Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

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

Post by Sumez »

I can't figure out if Turrican's post is meant to be serious?
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Turrican »

Would you say the SFC and MD are on equal foot when It comes to shmups, because the first after all has Axelay, Super Aleste and Parodius? No, i wouldn't think you'd Say that.

Imagine how funny that same sentence would sound in relation to beatem ups because SFC has a slightly better Sailor Moon ...

You avoided entirely my point on tnwa by the way, which Is that reverting to single axis movement makes the game overall feeling fundamentally different and also very much a dead end in the evolution of the genre. It's leaps and bounds above Its peers of the time (Batman returns) which are precious few.

Look, when Technos made Renegade and then Double Dragon the impact was such that Hollywood came knocking at their door. Short than a decade later, when Natsume updated NW, the impact was such that... A couple hundred nerds took notice that It wasn't an half bad game, It was pretty cool. That's the size of the gap. Paprium or Streets of Rage 4 are a testament to a continuing trend.

The single plane choice Is deliberate and has nothing to do with hardware shortcomings, i'm not implying that. It was functional to the good game Natsume wanted to make. A bit like the hex r-type tactics Is what Irem wanted to make with the (rather good!) Bitter Chocolate. Which didn't exactly set the world on fire, nor ignited a slew of Raiden Tactics and Gradius Tactics. Unfortunately :)
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Turrican »

Sumez wrote:, nothing ever made me think that the MegaDrive is any more of a beat'em up beast than the SNES.
We're even Sumez, I really find It difficult to take these words seriously. :)
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Vanguard »

Turrican wrote:Look, when Technos made Renegade and then Double Dragon the impact was such that Hollywood came knocking at their door. Short than a decade later, when Natsume updated NW, the impact was such that... A couple hundred nerds took notice that It wasn't an half bad game, It was pretty cool. That's the size of the gap. Paprium or Streets of Rage 4 are a testament to a continuing trend.
Ah yes, popular = good.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Vludi »

Turrican wrote:Imagine how funny that same sentence would sound in relation to beatem ups because SFC has a slightly better Sailor Moon ...
Strawman, it was clearly an argument for the performance thing which you seem to be backpedalling now. But yes I think the SFC beat 'em up library is very comparable, if not slightly better, Golden Axe and Mystical Fighter aren't better than Sonic Blastman 2, Batman Returns, RoDD, Combatribes, King of Dragons, Turtles, Legend, Ghost Chaser Densei, Undercover Cops or the FF trilogy, even the Sailor moon games you diss have comparable quality, just a bit slow-paced.
Turrican wrote:You avoided entirely my point on tnwa by the way, which Is that reverting to single axis movement makes the game overall feeling fundamentally different.
I adressed that point many times already, not my problem if you don't want to see it. Core gameplay mechanics are more important than the game being single-plane or belt-scroller, which is why Final Fight has more things in common with NWA than with Renegade or Double Dragon.
Turrican wrote:and also very much a dead end in the evolution of the genre.
People have been saying the exact same thing about regular shmup and belt-scrollers all the time, or when comparing modern hack 'n slash to beat 'em ups, it's just as nonsense.
Turrican wrote:Look, when Technos made Renegade and then Double Dragon the impact was such that Hollywood came knocking at their door.
Oh so you are more concerned with popularity than actually discussing the quality of the games, nevermind.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BIL »

Turrican wrote:A lot of valid points, but I haven't said that the game isn't great in its own niche. It Is. It certainly Is what a green beret or vigilante would be after the FF experience. Lesson learnt: great!
Being precise (as stated, I consider TNWA a true hybrid, having descended from both Spartan and FF) - I would not put Green Beret in Vigilante's subgenre. GB is a quasi-platformer. Stage design is steeply vertical, with lots of tricky optional leaps - they'll benefit/punish you greatly, depending on whether you nail/fail. Thus, despite the lack of pits, platforming is integral. Vigilante has uniformly flat stages, with one basic hop at the very end, basically for aesthetic purposes.

More importantly, though - how do you grapple in a game with 1HKOs on enemy contact? That's a very important element of GB's enemy design. Or combo, when the player and all enemies, even bosses, die to a single hit? Again, GB is designed around solitary fatal strikes.

The same year's Spartan X took a Gordian approach: Jettison fatal contact and 1HKOs, along with all verticality and platforming, to emphasise combat. Wataaah! Now zako can dogpile, and bosses must be duelled, and a single hit can be fatally followed up. Meanwhile, you'll never have to jump a gap - but neither can you cat-burglar your way high over deadly ground.

