I've been waking up to that clock for almost 5 years now - booyah! Also, I hate to 'harsh on your vibe,' but your amazing Rammy medicom figure was an eBay mainstay for years on end, often closing without bids for less than $10. Yet, being a moron, I never got around to buying one.
I, too, am a massive Lammy fan, and usually get laughed out of the building when I express that viewpoint. In my opinion it destroys not only Parappa 1 and 2, but everything NanaOn-Sha have made to date. By far! It's also the only game I've ever given serious thought to starting a fan site for, but sadly that idea never really got off the ground. It sucks - I even talked to Rodney about it back in 99 and he not only agreed to let me use all of his already existing art without copyright restrictions, but also hinted that he might be down with doing some original art for the site. Yes, I'm a total fool for not following through with it.
Speaking of being a total moron, check out THIS move. Back in 2000 I visited Japan, and one of my goals on the trip was to hunt down and buy one of the two obscure/rare/
OOP/etc Um Jammer Lammy guitars by Fernandes. One of them is yellow and is a real-life replica of the guitar Lammy plays in the game, and the other is one of those cool Fernandes bean-shaped guitars with the built-in speaker, adorned with Lammy art. I visited numerous guitar shops in several cities and never was able to find it. Or so I thought. Upon returning home and looking through my pictures, look what I found:
Look in the upper-left. The yellow guitar. That's it. I was staring DIRECTLY AT IT and was so blinded by the flurry of rad guitars that I didn't even notice! I would've bought it on the spot, had I realized! AGHHH.
I even returned to that same (Kobe) guitar store 2 years later and tried in horribly broken english to ask about it, and received a laugh and a shake of the head. The guy working there did seem to know what I was talking about, though!
On a more positive note, I
have managed to pick up some cool Parappa/Lammy related junk, including all the usual keychains/plush toys/stationary/soundtracks/etc. These are probably my favorite promo items:
The infamous Parappa bus banner. That's right, this was actually made to promote the US version of the game on the sides of buses.
This is a cool Lammy floor sticker, made of thick vinyl and made to be stuck on the floor of a game shop. It's about 24" wide and 18" high and, of course, is un-stuck.
Of course, none of this compares to the thrill of getting to see some of the best songs from the game performed LIVE, as I think old JackFrost did. I tried my absolute hardest to get in, but by then my meager Playstation fansite had been down for almost a year and they weren't buying that I was in any way "press." I'm still bitter to this day. I did manage to record a few songs via the live web-cast of the show, though. Kick-ass shit! I'd do just about anything for a nice video or better audio recording from the show.
About the US version - the lyric changes are disgusting, particularly in Paul Chuck's stage. How anyone could possibly have found lyrics about chopping down trees offensive is far beyond me, but apparently someone at Sony disagrees and saw it fit to change "chopping down trees, just for fun" to "rolling up high, in the sun," among many other head-scratchingly lame modifications. It's almost so bad it's funny -
almost. You might want to pick up the US version for $5 sometime, if you feel like making yourself incredibly angry.
~Rockin' to the beat of the sunnn..~
~
Knowin' that we're here for the funnnn!~
>__<
