Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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BIL
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BIL »

Turrican wrote:This is the sad story of a man who still could tell wether he's playing Space Harrier rather than Burning Force. A prayer for him.
Prayer is never to be discounted. Image However, that man, if he truly does play TNWA like Spartan, needs something more immediate.
Spoiler
THAT MOTHERFUCKER NEED AN AMBULANCE
Image Image Image Image Image Image Image
Perhaps what had enraged everyone so much was that to explain what a difference in feeling is to have one dimension, he had gone a bit too far back in time, mentioning games of an much older period. And that had sounded insulting to TNWA that was obviously pushing things forward in its own way. (But it can also be said that mentioning Spartan and Vigilante wasn't slur on his part. At least he ranked them quite a bit higher than the following examples of Juooki, Splatterhouse or even Crude Busters, but that's a digression).
TBH you mentioned Green Beret and Vigilante - that's when my Nerdbunker Alert went off, and I raced home to commence battle >_> I didn't take any of it as a slur (HOW DARE YOU/I DEMAND SATISFACTION Image), not even the nakedly console-warring "evolutionary dead end" stuff. I know how it be when you're in them console trenches. :wink:
In a nutshell: by going to the extremes of removing depth and adding a lot of its own on the table, TNWA still doesn't play much like Final Fight or the subsequent games in the "main branch" of the genre (the one originated in Renegade/Double Dragon).
I too regard TNWA and Crude Buster as their own thing. Where I disagree with you, is on TNWA being "Spartan with throws." To make TNWA out of Spartan is to obliterate the latter's combat, leaving only the bare chassis of a 2D plane, the player, and the enemy. You could say "Enemies run at you from both sides and you hit them, but now, you can also grab and throw them" - but this would be a gross oversimplification. Usefully describing even competent TNWA play would entail a vertitable glossary of terms and concepts taken directly from Renegade in general, Final Fight in specific.

Adding to that, as Vludi said: This isn't even a setup alien to beltscrollers. After the arcade games' hinting at the concept, with rare platforms too narrow to sidestep enemies safely on, the FC Double Dragons employ vast swathes of straight 2D action. Sometimes entire stages. Do these segments "not play much like Double Dragon?" I assure you, if you play the toughest of them like Spartan - defending only your immediate space with strikes as enemies close in - you'll get beaten into the floor.

WRT hardcore, I am about accuracy, not feels. If you think that corridor feels like Splatterhouse, with its smoosher traps and pits, you must realise the enemies will nevertheless pound you into dogfood if you let them pincer you. Because these stages don't suddenly revert to 1985. They remain designed around canonical Kunio mechanics. Combos, grapples, crowd control. Not only do you not need to use these in Spartanesques - you overwhelmingly can't. They come from an entirely different subset of 2D action colloquially termed "brawling," where enemies can't be merely smacked away but must be strategically manhandled.

Actually, forget Spartan - we have a much more useful antecedent: The Ninja Warriors. The player has guarding, super-jumps, and projectiles, all of which made the leap to TNWA (the last heavily modified). All are big additions to Spartan mechanics! Enemies, meanwhile, behave more like Spartan's bosses - lots of footsies, special attacks and novel movement options. None of these things even begin to budge the needle from Spartan to Renegade. Had TNWA continued along these lines, increasing player and enemy repertoires, without introducing the tactile intersection of brawling, the result would be something like Capcom's Mutant Apocalypse.
could really have used -like a carefully placed Zangief piledriver- a great and definitive closure like:
in classic console war style, overstepped by implying TNWA is a novelty one-off anyway - a statement so retarded, that all forums members were eager to reply him with a list of a dozen post-1994 great brawlers that had been directly modelled after TWNA, primarily by reverting to a 2D space.
Yeah. That would have rocked. A lot more than bringing early 1990's Crude Busters on the spotlight, for sure. But ah well. Can't have everything. Instead, he had to settle for Sumez's (rather underwhelming) "strangely unexplored approach to the genre" comment. He was ready for the firing squad to put and end to his misery, but had hoped in a little more grandeur.
WTF, how'd we end up back here? A recap: nobody was doing anything new with brawlers or sidescrollers, circa TNWA. In arcades, most of those genre's big names were either receding or dead, IREM and Technos included. A few genre classics aside, a desert ensued. Rinse/repeat for consoles.