In short, TNWA is Spartan's chassis with FF's mechanics integrated. No qualifications needed - that is what it is. GB is only barely less outlandish a substitute here than Rygar. :wink:
... however, let's face reality. It achieves this greatness by removing depth of field. Now, how many titles followed this path? Could the tradeoff work again, or It was an one trick pony? It honestly feels the latter.
In unifying XY's inescapable pressure with post-FF combat mechanics, TNWA is an excellent first try. Definitive, it is not. The runtime is notably padded, a console LP (~50min) rather than arcade EP (~25min). Kamaitachi's crouch P is wildly overpowered. There are no individually threatening enemies or bosses. The auto-charging meter indulges stalling. Lack of true evasive AI undercuts zoning. There's no juggle, stifling combo potential (cf DD Advance's subtlety, not Guardian Heroes' excess). Weapons are sub-DD1. It has no 2P play.

Much of this was addressed by Once Again, often superbly. Some of the most important, though, was untouched. There are still no aggressively threatening enemies - in fact, you now have a huge playfield to flee across. WTB anti-android Special Cybernetic Death Squad: FASTY/Sword (shing), BOMBY/Artillery (buddabuddabudda), and GRABBY/Hands (*SNAP*). And two or three really diabolical bosses.

Attach emergencies like this to dangerous elites, basically:

Spoiler
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Telegraph everything, no cheap bullshit, just the sort of fiends you're relieved to see die. Nothing threatens an expert, currently. If you're threatened, you best L2P. ImageA competent player coming away from TNWA saying "One and done! Nowhere to go from there! No wonder nobody else makes these!" smacks of myopia, and/or the point-scoring common to console war threads (I know this kind of is one, but I'm a console mercenary! I'll lay down with whoever gives me the best games! my war has no limits Image).

Likewise, crediting TNWA's excellence entirely to its removal of the Z axis? Even a rudimentary beltscroller with these FF-calibre mechanics and player/enemy designs would stand out a mile, certainly on 16bit. It's the mechanics that make or break a brawler.

I'm surprised you'd mention a lack of followups as indicting TNWA, when things soured for sidescrolling and beltscrolling circa '94. The still-booming VS fighting, and nigh-unkillably economic STG/puzzle genres aside, everything suffered. Lots of key names either dying (IREM, Technos, DECO, Toaplan), or receding (Namco, Konami, Taito, SNK, Jaleco), with even stalwart Capcom playing it safe: no sidescrollers for CPS2, Strider 2 shunted to ZN1 for poly points, and CPS3 lacking anything 1P whatsoever, to complete their 90s arc. There are genre gems - Metal Slugs and Shock Troopers and Cannon Dancers - but it's a desert compared to the thriving ecosystem of a decade prior.

Consoles display a similar pattern (again, ignoring the evergreen 2D arcade genres). 16bit went out in a blaze of glory. 32bit was a ghost of the prior two gens. A handful of outstanding peaks in stark isolation - Taromaru, Ralph, and I would argue S&P's ferocious polygonal Cabal - plus a few notables. (Sora no Tenshi is not notable - it'd be laughed out of the room, in the prior gen :sad:) And there was Rockman/X, another nuke-proof IP. Though even he couldn't reach mid-90s arcades without toeing the vs fighting line.

I'm sure you know all this already, as do most of us in this community - it's a sad old tale. Although, personally... even if TNWA had debuted in 1988, hot on the heels of the original, without leaving a trace - I still wouldn't think this reflected badly on the concept's potential. Plenty of good games never get made. Plenty of bad ones do.
You may think that depth of field only serves to be cheap with zoning, but I'm not entirely convinced that you all would be so eager to quit all the post-gaplus shmups in favor of the good old "Stick to terrain tank" of Space Invaders glory.
Wait wut. I don't think that, and AFAIK, nobody else so much as hinted at it - that's one outlandish strawman! :shock: XYZ is an addition to XY. It facilitates things - from the basic Technos circling pincer, to elaborately layered waves ala Final Fight, as well as techniques to overcome them. At the same time, XY's limitation is itself a strength. It's excellent at maintaining pressure, for one - see the GIFs I posted.

