I drew and named all of those characters, as well as the world that they inhabit. The crazy great story was written by Gabin Ito and he asked for several “teacher” characters who would challenge Parappa to rapping contests. “Parappa” is some kind of play on Japanese words that means “paper thin”. Matsuura liked it too, and he had come up with a name for the game: Parappa The Rapper. I made several sketches and Sony Creative chose a dog with a pointed cap. Matsuura wanted the main character to be an upbeat, lovable slightly naive dog. I started drawing a wacky funny cute American suburban land where my characters could live and play. For some reason Pony Pony did not make the cut. I got word from Sony Creative that they wanted to put my colorful funky PJ, Katy, and Sunny characters in the game. Playstation was a first generation a 3d platform, a real technical feat at the time.I returned to New York and set about making sketches for the characters and world. Matsuura’s animation people loved the flatness of my work, and thought of creating flat characters who move around in a 3D world. When I went to meet Matsuura’s team, they had already made a crude animation demo of the rap-music-simon-says-game using my characters from my 1993 CD-ROM Dazzeloids. He was already a fan of my artwork, and when he found out I was already working for Sony, he asked the people at Sony Creative Products if I would design the characters and world for his game. His game was an interesting “simon says” that used rap beats. Sony Creative was designing products with these fun characters.Little did I know in another Sony office, Matsaya Matsuura, a well know pop musician was developing a game for a brand new game platform called Playstation. I designed a bored brown bear named PJ Berri, a cute precocious girl named Pony Pony, a blue fashionable cat named Katy Kat, and a super happy flower girl named Sunny Funny. I was hired to design cute characters for printed products, clothing and toys. In 1994 I was hired by Sony Creative Products, a licensing company inside Sony Music Japan. “How did you originally get involved with the Parappa project?” If we keep talking and blogging about how great Parappa IS, then the possibilities are all there. All people can still enjoy the old Parappa games and characters. The good thing about “I don’t know” is that it means the future is open. If only! Ah but that’s all in the distant past. My dream was that Parappa would have been Sony’s ultimate mascot, as Super Mario is to Nintendo, so Parappa should have been to Sony. Why? I’ve thought long and deeply about this question! There are many possible answers, theories, complicated circumstances and even a few facts that may account for Parappa’s disappearance from the game world. As of this writing (updated January 2022) there is no plan for another Parappa game. “When will the next Parappa Game come out?”
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