Whoever thought Parappa the Rapper was for kids and if you know your nut-buster from your Helicopter then you’ll find what you’re looking for in rude-boy-in-a-car-park sim B-Boy. But be warned: middle-agers could hurt themselves trying to recreate some of the moves shown in this review. Please leave it to the professionals and just buy a sports car if you want to relive your youth.

B-Boy is a rhythm game that looks at the niche but stylish pastime of breakdancing. Most people think breakdancing is spinning around on your head for ten minutes while Run DMC blasts out in the background but a lot of things have changed since then; now they grab their nuts sometimes, and women are allowed to compete (but not with the nut-grabbing).

The ‘battle’ games are essentially a rhythm game. You have a beat bar circling around the base of your b-boy, which shows the timing of the track. You then have to start a move by pressing one of the ‘power buttons’ (X, Triangle, O or Square). You can sustain a move by tapping the shoulder buttons to the beat but eventually you have to move on to another move. Linking moves gets you more respect and keeping stuff on the beat means you receive ‘mad props’ from the in-game homies.

The graphics don’t look too bad for PSP but given the size of the screen you’d think they’d be able to hide the jaggies on the main characters. One problem I did find when playing B-Boy on PSP was that the beat bar is essential to playing - without it you’re buggered. Where the screen isn’t the biggest you’ll sometimes find it hard to read the bar as it goes around, especially as the further you get into the game colour co-ordination (matching the colours of the buttons with colours on the beat bar) becomes important. It’s hard enough to see if you’ve got 20-20 vision, but I’m colour blind so it was pretty much impossible!

To be honest although the gameplay in B-Boy is pretty shallow and unoriginal that’s what most people look for in a quick play arcade game, which is essentially what the PSP is for. The conversion doesn’t seem at all different from the PS2 version; there’s nothing extra to keep things interesting, only small issues that make the game a little harder to recommend. If you’re a fan of trip-hop music and don’t mind mindless button-tapping to the beat then this is definitely up your alley. For those who want a bit more meat in their PSP games there are plenty of other games out there.