The Space Invaders analogy is facile. We're comparing sidescrolling and beltscrolling brawlers. Remove Z movement from Final Fight, and you've got a rough TNWA. Same mechanics, restricted to two planes. Remove Y movement from TNWA, or its progenitor, Spartan X? Now you have a broken mess, because like sidescrolling action of nearly any strain, they're designed for a jumping character.
If the Vigilante comparison doesn't convince you, think of Tempest. Great concept, with something like three games building upon It in a span of three decades. Street of Rages 2 in this example would be something like Kyukyoku Tiger or Raiden DX.
As an ardent Hardcore Gaymer Image, I could never file TNWA in with Spartan X, Vigilante, Altered Beast, Splatterhouse, The Ninja Warriors, and Thunder Fox - because while all of these games are sidescrolling action, none of the latter are brawlers, let alone ones specifically modelled on Final Fight.

No grappling. No throwing. No flattening crowds with thrown enemies. No metered desperation escapes. No combo enders. Often no combos at all. Several reinstate enemy contact damage. In short: there's no brawling in these games. Just striking down foes, often at deadly cost if they bump you. While TNWA inherited Spartan's chassis via its 1987 predecessor, its combat engine is all FF.
About the anodyne answer "just Splatterhouse 3" to the question: what good brawlers did MD put on the table.
AYKSHUALLY Image I specified significantly more about SHP3, while saying nothing else about MD brawlers beyond the BKs, because I know very little on the subject. ;3
The answer is correct but only from a contemporary point of view, when the older, simpler games are inevitably considered surpassed. But from an historical Pow, things are reversed: from Juuoki and on, the megadrive's foundation Is on the genre (fonzie's intuition at least is right here), and the interesting examples, from the exclusive Golden axes to stuff like Maou Renjishi, abound.
Oh wait, I know MD GAII. It's quite good! A smart GA1 Black Label, tidying up many of its foibles. Better crowd control, via aimable throws, which now knock down enemies. Better mounted combat, with rams flattening crowds en masse, instead of stopping at first impact - a truer sense of running motherfuckers over on a chicken the size of a horse. Smarter bombing, the variable gauge enabling crowd-controlling pops, boss-obliterating cataclysms, or anything between. Also, more onscreen enemies, and a stirring dark fantasy OST, goddamn-near Sakimoto/Iwata calibre at times.

I thought GAIII was squarely mediocre, and after a first-attempt 1CC spamming PUMAMAN's dash attack, I tried the other characters. I'm always willing to accept I've picked a broken/EZmode character. Unfortunately, the rest were either nearly as busted, or lame. So I never picked up GAIII. I see the collector's appeal, though. Might one day snap it up, if so possessed.

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OMAKE
Look, when Technos made Renegade and then Double Dragon the impact was such that Hollywood came knocking at their door. Short than a decade later, when Natsume updated NW, the impact was such that... A couple hundred nerds took notice that It wasn't an half bad game, It was pretty cool. That's the size of the gap. Paprium or Streets of Rage 4 are a testament to a continuing trend.
My sides! Image YOU ARE TEARING ME APART TURRICAN (;`ω´;)

Double Dragon was a mainstream darling in 1987, as were brawlers, Technos pioneering the genre a year prior. By 1994, when that shitty movie arrived (what a hit!), the face of the series was fucking Double Dragon V Image (the v stands not for "versus fighting" but vomit.gif). The next year saw an inoffensive, yet equally genre-abdicating versus fighter, not on Technos's own hardware, but on former brawling rival SNK's. And then, Technos died.

It's supposed to be some damning indictment that TNWA was released to positive acclaim in 1994, when the guys who created the genre to massive success less than a decade prior were now so broke, they could no longer participate in it, or even afford to print their own PCBs?

Image Image Image

Father God, who art in heaven, have mercy on me - for typing this, I realise...
TECHNOS WENT TO LA, GOT HOOKED ON H, AND DIED BROKE Image
(while Capcom survived with merely a bad tattoo - remember "Real Battle On Film?" What a hit! Image)

By "testament to a continuing trend," do you mean beaters are MD-centric? Ok that's cool. I'm not in that conversation! Imma kick back, and watch The Raid (aka The Real Double Dragon Movie even if it owes as much to Donkey Kong Image)

Image
The single plane choice Is deliberate and has nothing to do with hardware shortcomings, i'm not implying that. It was functional to the good game Natsume wanted to make. A bit like the hex r-type tactics Is what Irem wanted to make with the (rather good!) Bitter Chocolate. Which didn't exactly set the world on fire, nor ignited a slew of Raiden Tactics and Gradius Tactics. Unfortunately :)
STGs with Z-axes exist - Zaxxon, Max Warrior, Viewpoint... that is what results when you give R-Type a Z-axis, surely? If you slapped a Z-axis on Spartan, it wouldn't become Front Mission.

