PaRappa the Rapper played a significant role in the evolution of Harmonix as a video game developer, ultimately inspiring the creation of the wildly successful music franchises Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
During the latest episode of our monthly interview show IGN Unfiltered, Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos credited Sony's 1996 original PlayStation music rhythm game as being incredibly influential in shaping the studio.
"We had been struggling for years to make this interactive music thing work, but then something happened, which is that rhythm games appeared in Japan," he said. After citing Dance Dance Revolution and Beatmanina, Rigopulos highlighted PaRappa the Rapper as being especially influential, noting that playing it for the first time was "the kind of lightbulb moment" for Harmonix.
"I was just like grinning from ear to ear playing that game and I think at that point we realized video games is how we can do what we're trying to do... where you have this incentive structure for long-term engagement and second of all where there's an actual business model to pay the bills," Rigopulos added, noting it was then they started hiring video game development talent and began prototyping their first game.
When asked if it's fair to trace the inspiration for all of Harmonix music games, including Guitar Hero and Rock Band, back to PaRappa, Rigopulos said, "I think so, yeah. To some degree Beatmanina and some of the early Konami games, but definitely PaRappa was transformative for us."
In celebration of the game's 20th anniversary last year, Sony announced PaRappa the Rapper Remastered at PSX 2016. This new and improved version of NanaOn-Sha's classic music rhythm game released earlier this month for PlayStation 4.
For more on the early days at Harmonix, stay tuned for the first part of our IGN Unfiltered interview with Rigopulos, which goes live later this week.
Alex Osborn is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter and subscribe to his YouTube channel.
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