KoE Blog: Rap Rat vs Mouse Trap
Rat Rap vs Mouse Trap Blog
A Couple 'a Cowboys vs Hasbro
"Ha-cha-cha”
-Mortimer Mouse
Intro
Board games have been around for decades and even centuries. Board games have been changing for all that time. Some innovations were more successful than others, and some stand the test of time. These takes on video games are a part of a unique structure of board games.
Rat Rap, the rapping rat from Rap Rap
“He’s Rap Rat and he’s the boss.”
The Mice, the greedy mice of Mouse Trap.
“It’s every mouse for themselves; don’t get Caught.”
In terms of explaining this one, it’s pretty simple, however there is one important thing that needs to be addressed for this that you’ll see directly under this and in TON
For Rat Rap, we have to specifically mention that we are NOT USING THE CREEPYPASTA. This is specifically the Board Game created by A Couple 'a Cowboys. This includes the actual Video Board game, the VHS videos, commercials and statements from the creators.
For the Mice, they pretty much get everything under Hasbro and its previous publishers.
Rap Rat:
Rap Rat: The Video Board Game (1992)
Rap Rat video NTSC version
Rap Rat video PAL version
RAP RAT IL GIOCO Video
Commercials
Statements made by the creators
Rap Rat Creepypasta (ooooh scary) (We’re not including this)
Mouse Trap:
Board Games
Mouse Trap (1963)
Mouse Trap (2004)
Mouse Trap Card Game (2002)
U-Build Mouse Trap (2010)
Mousetrap Trappers (2015)
Mouse Trap Escape (2022)
Lucky's Leprechaun Trap (2024)
Mouse Trap Smallest Tiny Micro Super Impulse (unknow)
Elefun & Friends Franchise
Elefun and Friends: A Tangled Tale (2008)
Elefun & Friends: Mouse Trap (2013)
Elefun And Friends Chutes And Ladders (2014)
Elefun & Friends: Bingo (2014)
Mouse Trap: Hasbro Board Game
hasbro family game night 3
Motormouth (Game Show)
Commercials & Other Media Worth Noting
Rap Rat was actually a vary interest game to play ngl
Im here ig
Playing mouse trap is lowkey like trying to understand godzilla ultima but harder
We used to make Rats swim with the fishes
Hahaha I am evil shaggy and aparat will curse youuuu!
Disclaimer: This is mainly for fun, so things may be wrong, but you know it's about the journey not the destination. (also probably spelling mistakes but like) also Spoilers.
Background
Get Mellow, Get Yellow, Get The Video Board Game Rap Rat!
Ever heard of Nightmare? Well Rap Rat was created by A Couple 'a Cowboys, literally. It was first created in 1992, after their semi popular hit board game, Nightmare. Rap Rat was created during the boom of VCR Board Games of the 1980s-90s. Many popular board games tried having VCR/VHS games, like Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, the VCR Quarterback, and what’s considered the first game that brought up this initiative idea, Clue VCR Mystery Game. While this idea ultimately failed, it led the way for DVD Board games, which did ultimately fail in the end as well, but both did have a presence in the board game scene.
Rat Rap has a strange reputation in the board game world itself. The game didn’t do that good in sales. While we don’t know the specific numbers of sales, we know that the Cowboys thought of it as a failed product. Compared to its other products it’s made, like Nightmare/Atmosfear, which sold its two millionth board game during the 1993/ In Australia, their home location, it sold 100,000 units only. These number of sales is why Rap Rat was created, to appeal to a younger audience. Since Nightmare is tailored towards teens and adults.
So instead of going against The Gatekeeper and collecting keys, you have to race against Rap Rat and collect Cheese. The game is a more simplified version of Nightmare. You have to land on the same space as your playing piece to collect your cheese colour. Other than this, the main star of the show is Rap Rat.
Rap Rat’s a rat that raps. As the narrator says, he’s the boss. He is pretty much the center of the game, quite literally decorating the game board. His role is to rap and give commands to the Players. He can really hinder or help you, really just depends on how Rap Rat feels. How do you beat Rap Rat, by collecting the aforementioned cheese.
Interestingly, there’s actually two different versions of the game, the PAL and NTSC versions. They do have differences, with the main one being that the NTSC version is a harder version of the game.
Where’s Rap Rat at now? Well, Couple ’a Cowboys eventually went out of business. Funnily enough, Rap Rat was one of the last few products they made before they went out of business. The actual puppet of Rap Rat is lost to time, with the creators themselves not knowing the whereabouts of it.