It'd become Datsugoku, eg, kinda bad. :cool:
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Sumez »

Turrican wrote:[TNWA] reverting to single axis movement makes the game overall feeling fundamentally different and also very much a dead end in the evolution of the genre.
I really think this statement makes it feel like you haven't played the game much, if at all.
If anything, I think it highlights a strangely unexplored approach to the genre that works incredibly well. It's very far from a dead end.

You're probably the only person who feels that only having one movement axis detracts from the game, or even makes it unable to compare to belt scrolling beat'em ups. You do realise it has basically nothing to do with the original Ninja Warriors game, right?
Would you say the SFC and MD are on equal foot when It comes to shmups, because the first after all has Axelay, Super Aleste and Parodius? No, i wouldn't think you'd Say that.
While I couldn't possible call them equal, I'd confidently say that the SNES is still commonly underestimated in this regard.
As for beat'em ups....?
Turrican wrote:
Sumez wrote:, nothing ever made me think that the MegaDrive is any more of a beat'em up beast than the SNES.
We're even Sumez, I really find It difficult to take these words seriously. :)
Exactly why do you feel the MegaDrive earns this position? Yes, there is Streets of Rage, which is a major player (and so it TNWA), but most other games in the genre don't stand out as much at all. What do we have, Golden Axe, Splatterhouse 3, Crude Buster... Comix Zone?
Overall the genre feels like it covers a lot more ground on the SNES, with a lot of games across the entire spectrum. 3-4 different Final Fight games alone, alongside decent ports of arcade brawlers like King of Dragons and Knights of the Round easily gives Golden Axe the run for its money, while a myriad of lesser titles like the Rushing Beat series, Undercover Cops, Gourmet Sentai, Denjin Makai, Legend, etc. probably make out the meat of the less remarkable middle ground stuff that I'm admittedly not too familiar with. And yeah, I heard quite a few of the Sailor Moon games are great? There's a ton of stuff.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BIL »

Great shitting blimey :shock: CRUDE BUSTER, there's a name conspicuously absent from my MD estimation. That one is quite excellent, too, and almost as brawler-informed as TNWA. Even has a significant edge on Natsume's masterpiece: 2P mode! Unusually for a Spartanesque, striking is secondary - grappling is king. A smack in the mouth has nothing on being hauled overhead, then smashed bodily into the cruel concrete of post-apocalyptic NYC! Bodies manhandled and broken, unmercifully, as if they were mere sacks of spuds!

You're approaching me? Then come as close as you wish!
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Furthermore... Image Not just foes, but anything not nailed down, and much that is, can be turned into a crowd-annihilating missile! Splendid fun, quite technical too.

NEW YORK CITY IS A REAL COOL TOWN / HITSTUN REALLY BRINGS ME DOWN ♫
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Re-reading that post, I'm reminded of another facet dividing the Spartans from the Renegades: Knockdown. In the typical Spartanesque, if an enemy goes down, they're done - falling straight off the screen, in Spartan and its direct sequel, Vigilante. In Renegade and its ilk, flattening an enemy is no guarantee they're dead - hence, the classic "blink of death," to let you know a foe is brown bread. Naturally, Crude Buster and TNWA inherit this.

That I don't go to CB/TNWA immediately is probably PTSD from GameFAQs (bless 'em) informing me that Green Beret, Rygar and Saigo no Nindou are "beat 'em ups." :3
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Turrican »

