It’s been seven years since PaRappa the Rapper 2 hit the Playstation 2 with a wet thud. Five years after the little dog, so confident in his mic skills that he walked around in a hat with his own face on it, brought rhythm games into the mainstream, the world moved on. PaRappa just didn’t have the flow he once did and when PaRappa left the gaming scene, so did the mad creative duo that birthed him. Game design maverick Masaya Matsuura went on to make new variations on his other creation, Vib Ribbon, while artist Rodney Greenblat disappeared from gaming altogether. Leave it the Wii’s wacky controller to bring these fellas back together for some more music-based shenanigans.
Of course, their new Wii game, Major Minor’s Majestic March, looks like it could have been made during the heyday of Greenblat and Matsuura’s collaboration. Foregoing the paper-style 2D of PaRappa and UmJammer Lammy, Major Minor’s rough 3D graphics would look more at home in a Dreamcast launch title than they do on hardware with more horsepower than the Gamecube. At least at first.
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