This tale of historical woe entertaining the notion that, because others didn't follow up on TNWA - released in 2D action's twilight, running on weaker hardware, balanced for tamer audiences - it's an evolutionary dead end. Again, I get the point-scoring. It doesn't make the points any less rickety, no matter how many times you intend to repackage them for us. If a game designer (as opposed to a console warrior) made this argument to me, I'd genuinely wonder if he was, in the most literal sense, retarded. If his appreciation of 2D action had been arrested at some point circa 1988, never to move ahead.

I've never heard anyone make this argument, and I spend way too much time nerdfighting over this shit with other nerds just as remorselessly obsessive as me. It's a garbage argument fit only for console war threads.
As he watched the sunset, he wondered if only he had shown more respect for Natsume's stroke of genius, comparing it to other games like Alien Soldier or Ikaruga, which had took an abused template and subverted it from the inside to offer a freshly new experience. But then again, it wouldn't have worked, because those games after all hadn't gone as far as removing one dimension in movement; and besides it was a moot point anyway, since most members here (with the notable exception of BIL) didn't feel it made any difference at all, and considered Final Fight and TNWA perfectly swappable. There was a bittersweet aftertaste in all this, but the sun had set, the guillotine rolled, and Turrican was beheaded.
If you'd compared a simple example of [Genre A chassis] + [Genre B mechanics] like TNWA to Alien Soldier, the product of a decade-long evolution stretching back to Green Beret, I would've advised you to put down the pipe and pick up the controller. Image

Likewise Ikaruga. Why not mention Shikigami no Shiro, or Psyvariar? Both are designed around doing things with bullets other than merely dodging them. None of the three tore their genre down to its foundations, then imported another genre's entire ethos. They just messed with the collision parameters a little.

This oilslick-shallow cross-genre name-dropping is spiralling out of control, Turrican! :shock: I approve, but as I said, I am mercenary to the bone and only here to talk games, and it is GRADE A CANNON FODDER. Image Image

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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Vludi »

Turrican wrote:a game that has a block button, a gauge to fill to perform several ranged attacks
Guardians has those + more mechanics and it's still a very Capcom/FF inspired game. Again, Final Fight put the essentials, but that doesn't mean that you can't play around with extra mechanics (Capcom did it a lot), or even a single-plane (FF itself proves that it can). There were lots of Final Fight inspired games at the time, I'm just stating that what NWA does well is reaching a similar quality, difficulty balancing and giving it a significant twist while still feeling at home.
Maybe if you actually played the games you'd notice all the similarities rather than relying on nostalgia goggles and wrong assumptions about the genre, because both FF and SoR are just as techincal/hectic as NWA, they require way more than just spamming elbows to win, if you treat them as party games that's just on you. NWA lacks belt evasion yes but the game's difficulty is balanced accordingly.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Turrican »