While Rap Rat may have been a commercial failure, the game itself is regarded as a bad game as well. Many people still remember it to this day, while somewhat in part due to actually knowing the game during its time out. Others remember it for an entirely different reason…
A Game Of Zany Action On A Crazy Contraption!
For thousands of years, board games were pretty simple. When board games became a commercial , they mainly consisted of paper or card board, sometimes wood. They were mainly flat. However, one company decided to take the world of Board Games 3d. That company was Marvin Glass and Associates. MGA mainly did this with the use of the plastic injection molding. This plastic injection was a huge invitation to toys. First made during World War 2 to help with mass-producing products. So when the war ended, many companies and manufacturers got their hands on this. This changes not only to toys.
MGA got their big hit by creating Mr. Machine, launching the company into the limelight. So naturally, they would make more products, with some of those products being board games that use plastic to give them more depth. They created many board and table top games such as Bop the Beetle, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, Operation, or the main focus of today… Mouse Trap.
First made in 1963, Mouse Trap is an interesting Board Game, especially for when it was first made. It was first licensed to Ideal and they made quite the profit from the game. And considering the game is still around to this day, it’s wildly loved; with several different versions.
The game is pretty simple. As you progress through the game board, you have to build the main attraction. The Mouse Trap. The mouse trap has mostly stayed the same throughout the year. It’s pretty much a small Rube Goldberg machine. With multiple different parts and pieces coming into play.
You pretty much have to collect cheese and not be trapped by the trap. It’s fairly simple, as I said before. It was made for ages 6 and up afterall. If you do get caught in the trap, you’re out! All of it is decided by a roll of the dice.
At a curtain point this game was acquired by Hasbro, which now owns the rights to the game. From this point on, Mouse Trap has gone on to have many different iterations. It even became a part of Hasbro’s Elfun and Friends line. The franchise has been douing strong for years and years to come. Perhaps the real mouse trap was the friends we made along the way (BTW this game is actually atrocious to play)
Weapons and Equipment
Rap Rat
Box TV
His Iconic TV that he has around as he is a Video Board Game. You play the game while playing the video on the TV.
Space Suit
He has a space suit that has a Jetpack on it. He uses this to get the “Moon”, which is really just cheese.
Cheese
He got cheese.
Silverware
To eat his cheese.
Rope
He uses rope quite a few times. He uses this to tie up and pull around his cheese. He can also use it like a lasso.
Corkscrew
To screw into his cheese
Saw
To saw into his cheese.
Binoculars
He’s got a pair of binoculars.
Boom Box
A Boom Box to play music. He also dances to it.
Camera
Take pictures, woah.
Stretcher
To hold all his cheese ig.
Net
What do you think it does?
Cheese Puzzle
Rap Rat’s whole game revolves around these. Each player has to finish their puzzle before Rap Rat finishes his cheese. He can just steal or give some to you whenever he feels like.
Mice
The Mouse Trap
This is what the game is pretty much known for. The trap has had a few different versions of what part it uses or how it operates, but there are some constituent things about it. The Mice themselves build this over the course of the game to try and trap the other mice.
However, the part that’s constant with all the traps through the years is the cage at the end that can land on a mouse, capturing them.
Cheese Wedges
Other than the trap, they are also known for their cheese. While originally, the cheese didn’t do much. However, in a more recent version of the game, they can be used to win. If you collect enough pieces to make a whole wheel, then you win.
Spaceship
Each mouse has their own spaceship. These let them traverse the moon to collect their cheese.
Spaceboot
The Spaceboot is used to hit the mice off mountains on the moon. These lets them roll around and collect the cheese moon.
Space Trap
When you roll this, you will be captured by the Space Trap. It will flow over to you and cover you. You’re trapped until someone else gets trapped.
Building tools
They’ve been demonstrated with tools to build their trap together. They have things like Wrenches, Saws, Screwdrivers, Hamers, just to name a few
Alcohol
They drink alcohol, not cool Mice. when they drink this, they go back 2 spaces.
Chute and Ladders
These return, woah. This is used in the Chutes and Ladders game, nothing more.
Special Spaces
Other than the white spaces, there are some special spaces that can be found through the Mouse Trap series.
Mouse Trap 1963
Go Back Spaces: These send you back a curtain amount of spaces.
Mouse Trap 2006
Could not find information
Mouse Trap (Onwards)
Blue Launch-the-Trap Space: Send any Mouse to the Cheesy Danger Zone and activate the trap. When caught, take one of their cheese.
Yellow Add-a-Cheese Space: Get a cheese wedge.
Green Steal-a-Cheese Space: steal a cheese wedge from another player.
Red Lose-a-Cheese Space: you lose a cheese wedge.