Vanguard wrote:Ah yes, popular = good.
The word you are looking for here would be "seminal", not popular. And of course it doesn't equate as good, where did I say that? :?
BIL wrote:In short, TNWA is Spartan's chassis with FF's mechanics integrated. No qualifications needed - that is what it is.
Exactly. I think you concede here that it has something that harkens back to the very beginning (Spartan) and that something is by deliberate design. Although yes, I hit more than one nerve around here by implying that this defining feature would group it with non-brawlers. I agree with both you and vludi that the FF mechanics weight more and make the game a closer brother to what came after FF. But, at least to me, the lack of depth (which works in the game's favor otherwise they'd have designed something else entirely) is nonetheless a quirkiness that it's felt. And in fact:
In unifying XY's inescapable pressure with post-FF combat mechanics, TNWA is an excellent first try. Definitive, it is not. The runtime is notably padded, a console LP (~50min) rather than arcade EP (~25min). Kamaitachi's crouch P is wildly overpowered. There are no individually threatening enemies or bosses. The auto-charging meter indulges stalling. Lack of true evasive AI undercuts zoning. There's no juggle, stifling combo potential (cf DD Advance's subtlety, not Guardian Heroes' excess). Weapons are sub-DD1. It has no 2P play. Much of this was addressed by Once Again, often superbly. Some of the most important, though, was untouched.
The game may be a masterpiece, but its quirkiness of removing depth wasn't replicated elsewhere except by the developers themselves when they decided it needed the definitive modern revision. That's pretty much what I was saying, which is most definitely not "Nowhere to go from there! No wonder nobody else makes these!" :P Come on. I'm on a Paprium thread, I'm sure you guys have seen some minutes of footage of it, enough to see that the game while aiming for its own identity, can't really escape the Bare Knuckle imprint. I was just laughing at the tremendously cruel catchphrase "There are better SNES brawlers out there", and the vludi brought on the one that basically plays quite differently.
I'm surprised you'd mention a lack of followups as indicting TNWA, when things soured for sidescrolling and beltscrolling circa '94. The still-booming VS fighting, and nigh-unkillably economic STG/puzzle genres aside, everything suffered. Lots of key names either dying (IREM, Technos, DECO, Toaplan), or receding (Namco, Konami, Taito, SNK, Jaleco), with even stalwart Capcom playing it safe: no sidescrollers for CPS2, Strider 2 shunted to ZN1 for poly points, and CPS3 lacking anything 1P whatsoever, to complete their 90s arc. There are genre gems - Metal Slugs and Shock Troopers and Cannon Dancers - but it's a desert compared to the thriving ecosystem of a decade prior. [...] I'm sure you know all this already, as do most of us in this community - it's a sad old tale. Although, personally... even if TNWA had debuted in 1988, hot on the heels of the original, without leaving a trace - I still wouldn't think this reflected badly on the concept's potential. Plenty of good games never get made. Plenty of bad ones do.
Indeed, it was a brief period of glory and it suddenly came to and end quickly, but not so quickly that one can't see what we've said above, that is that the Natsume oddity of getting back to Spartan for its brawler made no proselitism whatsoever, and I think there are good reasons why.
Double Dragon was a mainstream darling in 1987, as were brawlers, Technos pioneering the genre a year prior. By 1994, when that shitty movie arrived (what a hit!), the face of the series was fucking Double Dragon V Image (the v stands not for "versus fighting" but vomit.gif). The next year saw an inoffensive, yet equally genre-abdicating versus fighter, not on Technos's own hardware, but on former brawling rival SNK's. And then, Technos died.
Yeah of course, Double Dragon was a smelly corpse in 1994. Heck, most things we discuss in these forums pretty much were, by that year. :)
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BIL »

Turrican wrote:Exactly. I think you concede here that it has something that harkens back to the very beginning (Spartan) and that something is by deliberate design. Although yes, I hit more than one nerve around here by implying that this defining feature would group it with non-brawlers. I agree with both you and vludi that the FF mechanics weight more and make the game a closer brother to what came after FF. But, at least to me, the lack of depth (which works in the game's favor otherwise they'd have designed something else entirely) is nonetheless a quirkiness that it's felt. And in fact:
I see what you mean re: Renegade being newer than Spartan (you could say this was a summer/winter affair :mrgreen:) - but I'm forced to regard Crude Buster and TNWA as new propositions. Children resemble their parents, sometimes one more than the other, but they by definition are new individuals.

Conjecturally, I'd like to know more about TNWA's dev cycle. Our invaluable blackoak has a nice interview with Shunichi Taniguchi, but it's more about Wild Guns, mentioning TNWA only in passing.

I wonder if Taito contracted Natsume, following their splendid Kiki Kaikai redux, and said: "We want another Ninja Warriors, here's the design brief, you are not to leave XY, but otherwise, go nuts" - and brawler mechanics were simply an obvious expansion of what is honestly a pretty vanilla Spartan (I like TNW, got the Mega CD and PS4 versions right next to TNWA/OA, but its power is at least 50% aesthetic). Or, if Taniguchi & co had a sidescrolling brawler in mind from the start, and approached Taito with their famous Spartanesque as an obvious vehicle.

Honestly, I've no feelings on TNWA being considered a Spartan or a Renegade (I would say "or a Kunio," but that doesn't sound nearly as Cannon Films cheesy Image). I just love talking about these games, and the nexus of hardcore 2D action in general.

