Project Rap Rabbit devs discuss the rap-battle gameplay element

A portion of a Siliconera interview with Masaya Matsuura of NanaOnSha, and Keiichi Yano of iNiS J...

S: That rap-battle element of Project Rap Rabbit is quite ambitious. What was the seed behind this more involving back-and-forth system?

Yano: We wanted to create something that was new and fresh but at the same time familiar. We didn’t just want to focus on rhythm mechanics, but we did wanted to look at other types of mechanics that would be valid for a new type of music rhythm action game. As we were thinking about what the storyline would be, there’s a lot of messages we wanted to put in that, so we thought rap would be the perfect vehicle for that. Not to mention, obviously, a lot of people can look back to PaRappa as part of that lineage.

I think between those two elements is why we ended up settling on rap, and it allowed us to really think about “what rap really is” and what goes on in the minds of rappers when they’re actually doing it. That whole exercise of thinking about that is how we landed into this unique gameplay that we developed. It’s very interesting, and it’s different because it’s not just so focused on the rhythm. That’s where we’re seeing a lot of excitement on the idea.

If you’ve ever seen a freestyle rap battle, you’re kinda queuing off of each other. You’re listening as well as emoting, and as Matsuura-san mentioned earlier, that call-and-response mechanism was originally in PaRappa as well. He’s always had the idea that musicians don’t just play music, they’re listening to the music at the same time as they’re playing it. And that was an important concept for us to incorporate into this as well.