BIL wrote:I too regard TNWA and Crude Buster as their own thing.
And rightfully you do.
BIL wrote:WRT hardcore, I am about accuracy, not feels.
This accurately shows a FF and NWA being not the same stuff, and not certainly for the single plane thing. As I said, the differences only begin there. And as you said children aren't parents, but their own thing.
BIL wrote:Where I disagree with you, is on TNWA being "Spartan with throws." To make TNWA out of Spartan is to obliterate the latter's combat, leaving only the bare chassis of a 2D plane, the player, and the enemy. You could say "Enemies run at you from both sides and you hit them, but now, you can also grab and throw them" - but this would be a gross oversimplification.
Sigh, okay. After Final Fight, there was no turning back. TNWA is closer to Final Fight, ie you approach the enemy without punching him to enter the grapple and ensuing combos. I never said TNWA is "Spartan with throws": only that by going back to a 2D plane it became something else altogether.
BIL wrote:This tale of historical woe entertaining the notion that, because others didn't follow up on TNWA - released in 2D action's twilight, running on weaker hardware, balanced for tamer audiences - it's an evolutionary dead end. Again, I get the point-scoring. It doesn't make the points any less rickety, no matter how many times you intend to repackage them for us. If a game designer (as opposed to a console warrior) made this argument to me, I'd genuinely wonder if he was, in the most literal sense, retarded. If his appreciation of 2D action had been arrested at some point circa 1988, never to move ahead.
Now it sounds like your making excuses for the game (see the part in bold), when it really doesn't need that justification. Nonetheless, I'd drop the argument, if not for the fact that Bare Knuckle 3 is 1994 also. Mystara is 1996 (as is Guardian Heroes). The third Sengoku is 1999? So the desert isn't really that deserted if one looks enough. it's a couple years ahead from Million's resurgence with that beloved pocket masterpiece that you know too well. Bottom line is: there was life after 1994, just not 2D plane life. :P

So it doesn't became so trivial after all to answer the question, who in 1994 had brought that coin-op evolution at home, expanding on it, building the all-be, the definitive word on the subject? History says Sega/Ancient. Revisionism says Natsume. But revisionism loses the proof of fact.
BIL wrote:I've never heard anyone make this argument, and I spend way too much time nerdfighting over this shit with other nerds just as remorselessly obsessive as me. It's a garbage argument fit only for console war threads.
The argument went: Paprium is not on par with some SNES brawlers -> lolz if you think BKII, BKIII :mrgreen: -> "hey wait, what about TNWA?" -> to which I didn't reply: "Aww, that's just shyte, mate", but: "That's its own thing"

And the console warrior bit: I think I've been quite light on it actually. Stating that the Megadrive was built on sidescrolling brawling action, with Sega contributing to it at least four times (Juuoki, Golden Axe II, Alien Storm, the Bare Knuckles) and leaving the ill-conceived Comix Zone aside a moment, while the SFC getting its greatest moment of glory (in terms of raw sales) arguably with the worst of the bunch (the single player first FF port), Nintendo having exactly nils, zero first-dev input in all this story, literally washing their hands off the whole subject, with 99,9% of their target audience most likely to be impressed by battery save capacity, Zelda, Earthbound, and RPGs. Saying all this didn't seem "console war" to me, it seemed to state the blatant and boring obvious. If I really would've wanted to enter console war, I would've targeted Capcom's sorry state of affair with the home sequels of Final Fight, which I didn't. :)
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Turrican »

Vludi wrote: Maybe if you actually played the games
Maybe if you could mention a single post of mine littered with junk like "if only you had played the games" that would clear things up a bit. I assume you can forward dialogue without expressing every two sentences a very insecure feeling by attacking someone that way. Is being a loser by definition. (/netiquette)
Vludi wrote:if you treat them as party games that's just on you. NWA lacks belt evasion yes but the game's difficulty is balanced accordingly.
Well, unlike the very technical game you brought on the table, they can be also enjoyed in a more carefree way, it's true. Must have something to do with freedom of movement, I gather? :P
Vludi wrote:Final Fight put the essentials, but that doesn't mean that you can't play around with extra mechanics (Capcom did it a lot)
Here's something we can surely all agree on. Experimentation is great. I hope I never sounded like "this genetic mutation should have never existed!" That'd be plain silly. :)
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Vludi »

