PSY.S. Matsuura hated appearing in music videos and began working on interactive software as an alternative outlet. Game development started in 1994, before the release of the PlayStation. At the time Sony Computer Entertainment was attempting to produce as many games as they could, which were worked on in two divisions. One division worked on popular genres and the other, internally known as "Division Zero", according to artist Rodney Greenblat, "just did whatever". PaRappa was a product of Division Zero. Japan Studio assisted on development. Greenblat got involved with the project after an SCE producer suggested that he and Matsuura work together, having both expressed interest in working with the PlayStation console. Greenblat had already worked with other divisions within Sony and was fairly popular in Japan, particularly for his CD-Rom Dazzeloids. Similar to the Paper Mario series, all of the characters appear to be two-dimensional beings cut from paper while the surroundings are primarily three-dimensional. On his website, Greenblat remembers that making the characters flat was Matsuura's idea, after creating a mock-up with characters from Greenblat's Dazzeloids CD-ROM. The game's title is a wordplay referencing the flat characters; "PaRappa" is a variant of the Japanese word for "paper thin". After deciding on designing a music game Matsuura went through multiple ideas such as having a game centered around singing or playing the guitar. Matsuura was particularly inspired by the musical practice of sampling and claimed "the most interesting thing about sampling was people’s voices", and thus wanted to create a music game using actual voices and by extension one based around rap. By the time Greenblat began working on the game, the basic structure of the game had formed. Greenblat would create characters based on outlines created by Matsuura. Several of the main characters were already designed and owned by Greenblat, including PJ Berri and Katy Kat. One of the first designs Greenblat created specifically for the game was that of the main character, PaRappa, who initially took the form of a shrimp. Occasionally Greenblat's designs would cause the game's story to change. Greenblat noted that he ended up having more input because the other team members felt that some of his characters exceeded their expectations, which prompted the writers to adapt to his characters by changing the story itself. For instance, after Greenblat came up with the idea of an onion for the Karate teacher character, the idea