Purple Space: Nothing happens.
Mousehole Tunnel Space: travel through tunnels to skip parts of the board.
Lucky's Leprechaun Trap
Same as Mouse Trap (Onwards)
Elefun & Friends
Go Back Spaces: go back on the board a curtain amount of space.
Skills and Abilities
Rap Rat
Rapping Skills
He’s Rap Rat, that’s all he does. For real though, his rapping isn't all that bad. A bit cheesy, no pun intended, yes, but the only thing that makes it really made is the editing and repeating of words.
Duplication
Rap Rat has the uncanny ability to just have multiple versions of himself. And this isn’t just art laid out, they are actively interacting with each other and doing actions together.
Immersion
Rap Rat has been seen entering and exciting the TV that he’s in. He’s even seen bursting through the TV screen as well. He can steal things and bring them to the TV.
Fourth Wall Awareness
Rap Rat directly talked with you, the players throughout the game at a whole point of him being a part of the video. He gives the views commands and can even hear and see if they fail to do the common.
Turn Skipping/Stillness Inducement
If you fail to do what Rap Rat says, you’ll lose your next turn, it being skipped and going to the next player. He can also just make people stay in place regardless if they lost to him. These players will have to stay still until their next turn. He can even make a person miss as many turns as their age.
Command Inducement
When Rap Rat gives a command, you have to follow it. These pretty much force people to act or do things for a certain amount of time. If you fail this, you lose a piece of your cheese puzzle.
Stealing
Rap Rat can just take away cheese from people, making their game harder.
Possible Transmutation
Rap Rat is possibly able to turn others into other things. When he tells you to do chicken noises, you can hear chicken noises as if you were actually turned into a chicken. He was also able to possibly transmute others to a dog, frog, wolf, monkey, a Lizard (which can’t move because they're on the floor).
Mice
Building Skills
The mice are pretty skilled in building, at least depending on the game you’re looking at. The Mice are seen building and constructing the actual mouse traps themselves. They also seem to be using everyday objects and items to construct it, which is rather impressive.
Possible Self Sustenance; Type 1
The mice are able to be on the moon. It’s not exactly clear if they’re wearing space suits or something to help them breathe, so they may not need to.
Resistances
Rat Rap
No Real Resistances
Mice
Poisons Resistance
The Mice are able to take poison. While they do get sick and go back a few spaces, they can land on this space as many times as they want without any real side effects to them, other than being sick.
Physical Feats
Rat Rap
Strength
Pull one of the spaces on the board.
Rats have a bite force of 6,000 PSI to 24,000 PSI.
Durability
WHAT is this image? Dr. Mouse
Has no real feats of durability but should be comparable to his strength.
Speed
Went to the cheese moon with his space suit. (See Things of note)
We possibly did this in the amount of time it took him to count.
If we take both of these as true, then Rap Rat would be able to move at 64066666.66 m/s or 21% the Speed of Light.
The average rat speed is 8 to 10 mph.
Mice
Strength
The Trap was able to hurt a cat
Scale to Elefun who was able to clear out all the animals from the lake by jumping into it.
The heaviest of which being the Hippo’s, which we’ve stated their max weight previously
Durability
Can get hit by the Spaceboot off the great cheese mountain without much damage.
This is on the moon however.
Speed
The average mouse speed is 8 mph.
Climb up ladders incredibly fast, the longest being from 26 space to 85 which is shown being as tall as a Giraffe.
Scale to Elefun and friends who run from Japan to their home in an unspecified time frame, though it seemed very quick.
Assuming they ran from Africa, the most common living area for elephants, from Japan in six seconds. It can get 65.52 m/s, or Subsonic.
Weaknesses
Rap Rat
Rap Rat is pretty egotistical and self centered. He presents himself as the boss and the best around, even boasting whenever he wins against you. That’s his whole thing. Heck, the entire game he is just being egotistical.
Mice
The Mice themselves don’t really work together most of the time, they're mainly there to get their own cheese and that’s it. They’ve even said before it’s every mouse for themselves.
A weakness about the traps itself is that they take super long to actually capture something. Their whole thing is being convoluted and elaborate, it’s not a normal trap. You could very well just move out of the way before it’s set off.
Things of note
Is Rap Rat a Demon?
Holy tuff
No…
But “seriously”, this is something I do want to talk about when it comes to Rap Rat. This is probably what he’s most known for in the modern day. Something really funny is that the creators of Rap Rat actually know about the Rap Rat creepy pasta and even said looking back Rap Rat is pretty creepy.
Final Thoughts
(Art from Lucky)
Now that both these rodents have been looked over and analysed, let’s see which of these combatants would win if they were put against each other.