Turrican wrote:Maybe if you could mention a single post of mine littered with junk like "if only you had played the games" that would clear things up a bit. I assume you can forward dialogue without expressing every two sentences a very insecure feeling by attacking someone that way. Is being a loser by definition. (/netiquette)
Just said it because it's pretty obvious that you didn't, wouldn't do it otherwise. If you felt attacked then I'm not the insecure one here.
Turrican wrote: Must have something to do with freedom of movement, I gather? :P
Yet you try to enter a gameplay discussion while limiting yourself to a party game mentality, quite the freethinker aight.
Also NWA can be enjoyed casually on normal, it's just not as shallow as credit-feeding some arcade game.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BIL »

Turrican wrote:[TNWA] a game that, as BIL would put it, adds a lot of pressure to the player by removing evading space
I wouldn't put it like that. Beltscrollers have plenty of pressure all on their own. DD2AC's Double Burnov fight is nightmarishly pressurised, those fat bastards will snatch you in a split-second.

What I said was, TNWA's XY plane is excellent at maintaining pressure, or further back, generating pressure, in situations that'd be trivial to escape on the belt. It lets Natsume do more with less. I'd still call TNWA a less harrowing game than DD2AC, and most definitely Final Fight.

I've no doubt you could create something absolutely riveting via TNWA's concept, chiefly by intensifying the enemy design, but neither it nor its sequel approach that zenith.
TNWA is a fundamentally too technical, too complex, far removed experience from the button mashers we discussed. Since Double Dragon the catch was: "let's get a couple beers with a friend and stomp baddies in the latest coin-op". FF, ditto. SoR, ditto. Paprium, ditto. TNWA is more like, "no beer! I must be sober to carefully plan my split second move in this match of Go, which is obviously single player only".
Again, I dunno. I've tried my hand at Final Fight, currently making it to the final stage on a life before things go south. I wouldn't call that game inherently dumb at all, any more than I would something like Kyuukyoku Tiger or Tatsujin (two buttons!) versus Starfox 64.

That brawlers and STGs can be played "drunkenly" (as Toaplan put it) is something their designers were well aware of. Credits are credits, ultimately. I forget which interview precisely, but shmuplations has a commentary on Hellfire's overseas 2P co-op and lack of checkpoints - noting both were catering to (allegedly) boozier Western audiences, just looking to blow shit up with the bros.

These are still perfectly harrowing games if you're going for score, or the simple prestige of no-miss clears.

Not trying to split hairs or bicker, here. It's just that I'm pretty good at TNWA/OA, and I've tried to get pretty good at FF, and I'm uneasy seeing the latter written off as less of an engagement. If you told me I had to one-life FF within the year, or else bottom in an Andre The Giant-themed porno, I'd be working day and night to sharpen up.
Turrican wrote:
BIL wrote:WRT hardcore, I am about accuracy, not feels.
This accurately shows a FF and NWA being not the same stuff, and not certainly for the single plane thing. As I said, the differences only begin there. And as you said children aren't parents, but their own thing.
I did say that, which is why I'm very confused now. Image TNWA is indeed its own thing to me, a hybrid of two existing combat subgenres. That doesn't mean I won't sympathise when someone includes it in a brawler discussion. 2D or not, there's a lot of brawling excellence going on in that GIF. I know, because it's me thrashing the boss with my 1337 grappling. :cool:
BIL wrote:This tale of historical woe entertaining the notion that, because others didn't follow up on TNWA - released in 2D action's twilight, running on weaker hardware, balanced for tamer audiences - it's an evolutionary dead end. Again, I get the point-scoring. It doesn't make the points any less rickety, no matter how many times you intend to repackage them for us. If a game designer (as opposed to a console warrior) made this argument to me, I'd genuinely wonder if he was, in the most literal sense, retarded. If his appreciation of 2D action had been arrested at some point circa 1988, never to move ahead.
Now it sounds like your making excuses for the game (see the part in bold), when it really doesn't need that justification. Nonetheless, I'd drop the argument, if not for the fact that Bare Knuckle 3 is 1994 also. Mystara is 1996. The third Sengoku is 1999? So the desert isn't really that deserted if one looks enough. it's a couple years ahead from Million's resurgence with that beloved pocket masterpiece that you know too well. Bottom line is there was life after 1994, just not 2D plane life. :P
You're making me recap the thread for you - I don't mind at all, just clarifying for anyone reading along: I've mentioned all of the below before, in detail.

