A couple of weeks ago, VGDensetsu spotted an interesting post from the Sega graphic designer Tomohiro "REW" Yamamoto, in which he revealed a never-before-heard story that the PaRappa the Rapper artist Rodney Greenblat once presented the project to Sega before Sony became involved in publishing the game.
According to this account, Greenblat brought the Parappa the Rapper project to Sega before Sony was ever involved with it, with Yamamoto going on to explain the Japanese children's TV show Ugo Ugo Ruga to the Sega producer Makoto Oshitani before lending him a copy of Greenblat's 1992 educational PC game Rodney's Wonder Window to help him get familiar with the artist's body of work.
Somehow, though, the project eventually changed hands, with Sony inevitably going ahead with publishing the project, while Sega inevitably passed on the opportunity.
As you might imagine, this anecdote had several video game historians fascinated at the prospect that one of Sony's earliest mascots might have been an ambassador for Sega in another life, with our own imaginations inevitably concocting visions of what the rhythm title might have looked like on the Sega Saturn.
However, it appears that Yamamoto may be misremembering these events, with the director of PaRappa the Rapper himself Masaya Matsuura denying the project was ever pitched to Sega in an email with a simple three-word answer: "Sega? No way!".
Judging from what Yamamoto has shared elsewhere in the thread, it seems unlikely that he's lying about Greenblat visiting the studio, with the most plausible explanation being that the Sega employee was simply misremembering the specific nature of the artist's visit.
We've reached out to Greenblat to see if he can remember more and will update this article if we hear back.