As with the sometimes heated arguments for/against Contra/Starfox belonging in the main forum, if we were "bmups.system11.org," I'd be equally absent. :lol:
The game may be a masterpiece, but its quirkiness of removing depth wasn't replicated elsewhere except by the developers themselves when they decided it needed the definitive modern revision. That's pretty much what I was saying, which is most definitely not "Nowhere to go from there! No wonder nobody else makes these!" :P Come on. I'm on a Paprium thread, I'm sure you guys have seen some minutes of footage of it, enough to see that the game while aiming for its own identity, can't really escape the Bare Knuckle imprint. I was just laughing at the tremendously cruel catchphrase "There are better SNES brawlers out there", and the vludi brought on the one that basically plays quite differently.
Indeed, it was a brief period of glory and it suddenly came to and end quickly, but not so quickly that one can't see what we've said above, that is that the Natsume oddity of getting back to Spartan for its brawler made no proselitism whatsoever, and I think there are good reasons why.
This discussion made me recall the similarly rare "line dancing" brawlers. I know of only three: Tenchi wo Kurau (CPS), Guardian Heroes (SS) and Panzer Bandit (PS). There may be more, but I've never encountered them. (ignoring direct sequels like Advance GH)

We can't know for certain, so I'm just going to leave it at this. In such a high-stakes, risk-averse industry, particularly one that was steadily phasing out brawlers, I don't think the rarity of these deviations tells us much. They're twice-unfortunate, really - mainstream gamers aren't easily drawn to hardcore genre efforts, while diehards may find tweaks offensive.

As for the industry itself... maybe the collective brawler dev community went "YUUUCK!" Players certainly didn't, judging by GH and TNWA resurfacing on 360 and PS4/SW to consistent acclaim, but who knows. Or maybe, devs were too busy evading homelessness by coding versus fighting games to even consider their own adventures in cross-genre pollination.

Capcom and Treasure and Natsume's guys certainly were. 3;

FWIW, I don't think Vludi was being cruel or arch mentioning TNWA - as he outlined (much more expertly than I could), anyone wanting Final Fight-styled brawling mechanics on 16bit would be mad to ignore it.

On that pragmatic note, I guess I'll come down on the side of "TNWA is a brawler." Owning far too many 16bit games for my own good, if I had to get rid of all but five "Real Streets of Fire Simulators," TNWA would be the first in the hypothetical Noah's Ark.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Sumez »

Turrican wrote:the Natsume oddity of getting back to Spartan for its brawler
You just don't give up :D
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Vanguard »

Turrican wrote:The word you are looking for here would be "seminal", not popular. And of course it doesn't equate as good, where did I say that? :?
The argument that because no one did build upon TNWA's foundation (aside from TNWOA) that therefore no one could is also very silly. There's every bit as much room for variety in the single plane brawlers as there is in beltscrollers.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Vludi »

https://www.twitch.tv/macaw45/clip/Craz ... oonerLater
https://www.twitch.tv/macaw45/clip/Live ... plePrimeMe
I very much doubt single-plane beat 'em ups are at a dead end when some random jp freeware can do stuff like this. Even Once Again upped their game with Raiden which is very unique.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BIL »

It's going on two years since I played TNWA seriously, or even looked at footage of it. Because it is one of those games so good, I tend to underrate it in hindsight, and because I'm enjoying this thread, I revisited my last real effort: a Kunoichi Hard clear, clocking in at ~42mins. I'm pretty happy with it. I think ~35min might be my limit for this character, if I really broke my ass.

Anyhoo, the game's biggest brawl is 8-3's Hangar onslaught. You can mitigate it significantly, by leaving the crate alone. It, and its max HP restore, will occupy one of the four enemy spawn slots. This has another benefit: a reserve lifebar for a tough fight.

I remembered smashing the crate and devouring its contents on arrival - because that's the way I like it, baby, I don't wanna live forever. Image I didn't remember the fight itself, and was very pleased to see I went without a single knockdown. Really happy with that! Harder than it looks. I try to showcase the best aspects of games in my replays, which I've always considered "buyer's guides" first and foremost.

All this preening to say:

1) TNWA plays nothing even remotely like Spartan or its ilk. That's an utter non-starter, sorry Turrican, I extra-concede nothing. :lol: The only return here is to principles of 2D action transcending Spartan, Renegade, and the medium itself. It plays like a Capcom brawler locked to a flat plane. To dominate it, you must carve out space for yourself via grappling and its associated mechanics: Enemy repositioning, crowd knockdowns, and i-frames. Combos are best launched on waking foes, preferably ones bulldozed into a corner with their buddies. In a pinch, jump-ins or even walk-ups can work, but enemies are very zone-aware, and will viciously punish if your execution is off by frames/pixels.

