, it's just a
straight port with no touching up, which is a shame. One thing added is an option to choose between 4:3 and
16:9 screen ratio, although this is a complete waste of time because it's a 16:9 screen so why would you
want to crop the sides and look at small images of the characters filling the space instead? Also, the game
was 16:9 to begin with, so there's no point to this.
On the plus side, the game has great stereo sound separation, and my particular favourite was the toilet level
(see this Youtube link), although
if you want something bizarre, try out this
'real' level 4 clip, which normally
features the chicken making a cake.
For those who want to have more than a solitary experience, the Ad Hoc Multiplayer option allows you to connect
with other players who have the game, competing against them, such that you can sort-of go head-to-head, except
that it will just take each player through each stage turn by turn before you can compare the results, so not
really head-to-head.
'Game Sharing' just sends a demo of the first level to other PSP owners wirelessly and there's also the option
to download tune remixes which you can save onto the Memory Stick, although given that the UMD can hold 1.8Gb of
data, why weren't these on here already?
Overall, PaRappa the Rapper is still a fun game to play, but you'll complete it within a couple of
hours at most and after that there's not much to go back to, so even a penny under twenty quid seems a bit
steep. If Sony want to resurrect a classic which would be fantastic to play while out and about, please bring
out the wonderful
Ico.
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