Excuses for TNWA? No. You're the one calling TNWA an evolutionary dead end, citing the legacy of Kunio, a game designed expressly for then-booming arcades.

I'm just pointing out that TNWA's blatant technical and market restrictions, alone, make a laughingstock of that claim. Some of the features most associated with brawlers - cooperative play and weapons - weren't in Kunio itself. Why? Who knows. They're not in TNWA, regardless. A brawler designed not for arcade intensity, but console agreeableness, on hardware so weak it can't handle more than four objects onscreen, or allow 2P play without burning your house down.

No legs, mirite! Image

I noted 16bit going out on a high note, a "blaze of glory" (Alien Soldier is 1995). I noted Capcom keeping brawlers going, a stark outlier with everyone else in the arcade market retiring/dying - though as said, even Capcom toed the VS fighting line, no less a stalwart than Rockman being forced into compliance for his arcade outings, while their sidescroller and STG output went off a cliff on CPS2 (contracting CAVE, Takumi and Raizing heavily, for the latter). CPS3's short lifespan and tiny library was entirely devoted to VS fighting.

Sengoku 1 and 2 were merely two Neo beltscrollers among many in their day - how many Robo Armies, Burning Fights, Ninja Combats and Mutation Nations accompanied Sengoku 3, post SNK going all-in on VS fighters? How many Vendettas, Violent Storms, Hooks, Undercover Cops, Denjin Makais, Sailor Moons, Shadow Forces, Combatribes, Zero Teams, Knuckle Bashes or Karate Blazers, in the cabs opposite? At a stretch, you could mention IGS - all respect to them, but you'd never need to leave Japan in the first half of the 90s.

Obviously there are classically 2D-styled gems to be found in the mid-90s onward. I already listed several: Metal Slug, Shock Troopers, Cannon Dancer, Taromaru, Ralph and Sin & Punishment. Oases don't disprove deserts.
So it doesn't became so trivial after all to answer the question, who in 1994 had brought that coin-op evolution at home, expanding on it, building the all-be, the definitive word on the subject? History says Ancient. Revisionism says Natsume. But revisionism loses the proof of fact.
I'm sorry, I don't know where this came from. :shock: Nobody said TNWA was a "definitive" brawler, only "a" brawler. I think we're getting into the weird genre talk that I've no interest in whatsoever, here.
If I really would wanted to enter console war, I would've targeted Capcom's sorry state of affair with the home sequels of Final Fight, which I didn't. :)
That would be one way of doing it, but Vludi didn't say he likes Final Fight. So instead, you implied an experimental hybrid of sidescrolling and brawling that punched way over its feeble technological weight, on sheer quality alone, was a novelty (a "one-trick pony"), one correctly consigned to the dustbin of history.

If you'd slated SFC Final Fight (input drops!) or its sequels (no balls!), you'd have had a far stronger point. :wink:
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

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BIL wrote:That would be one way of doing it, but Vludi didn't say he likes Final Fight. So instead, you implied an experimental hybrid of sidescrolling and brawling that punched way over its weight on sheer quality alone was a novelty (a "one-trick pony"), correctly consigned to the dustbin of history.
That's conjecture on your part. I said novelty, I didn't say dustbin of history. It's a novelty receiving accolades of history but there was no need to specify that (since well, the developer themeselves have resurrected it and we were all aware of that).
BIL wrote:I think we're getting into the weird genre talk that I've no interest in whatsoever, here.
Likewise, and I must say the thread had been much better before my remark, when it tackled MMC3 and assembly language issues. So as long as I'm concerned, it ends here. *picks up his own head and walks away*
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

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I'll give you head any day bro Image :wink:
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

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Likewise, and I must say the thread had been much better before my remark, when it tackled MMC3 and assembly language issues. So as long as I'm concerned, it ends here. *picks up his own head and walks away*
I'm getting old: when was MMC3 and Assembly mentioned?