If you play it like Spartan, defending just your immediate space with L/R strikes, you will be confounded by a range of factors, some player-side, some enemy-side, too extensive to list without turning this into a strategy guide (hit me up, any who are curious, I could talk all day Image but you will have to survive the R2RKMFcave Image). This concept of actively moulding the playfield to your advantage is part of Kunio, but it only really bloomed in Final Fight, where grappling was no longer shackled to striking, and players could manhandle enemies with unprecedented speed and accuracy.

(I enjoy both methods, and have a slight aesthetic preference for outboxing an enemy until they double over in agony, before mauling them in the clinch - though instantaneously wrenching shoulders and necks to create Dead Meat Muppet Missiles is p.rad, too Image)

2) I'd forgotten just how violently unpredictable TNWA's action is. As shown shortly before the Hangar, a split-second's indecision is all it needs to knock you flat. With most of my time going to Once Again, I'd also forgotten what a pressure cooker the 4:3 aspect is.

3) Natsume accomplished this on a Super Famicom cartridge, with four objects onscreen max, in a market that precluded arcade-calibre intensity, during a brawler recession that killed/crippled several key players. That seems an astonishingly strange place to mark an evolutionary dead end (hence my interest in this thread, pending further tales of Winkler woe/melting cartridges). As for impact and legacy, those often indicate little more than good luck. Double Dragon Advance leaves its predecessors standing. The public didn't care. Chances are they wouldn't have in '94, either.

Who needs Sousetsuken? Behold, the zenith of the series. >_> (don't get rude, cunts! :shock: I love DD1. I'm probably much better at it than you! but it's 50% brawler, 50% The Three Stooges with diverse casting)

We probably have very different ideas about what a theoretical Ninja Warriors 2 could be. And that's fine. High-performance arcade violence is my vice, I wish I'd gotten jumped by something less ragingly counter-productive. Like golf! Image
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BrianC »

To make matters more confusing, the MSX port of Spartan X/Kung Fu/Kung Fu Master, is named Seiken Acho. There are games named Kung Fu Master and Spartan X on the MSX, but they are completely different games.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BIL »

Gahh, my brain is overwriting trivia with stage layouts lately. :lol: I can't recall if FC Double Dragon's title screen even includes the words "DOUBLE DRAGON," or just the "Sou-setsu Ryuu" kanji. I know all three NES ones keep the latter, which immediately captured my attention as a kid.

Lemme check. Ah yeah, FC does have the English title. Though it gives no clues as to pressing [SELECT] to start the game! An admirably maverick move. :cool:

EDIT: Gaaad DAMN Image This bit where my man beats Jeff CLOSE II DEF w/3 savage hits, leaving him sprawled face down, and Jeff's Friend is like "he done, fight me damn you" and Billy is like "Hol up" *CRACK* Jeff, ur neck and ur back its all gone homie, I think its over 4U Image

Yes I know the Sharp Dressed Men aren't really Jeffs, but since he is AWOL, somebody has to carry the torch for "that one badass rival practitioner." You know what sucks, how FC's badass version of Chin wasn't given his own gig. Then again, DDA was working the smallest GBA ROM size available, can't ask for much more out of this gem. TBH, I suspect the restriction may have benefited. See also Alien Soldier where there's no room for relationships, there's just room to hit it! I wish I could hit Guardian Heroes' cutscenes - WITH MY FIST :evil: Read the manual for that stuff, FFS. OR better yet, put it in a MOOK for XTRA revenue stream! :o
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by spmbx »

Reading the entire last page of this, i'm not quite sure if i understand any of it or if i can find any relation to the topic's game?
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Sumez »

This thread is now about TNWA, sorry. We figured Paprium wasn't worth it.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BIL »

Well, you see spmbx, one page back, Minty said Paprium wouldn't crack the top 50% of SFC brawlers. Then the thread went dark, until apparently, somebody's Pablum melted - the most interesting thing about this game. Turrican then posted a late rejoinder to Minty, saying the most elite SFC brawlers are blown away by the MD's middle tier, and so Papsmear must be a really poor showing indeed!

Vludi disputed the former claim, citing The Ninja Warriors Again. Turrican pondered whether TNWA is truly part of the same genre as Bare Knuckle and Final Fight - a poignant question, indeed - but in classic console war style, overstepped by implying TNWA is a novelty one-off anyway - a statement so retarded, it made 2D violence enthusiasts of all console loyalties (or indeed NO console loyalties) spray their Jolt cola all over their monitors, and take up arms.

