Paprium is a side-scrolling beat 'em up video game for the Mega Drive developed by studio WaterMelon and released in 2020. It was announced as part of a crowd-funding pitch in 2012. Development took eight years, with little to no communication with game's backers or the press, and the game was widely considered to be vaporware.
Gameplay
Paprium is a beat 'em up game similar in style to other beat 'em up games that came out on the Sega Mega Drive in the late 80s and early 90s like Golden Axe and Streets of Rage, with visuals styled after various pieces of media in the cyberpunk genre. The game offers three modes, "Original", "Arcade", and an unlockable "Arena". Original and Arcade mode are playable initially, with Original mode featuring cut-scenes and player-chosen progression, while Arcade mode is styled after retro-games of the era with set progression; however, it is unique due to new routes which are unlocked by playing the Original Mode. Arena mode is unlocked after progression in Original mode, and it is a survival type mode with up to four players, but only if each of the four players use the WaterMelon produced Grand Stick III arcade stick.
Paprium begins with three playable characters, Tug, Alex, and Dice, each with their own strength and speed, with a handful of other playable characters that the player can unlock with game progression. The game follows the three characters in Paprium, a fictional supercity built after a massive nuclear war located "somewhere at equidistant point [sic] between Shanghai, Tokyo and Pyongyang" in the year 8A2 (hexadecimal value for the year 2210). The game supports both the Mega-CD and the 32X accessories: when the accessories are plugged in to a Mega Drive, it will insert boxes of the accessories in game which functions as a throwable explosive weapon for players. In addition to this, the Mega-CD's additional CPU hardware can be leveraged as a computer controlled second player in single-player games.
The player will move through various stages battling various enemy characters to advance to the final boss stage for each level. Certain stages have branching paths which allow the player to pick and choose which way they want to progress in the level. Killing enemies will add to the player's score which will help unlock additional lives or powerups. One unique feature in Paprium is unlike other beat 'em up games, Papriums score is recorded in the hexadecimal or base-16 numerical system rather than the conventional decimal or base-10 system. This isn't limited to score in the game, as other numbers in the game such as the aforementioned year and player character's age is all recorded in hexadecimal. A mechanic in the game is the characters can form an addiction to BLU, a drug that can be picked up in the level and grant a small amount of invulnerability on use. Characters can become addicted to the drug, and this will eat away at the character's life bar. If the player's lifebar falls into the "addiction" portions the playable character will enter drug withdrawal and be weaker and slower. Players will have the option to pick up various weapons or use various vehicles in certain stages to make fights easier.
Development
WaterMelon announced a new game on their Magical Game Factory website, a site set up as both a storefront and crowd-funding page for WaterMelon and future games, as Project Y, the then code name of Paprium, which was announced would be a new Mega Drive game on February 21, 2012, which would be developed alongside WaterMelon's first ever Super NES title, code-named Project N, which is still in development. Funding and influence on Project Y was funded by "gems", a digital currency used by WaterMelon for this site where funders would convert actual currency to WaterMelon for these gems in order to vote for what direction they wanted the game to take. Each gem would cost roughly 0.10 Euro (around $0.13 USD at announcement date) and would be used individually as votes, allowing funders to buy more gems to fund ideas they wanted more than others. Throughout the early development phase for Project Y, WaterMelon put up calls to funders to invest their gems to influence what game platform they wanted WaterMelon to develop Project Y for, what genre or genres they wanted Project Y to be, and the game's art direction.
On March 4, 2012, WaterMelon announced that from the results of an investor poll, Project Y would be a beat 'em up with role-playing game elements, and the results of another poll from March 29, 2012, determined the game would be set in a cyberpunk setting. Development for Project Y began sometime around September 2012 alongside Pier Solars HD re-release, with an initial release date for summer 2013. The game originally was planned to be at least 40 Megabits in size, but through the development cycle it was increased to 64 Megabits in size.