Weapons and Equipment
In terms of equipment, both equipment that’s useful and useless. Ignoring the useless stuff, the Mice general has more equipment that could be used. However, interestingly the actual Mouse Traps themselves aren’t actually that useful. They are needlessly long and drawn out. If you were actually paying attention, you could move out of the way of being trapped in a cage. We’ll talk about speed later, but it does add to this. The Space Ship and Space Boot are useful, but those are matched by Rap Rat’s own Space Suit. The Ship and Boot are still better however, as their just bigger and the boot can be used to kick around Rap Rat. The building Tools can also be used as weapons, but Rap Rat has similar items.
Honestly, the best thing that the mice have that Rap Rat doesn’t is the special spaces, but those in themselves are more tailored towards taking cheese. It’s still helpful, just not as helpful in a fight.
The Mice take weapons and equipment, mainly in part to simply having more. However, both do match equipment for the most part.
Skills and Abilities
These skills and abilities are rather clear cut. The Mice really don’t have much skills. They may be smarter, as they’ve built traps out of random things, but Rap Rat has many different abilities that would really hinder the Mice.
He can duplicate to match the mice numbers. He can jump into TVs to avoid attacks. He can steal any items they could have. He could give them commands and skip their turns. The Mice really don’t have much counters to anything Rap Rat could do.
Rap Rat takes skills and Abilities simply due to having way more and really useful ones that the Mice can’t counter.
Physical Stats
Now this is the most interesting stat. Both really don’t have impressive feats, well except for one category; Speed. Speed is really really interesting to look at.
The Mice speed feat is more, kind of. They should scale to Elefun, as they’ve interacted and the Mice have even outran them before. This is important because they’ve run from Japan to their home in a few seconds. Assuming that they live in Africa and ran from Japan, it can range to 65.52 m/s, or Subsonic.
Now Rap Rat’s a lot weirder. We see them on the moon. If we do assume it’s the moon, we still don’t have the time. Unless, we count his counting statement to the amount of time it took. They took around 6 seconds to count. So using, Rap Rat can get to 21% percent the Speed of Light.
Now this is considerably faster than the Mice, and would certainly give them the win. However, this does use a lot of weird things to figure this out. However, if we don’t buy this, Rap Rat still has a way around this speed. And that’s just by skipping their turn. He can simple make them not be able to move for multiple rounds. Heck, if he feels like it, he can make them skip as many turns as their age, and Mouse Trap is 63 years old. This ability hard counters any speed advantage that the Mice could have
Looking at the other two stats, both don’t have a lot. The Mice can scale to Elefun, which was able to clear out an entire lake of animals by jumping in it, which is rather impressive. Rap Rat himself doesn’t have much tha compares to this. Yeah he can lift a relatively heavy TV and has a power bite force, it’s just not comparable.
However, again Rap Rat could just skip their turns or even turn them into weaker animals. And lets say he jumps into a TV, the Mice can’t get him.
Regardless of what stats you buy, Rap Rat almost negates any sort of advantage the Mice have. And if you buy his speed feat, it puts him way faster than the Mice.
Conclusion
Rap Rat
Advantages:
+ Possibly Faster
+ Could skip or Transmute the Mice to cancel any stat advantage they could have.
+ Could steal any weapon the Mice have.
+ Could duplicate himself to counter the Mice stat advantage.
+ Way better abilities
Disadvantages:
- Has less equipment.
- Lower in speed if you don’t buy his high speed.
- Lower strength and Dur.
- Not as intelligent as the Mice
Mice
Advantages:
+ Better Strength and Dur
+ Possible better Speed
+ More equipment
+ Numbers advantage…
Disadvantages:
- …Until Rap Rat duplicates himself.
- No haxes.
- Has no counters to Rap Rat’s Haxes.
- Way slower if you count the Moon Rap Rat speed.
Overall, this was actually rather interesting to actually look at. Considering all Rap Rat had was one proper board game, the fact that he can match against all four Mice is really impressive. The Mice just didn’t have anything against his haxes, and depending on what you buy, Rap Rat could be way faster than the Mice. No matter how strong the Mice were, Rap Rat has many ways around it. The Mice just feel right into Rap Rat’s trap.
The Winner is Rap Rat
Rap Rat Votes: Lucky, Shaggy, THE, Fish
Mice Votes: None
Post Blog Notes
Blog Credits
Main Researchers: Lucky
Custom Assets: Lucky
Debaters: Lucky, THE, Fish, Tree, Shaggy
This one was done entirely by me. I don’t really have much to say about it. Kind of tuff.
🐱 Car
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