WE DOGPILLED HIM VIOLENTLY (■`W´■)

TLDR: new console war for Megadrive/SFC
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by spmbx »

Thanks for the short summary it was actually very enlightening carry on :)
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

So, now that it's been out awhile, is Paprium any good? Was it worth the wait?
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Udderdude »

The AI is pants on head retarded and you can jump kick 90% of the enemies to death, including bosses. It's all style and no substance. There was a review I posted earlier in the thread.

Think I should add that even if the game were any good, you still shouldn't be giving any money to Fonzola.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Turrican »

They dogpilled him, alright. :cry: He shed a tear in front of his Natsume altar shrine, with Nazo kuro Manto, Return of the Ninja and their undisputably best ninja game ever, the unforgotten Kage/Blue Shadow, all looking down to him with gloom. It was as if he had been proven guilty of dismissing in public his genuine dev heroes. :cry: But he couldn't help it, to him their TNWA felt really a lot different from Final Fight and its spawn.

This is the sad story of a man who still could tell whether he's playing Space Harrier rather than Burning Force. A prayer for him.

That's why a phrase such as
vludi wrote:Core gameplay mechanics are more important than the game being single-plane or belt-scroller, which is why Final Fight has more things in common with NWA than with Renegade or Double Dragon.
felt only half true to him, because adding a whole layer of movement, or removing it, definitely ranked as "core gameplay mechanic" in his dictionary.

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).

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). Being shamed on the forum to everlasting damnation, he had to ask himself, in a very mainstream way: would he recommend TNWOA (currently on discount at digital stores!) to his friends who had been all in a frenzy a couple months ago over Streets of Rage 4? Or, to be more precise, would he recommend it not on the notion of being an excellent game, but on the notion to offer them more of that experience? And in all conscience he still couldn't. Spit on his grave, but that was it.

Of course, BIL accurately summed up the thread's latest developments. Also of course, a sentence such as
in classic console war style, overstepped by implying TNWA is a novelty one-off anyway - a statement so retarded,
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.

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.

One asshole less in the world. RIP to him.
Last edited by Turrican on Thu Mar 04, 2021 9:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Vludi »

Turrican wrote:That's why a phrase such as
vludi wrote:Core gameplay mechanics are more important than the game being single-plane or belt-scroller, which is why Final Fight has more things in common with NWA than with Renegade or Double Dragon.
felt only half true to him, because adding a whole layer of movement, or removing it, definitely ranked as "core gameplay mechanic" in his dictionary.
The problem is you pretend it's the only one that matters, which is why your argument is nonsense and proves a shallow understanding of the games, considering there are many other gameplay factors that outweigh it overall. The belt ultimately just acts as a lenient evasion move, which isn't even necessary to use in Final Fight for the most part, in the first half of stage 4 for example there is a whole section that forces you to stay on a single-plane and guess what, it's perfectly playable. Pretty sure the first Double Dragon has some sections like that too, and the whole game can be played as single-plane anyway due to how broken the combat is, only exception is the final boss's gun, similar to Belger's crossbow.
Last edited by Vludi on Thu Mar 04, 2021 3:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Turrican be like

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

Post by Turrican »

Vludi wrote:The problem is you pretend it's the only one that matters, which is why your argument is nonsense
"ha! no", said the severed head. The problem is rather reversed, in fact. It's more that 2D movement for you is where differences with FF end, rather than begin. I mean, I'm sure you play FF like pro, but you're asking me and average joe to believe that a game that has a block button, a gauge to fill to perform several ranged attacks, has friggin' "advance while crouching" finesse (a la Simon Belmont in IV!), a game that, as BIL would put it, adds a lot of pressure to the player by removing evading space, is the twin separated at birth from Final Fight: a game that for long chunks of its stages can be played using the same move (of the kinda three you have?), a game whose designers' saw the cheap elbow tactics in Double Dragon and thought "You know what? this is still too complicated to input for average joe, let's remove them". A game that has basically one form of attack, button-mash, and grapple. For both of which positioning on the layered field is not only essential: it's the only element away from total boredom.

I was in a Paprium thread. The outsider here is you. 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".

...Said the severed head.
Last edited by Turrican on Thu Mar 04, 2021 9:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Squire Grooktook »

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RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................

Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
Aeon Zenith - My STG.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Turrican »

Squire Grooktook wrote::shock:
recap: they killed Turrican, but he haunts them from the underworld.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Squire Grooktook »

GHOST IMPERATOR TURRICAN seizes the galaxy with a deathly claw...
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................

Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
Aeon Zenith - My STG.
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Re: Paprium - New beat em' up for MegaDrive/Genesis

Post by Turrican »

If only I had retained my pixelart skills, now I would add a fluorescent halo to my avatar :lol:
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