WaterMelon put a call out to hire additional artists for Project Y in July 2013, pointing out familiarity with Final Fight, Streets of Rage 3 and The King of Fighters as the requirements for the position. Tulio Goncalves later mentioned this in an interview with Retro Gamer that these were the main sources of inspiration for artwork and gameplay for the game. Luis Martins eventually was brought on as the artist responsible for the character designs of Paprium as a result of this open position. Due to the late hire of an artist for the game and confusion around when the game would be released, the release date was quietly moved to March 25, 2014, with other WaterMelon employees later stating that this initial Summer 2013 release date was "fake". The game would be pushed to an undetermined 2014 release date on March 26, 2014, when the original March 25th date was missed.
Internal conflicts at WaterMelon started occurring during the studio's Pier Solar HD development and the beginning of Project Ys development cycles, culminating with Godde moving back to France and beginning to compartmentalize Project Y development to just himself, going as far as keeping including cartridge manufacturing information and game direction information hidden and known only to him, including keeping information from WaterMelon's co-founder Tulio Goncalves. Goncalves left the company after Pier Solar HD's release at the end of 2014, due to conflicts with Godde. Another setback in development occurred in August 2016 when Godde claimed that Project Ys developer's kit was lost by Air France, causing WaterMelon to have to replace it at a large cost to the company; however, this has been disputed by a Sega-16 forum member, who was in contact with Godde and Air France. They claimed that, in their interactions with the airline, no one there was aware of any lost package reported to them or discovered by their flight crews.
WaterMelon announced that Project Ys official name would be Paprium in a March 17, 2017, post on their Facebook page, along with a late 2017 release date, later confirmed to be September 17, 2017. Another setback occurred during development leading up to the release of the game when PayPal shut down WaterMelon's accounts and froze funds that WaterMelon had stored in PayPal. Godde, writing on the Magical Game Factory blog, then announced that the game would then be pushed back from a September 2017 release to an early 2018 release.
In a March 27, 2018 post, WaterMelon stated that they had run in to a production issue with the DATENMEISTER chipset and this was holding up production on the game as chipset modifications were needed to continue manufacturing. On October 27, 2018, WaterMelon held a small party in Paris to celebrate 30 years of the Sega Mega Drive, as well as publicly unveil a working copy of Paprium. This was the first time Paprium in any form was displayed to the public and not a member of WaterMelon's development team. The party was criticized by both attendees and those who watched recorded footage of the gameplay as the game appeared to be unfinished with enemies being non-existent, stages appearing to be empty, and the game crashing several times during the demo. Godde defended the party and game display claiming that Paprium was finished, but they intentionally displayed a prototype to keep the final release of the game a surprise for new players. Godde later stated in a 2020 interview that the released version of the game was completed in 2017, along with stating that this was the version that was shown at the party, despite the various issues displayed when playing the game to the party-goers.
Martens had confirmed that Paprium is still under manufacturing and the game was going to be planned for an end of 2019 release, after previously making a public statement calling out WaterMelon for lack of transparency regarding release and manufacturing news. Godde released an update on the WaterMelon Facebook page on May 28, 2019, along with a video of a factory worker assembling the Grand Stick III. In this update, one of the last public updates from WaterMelon prior to the game's release, continued the ongoing allusion to financial issues related to the Paprium release, along with the mention that only pre-ordered copies would be assembled, with no further stock being assembled.
Soundtrack The Paprium soundtrack was composed by David Burton aka Groovemaster303 and Trevin Hughes aka Jredd. Tulio Goncalves originally reached out to Burton for Paprium because of his prior work on Pier Solar, and his work on the Streets of Rage Remake fan-game. and was approached by WaterMelon for the soundtrack for what then was known as Project Y. Burton approached Hughes for a collaboration as the two had worked together in the past on other projects. The soundtrack takes advantage of the Mega Drive's native Yamaha YM2612 sound chip as well as utilizing the Zilog Z80 included in the Mega Drive for Master System backwards compatibility, along with the extra hardware included in the Paprium's DATENMEISTER chipset for additional audio capabilities like increased audio channels and samples. The soundtrack was completed sometime in 2013, with minor changes and tweaks to the tracks occurring during the development lifecycle.
Hughes has mentioned that games like the Streets of Rage series as well as the Mega Drive's Terminator game, along with works by Yuzo Koshiro and Tim Follin, were used as inspiration for Papriums soundtrack and sound design.
Cartridge hardware