Good Game Get! Gitaroo Man Lives!

I remember when I first played Parappa The Rappa, as it was a birthday gift from my parents. I had my PS1 hooked up to my parents bedroom TV and as a young Kyle, I used to lay down and play amazing titles such as Crash Bandicoot, Jet Motto, and Final Fantasy VII. Parappa The Rappa was an absolutely amazing gift because I had been so stoked about it from reading a review in PSM.

The memories aren’t necessarily vivid because the game was so awesome (it was, by the way), but vivid because I remember being such a dense little kid and not knowing a few things about the game, or at least not reading the instruction booklet. I asked my parents to return the game back to Electronics Boutique because It was broken, not literally of course, but every time I finished the third stage, the game would game over, and reset. I didn’t understand this, became really frustrated and ended up blaming the game.

They took it back to Electronic Boutique and to today’s surprise, they actually took the game back, and refunded their money. The next day, I decided I still wanted to play Parappa so we went to K-Mart and I picked up a different copy. Again, the game stopped on the third level, and it was a month before I finally figured out that I need to change the difficult setting from Easy to Normal for the game to allow me to play through all of the stages.

I think the default was at Normal but my pansy ass wanted it on Easy and for that, I screwed myself over.

Regardless of my ignorance, Parappa the Rappa was the first rythm game I had ever played and for that, it’ll always have a special place in my heart. Dance Dance Revolution of course was the second rhythm game I had ever played and for some reason throughout various points in my life DDR has sort of had revivals within my circles of friends. In middle school it was with some cousins and then in high school, it was my best friend Colt, and his coercing of his Mom to buy it for their XBOX so that she could exercise.

Fucking stroke of genius, Colt.

I don’t even remember what remix/mix/galactic edition the game was, and of course I’m aware that the North American copies always blew when stacked up against their Japanese counter parts, but it was still a lot of fun and we tore it up for hours and hours on the weekend.

We had friends.

I think.

Then along came super hardcore rocking out, Guitar Hero, and it’s arch nemesis Rock Band, and that wacky colorful Japanese music game goodness was gone and replaced with American dark colored bad assery or something. Don’t get me wrong, the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games are hella fun but pretending to be a rock star is a whole lot less fun than pretending to be a rapping dog or an outrageous dancing anime chracter against a trippy green screen music video.

Plus, the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games are extremely peripheral heavy, and they’re expensive and clutter-prone and usually end up collecting dust, once you’ve mastered all of the songs, or at least figured out that buying the songs is a huge fucking rip off.

The magic behind Parappa the Rappa is that all you needed was your PS1 controller to enjoy an amazing rhythm game. The same controller that came with your console, the very day you unwrapped it on Christmas morning.

Gitaroo Man is a game. It’s a rhythm/music game.

It’s a guitar game just like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, but it’s colorful, has great original music, a wonderfully cheesy story, and unlike the other games, it’s not full of itself.

Best of all though, Gitaroo Man is not peripheral reliant and all you need is that DualShock 2 controller or the built-in controls of your PSP.

I missed out on Gitaroo Man when it first came out in the states on the PS2 a few years ago and that disappoints me, and if you’re a big fan of the series, it probably disappoints you too. I finally did get a hold of a PSP copy of the game which is an exact port of the PS2 game with a few bonuses.

Gitaroo Man is a rhythm narrative and I say this because, when compared to the story behind the Rock Band or Guitar Hero games, your goal is not to become a rockstar, but to save planet Gitaroo, grow as a human, and fall in love. Pretty noble, right? Exactly. That’s the kind of game Gitaroo Man is.

The game plays out with a cinematic/gameplay/cinematic/etc format, and it works well as the story progression and cinematics are a treat to watch. Who has ever wanted to come home from a bad day of school to have their ridiculous cute dog tell them they’re the next Gitaroo Man and need to save Planet Gitaroo. Not only is the dog cute, the whole world is cute, as the developers did such an excellent job of taking this relevant punkish comic illustrations and translating them to polygonal goodness.

Of course the music is good, if you were wondering, it is a music game after all, but the variety of the guitar driven songs are wide and strong, and if you’ve ever wanted to serenade someone with your analog stick and action button, it’s quite possible to do in Gitaroo Man.

Her name is Kirrah by the way, and for all intents and purposes, your name will be U-1.

U-1 is a sissy boy and he whines a lot, but by the end of his short journey he’ll be a man, or at least a Gitaroo Man, which has to count for something. U-1 plays the Gitaroo with the action button and the analog stick, and you block incoming Gitaroo attacks with triangle, circle, square, and x.

The experience when playing the Gitaroo is absolutely visceral as a line is in charge of pitch changes, and the action button is in charge of guitar strums, or touches, depending on how you think the Gitaroo is actually played. It really gives you a sense of being responsible for the guitar track coming out of your PSP and can be quite engrossing if you allow it to be.

The game is as contagious as something at the top of the pop charts, unless you’re into indie stuff and then it’s exactly the same, except your little hipster heart may feel twangs of guilt, for enjoying such a simple pop art experience with perfect little (nonsensical?) haiku messages in between chapters to show character growth, and maybe, just maybe, a slight growth in the player too.

Gitaroo Man Lives! is the culmination of everything I’ve ever wanted to see in a rhythm game, as you see I can’t make video games, I can only play and write about them, which is okay, but I assure you, I’d like to put my name on this game.

I’d autograph copies of it every chance I could get to loyal cult fans, for it’s most certainly something I’d be proud of.