Parappa The Rapper was originally released for the Sony playstation 10 years ago. Since that time, the game spawned a spin-off in Umjammer Lammy, a sequel for the Playstation 2, a short-lived anime series, and numerous goods were released, with even a Parappa-themed restaurant, Cafe Rodney, open for a time in Tokyo. However, soon after Parappa 2's release in 2001, the game's popularity dropped off and nothing else was released, until now.

Parappa PSP is a port of the original game, offering a few new extras. The game play is exactly the same as before, with you following the rhythm and mimicking the lyrics of the instructors on every stage, getting ranks of good, bad, or awful for points. Once you have completed a stage once, going back and replaying it will allow you to reach to cool status, which then leads to the stage's visuals changing, as Parappa takes over the song, letting you rap freestyle. The game only offers six stages, which can be played through rather quickly, although you can always try for a high score every time you replay them.

The port to PSP is well-done. The game can be played in its original 4:3 aspect ratio, or switched to 16:9, in which the game has been accomodated for; there's no screen stretching to be found. Parappa's graphics were simplistic ten years, which acutally has helped the game in aging well, but even then, it still looks rather dated. Other than adapting the game for widescreen, Sony didn't do anything to upgrade the visuals. Music remains catchy, making the game just as much fun to play now as it was a decade ago.

New to the PSP version is Multiplayer for up to four players and gamesharing, but the big new extra to Parappa are the remixed songs; You can download different versions of the game's background music. If you can't get your PSP online, the music can be downloaded from http://www.jp.playstation.com/scej/title/parappa/top.html. As of this writing, only the music for the first stage is available, offering funk, hard rock, disco, and Asian themed variations to the background music.