Anyway, after all that chat: that scumbag Fonzie is not to be trusted and I would never pass that creep any more $ in this life.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Turrican »

MintyTheCat wrote:
Likewise, and I must say the thread had been much better before my remark, when it tackled MMC3 and assembly language issues. So as long as I'm concerned, it ends here. *picks up his own head and walks away*
I'm getting old: when was MMC3 and Assembly mentioned?

Anyway, after all that chat: that scumbag Fonzie is not to be trusted and I would never pass that creep any more $ in this life.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by JohnBooty »

I'm not sure which is more insane: this thread, or the fact that I looked at this thread and thought: "Yeah, now is when I'll finally make an account here!"

I got my copy of Paprium a few weeks ago.

You could argue that the gameplay is broken and you wouldn't be totally wrong. As others have noted the fighting mechanics are paper-thin and you spend a lot of time spamming jumpkicks because sometimes the air is the only place you're safe. There are other issues.

That said? I'm still enjoying the hell out of it.

What the gameplay kind of boils down to is an exercise in grouping/zoning/herding/whatever-you-want-to-call-it the absolute cluserf*ck of onscreen enemies that are generally hounding you. I've never played another brawler where you are quite so *constantly* engaged in simply trying to carve out a little bit of breathing space. It's relentless but the controls are crazy responsive; I'm lucky enough to be playing on a CRT so lag is about as close to nil as is physically possible. For me it's added up to a fun time that has kept me going back to it.

FWIW I've played the game just about exclusively on "Very Hard", the hardest of 3 difficulty levels that is unlocked out of the box. From what I've seen of the easier difficulty levels the AI is super brain dead if you play that way. But it is pretty damn good (by genre standards) on "Very Hard." Occasionally enemies will indeed stand there and do nothing, but for the most part they relentlessly try to surround you and use ranged attacks (like the whip chicks, etc) that are out of your reach so you need to really work to control your spacing.

By no means is this game perfect or worth the current $100+ asking price, and obviously the development and customer service saga was a legendary nightmare. Still... I'm really glad to own it.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Vludi »

JohnBooty wrote:I've never played another brawler where you are quite so *constantly* engaged in simply trying to carve out a little bit of breathing space.
SoR2 mania is similar, except you don't have cheap stuff to trivialize it. I generally don't like beat 'em ups where all enemies have ridiculous speed compared to you, feels like a cheap way to increase difficulty and ends up in poor balance anyway, coming down to spamming overpowered safe moves (Paprium), or killing enemies one by one because it's the only safe way (SoR2 mania). POW is also similar to Paprium but at least in that one the jump kicks require more precision and there's some resource management.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by JohnBooty »

Vludi wrote:I generally don't like beat 'em ups where all enemies have ridiculous speed compared to you, feels like a cheap way to increase difficulty and ends up in poor balance anyway, coming down to spamming overpowered safe moves (Paprium), or killing enemies one by one because it's the only safe way (SoR2 mania)
Jumpkicks aren't overpowered safe moves; they're just safe.

They're pretty low damage compared to combos and rushing attacks. You could literally jumpkick your way through the game but you'd die of boredom; it'd take probably 3x as long. So even though the game doesn't enforce a time limit, you have incentive not to jumpkick your way through it.

The general gameplay flow for me is to group enemies and hit them with a combo or rushing attack and then dish out bully damage for as long as possible until another horde sneaks up behind me. At that point I use either the rear attack (similar to SOR if I remember correctly) or jumpkick my way to safety.

Weapons are super effective for the most part. A thrown weapon kills most enemies in one hit but then it disappears. Conversely a weapon thrown by enemies eats like half your life bar. So when there are weapons on the ground it's kind of a fun mad scramble to claim them. Not groundbreaking but it adds to the variety.

