20 Remakes and Remasters That Are Worse Than The Original

16. PaRappa the Rapper (2017)

NanaOn-Sha and Sony’s PaRappa the Rapper is one of these games that you might not believe really exists, never mind was successful, if you hadn’t lived through its arrival, success and dispersal into obscurity. But we did, and it does.

Fundamentally a rhythm game – a genre which has gone in and out of fashion over the years with the dance mat, Wii and other fad tech – PaRappa allows us to control the titular, uhh, dog? boy? thing? as he learns to rap and do karate from a, well, a sentient onion, in order to win the affections of a sort of half-flower half-girl named Sunny Funny. It sounds like an acid dream, and it also sounds terrible. And it is – but despite all this, it’s downright addictive.

Now, we didn’t expect to see a return from PaRappa, but Sony reckoned the culture had come full circle and was ready to let the dogs out again in 2017, setting their own Japan Studio the task of bringing the game to the PlayStation 4. After all, how hard could it be adapting a fixed camera game with simple, repetitive animations? Well.

PaRappa the Rapper Remastered has hella lag, and while the visuals are upscaled, bright and shiny, the game itself is actually just an emulated port of the 2007 PSP version! Shocking, shameful, and not worth any discount they can put on it. Don’t pack your PS1 away just yet.