The "Blu addiction" mechanic is also stupid but fun. For a given save file, your "Blu addiction" meter persist between runs. You're gonna make a lot of runs for a given save file if you want to see endings so this starts to come into play.

I guess what I'm saying is that, while imperfect, it's a lot more than a broken jumpkick fest for me in practice.

The last (only?) "modern" brawler I played was River City Girls and I've put about as much time and had about as much fun with Paprium as RCG despite the difference in depth and polish. Admittedly of course I'm also swayed by the fact that it's running on Genesis hardware which is just hilarious.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by JohnBooty »

Regardless of which game is "better" I have to thank the folks on this thread for pointing out Ninja Warriors Again.

I played the original Ninja Warriors back in the day and (maybe unfairly) thought it was a real dud unless maybe it was 1988 or whatever and you were being blown away by the duel-screen arcade cab. So I never gave the series another look.

But... holy crap Ninja Warriors Again seems amazing. I'm going to dive into that one ASAP.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BIL »

I have this thread subscribed, WAR HAS NO LIMITS :cool:
JohnBooty wrote:I played the original Ninja Warriors back in the day and (maybe unfairly) thought it was a real dud unless maybe it was 1988 or whatever and you were being blown away by the duel-screen arcade cab. So I never gave the series another look.

But... holy crap Ninja Warriors Again seems amazing. I'm going to dive into that one ASAP.
Excellent to hear Image Games this good will change your life! The original's not all that notable, tbh. I like it, and have disturbingly multiple copies for various consoles, but its power is at least 50% aesthetic. The savage yet cheesy war-torn aesthetic (the ghastly screams and ripping gunfire that herald a new credit; a doomed target's "Please... don't kill me!") is pure Cannon Films: The Game, as Zuntata's signature weirdpop shrouds the whole affair in infernally catchy, off-kilter hooks. As a Spartanesque, though, IREM's 1985 effort PWNs it handily with a stiff barfight beatdown, and NAMCO's Splatterhouse boots it in its ass on its way out the door.

Then both sit around and sulk, because TNW has all the best tunes 3;

TNWA is a quantum leap forward, whichever sub/genre one puts it in, and The Ninja Warriors Once Again is at least as good! Natsume are great. <333

EDIT: if of any use (TNWA's combo system is simple, but notably idiosyncratic), here is a TNWOA quick startup guide - shamefully back-burnered, but it covers the system basics, plus Ninja and Kuniochi. Not Kamaitachi, who is the babby EZmode pick on SFC, though better in TNWOA's more time attack-geared context. 90% of it applies directly to TNWA, minus Once Again's smattering of new moves.

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JohnBooty
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by JohnBooty »

BIL wrote:The savage yet cheesy war-torn aesthetic (that ghastly screaming and ripping gunfire that heralds a new credit; a doomed target's "Please... don't kill me!") is pure Cannon Films: The Game, and Zuntata's signature weirdpop shrouds the whole affair in infernally catchy yet off-kilter hooks.
Hahaha. I just watched an HD YouTube longplay of the first level on a widescreen monitor with headphones on and I totally get what you're saying. I'd give it a play just based on the aesthetic alone, that's awesome/hilarious.

I think what happened is I fired it up in MAME ages ago and didn't really give it a proper look.

That's why I avoid dealing with massive numbers of ROMs these days. When I've got 1,500 ROMs in a folder it's too easy for me to ADHD through them and not give anything a proper chance. These days I've learned to just copy just a small handful of ROMs at a time into my MAME directory or flashcart and really focus on individual games.
I like old video games and sometimes new ones as well.
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Sumez
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Sumez »

Welcome to the farm, John Booty. Don't be scared of the 300+ page count of the R2RKMF "ninja gaiden" thread, I think you'll find yourself right at home in there. :)
Thanks for the expanded insight into Paprium! It's good to hear a fresh take.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by MintyTheCat »

Our man Fonzie is on fire: another interview - his batting average is going up in the communication dept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj2LM1rvFQ8
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Udderdude »

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/ ... g_campaign

Looks like this might end up on modern platforms after all.
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MintyTheCat
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by MintyTheCat »

No one should pay this criminal ANY money EVER.

I have no idea why anyone would think that he's trust-worthy in any capacity.

I have the game and it's like playing a standard issue Super famicom brawler. He was trying to charge something like $440 was it a few months after release, and all the while taking in more money and not delivering the games that his paying customers invested in.

This to me sounds like an elaborate Ponzi Scheme.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by null1024 »

I'm immensely curious about the game, but fuck, the idea of paying a cent for it after the sheer fuckery around it sounds horrifying. Even a modern platform release wouldn't change that.
Come check out my website, I guess. Random stuff I've worked on over the last two decades.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by MintyTheCat »

null1024 wrote:I'm immensely curious about the game, but fuck, the idea of paying a cent for it after the sheer fuckery around it sounds horrifying. Even a modern platform release wouldn't change that.
Fonzi has absolutely no idea how to handle money and customers. I cannot understand why anyone would trust him with anything. He should stick to Photoshop and wearing those silk shirts of his. In my book: a total wanker - no one has the right to host a release party, have people fly in to Paris for nothing AND take our money and run off with it.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BrianC »

MintyTheCat wrote: This to me sounds like an elaborate Fonzie Scheme.
fixed
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by XtraSmiley »

BrianC wrote:
MintyTheCat wrote: This to me sounds like an elaborate Fonzie Scheme.
fixed
Perfection.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by MintyTheCat »

Fonzie Scheme
:lol:
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More Paprium drama

Post by ldeveraux »

I just received an email from Watermelon Games regarding Paprium. If you don't know, many folks have maligned them for issues with their game. To be honest I'm not sure why, my game runs and plays well, it's a lot of fun. I remember RetroRGB had some negative things to say in the past. Looks like they are starting a crowdfunding endeavour to raise money to sue people? It's rather unclear, maybe someone here can make heads or tails of it!

"As you may have heard we are going to release a Crowd-Funding campaign about PAPRIUM in next few days.

Because the situation is extremely difficult for us and we will have no support from the press combined with a lot of hate from individuals who are actively working at derailing things...

We need all goodwill help to turn things the right way.

If you're willing to help, please contact enrol at watermelon-games.com with a small note about how you think you can help and how many hours you can put into it. It can be from social media, press, reviews, proofreading, promotion to tougher things such as public protests, investigation, etc.

We are also looking for lawyers and jurists to help prosecute individuals and companies in France, Portugal and USA. The work load is massive and we need assistance to beef-up our lawyer team and speed-up process, please contact watermelon at watermelon-games.com along with your references.

Here is latest interview made for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgTRyHRtdCA

Thank you again,

Important notices:
We are still processing tickets at the moment, for the few of those who didn't get an answer yet, more patience is needed, do not double-post tickets.
For returned parcels, incorrect parcel content or technical issues, we have registered your requests and are still processing them / we will get back to you.
For those still awaiting refund, we will be processing those soon through a partner's paypal account.
For urgent matters, until our situation is resolved, please refrain from posting email or tickets, please call +33(0)7 81 08 84 61, thank you for your understanding.

Keep faith,
WM"
juji82
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Re: More Paprium drama

Post by juji82 »

maybe they are just raising some Money for another party!
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Re: More Paprium drama

Post by SavagePencil »

and now by broadcasting it, we've given them oxygen. Vagueness and mystery and threats. Sigh.
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Re: More Paprium drama

Post by Taiyaki »

I didn't know Paprium had problems to that degree. I remember it taking forever for it to come out, and then when it did it hardly made any noise. As a result I still haven't gotten a copy or even gotten around to reading/watching reviews of it.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Ghegs »

Combined threads.
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