Paprium is a side-scrolling beat 'em up video game for the Mega Drive developed by studio WaterMelon and released in 2020.

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.

[12][13] Development for Project Y began sometime around September 2012 alongside Pier Solar's HD re-release, with an initial release date for summer 2013.

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.

[16][17] 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.

[9] Another setback in development occurred in August 2016 when Godde claimed Project Y's developer's kit was lost by Air France causing WaterMelon to have to replace it at a large cost to the company,[10] however this has been disputed by a Sega-16 forum member who was in contact with Godde and Air France, who 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.

[9][21] WaterMelon announced that Project Y's 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.

[26] 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.

[28][29] 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.

[31][34] 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.

[36][37] Removing the epoxy reveals several additional chips such as an Altera FPGA (10M02SCU169C8G), a STMicroelectronics microcontroller (STM32F446ZEJ6), a Spansion microcontroller (GL064N90FFIS2), an ISSI semiconductor RAM (IS42S16100H), and two logic gates from ON Semiconductor (74LCX245 and 74LCX257),[38] which is used to handle the additional audio channels and capability, and to assist the console in various game tasks (managing VRAM, generating sprite table...).

While functionality does not exist for this yet, it has been mentioned by WaterMelon that this will be used as an expansion port for future downloadable content along with an online high-score board or possibly for compatibility updates.

[2][3][40] The Grand Stick III connects to the Mega Drive via the DE-9 controller port, or to a PC via the device's USB-B plug.

[44][35] If the game is run on a Japanese Mega Drive, a number of small differences between the Japanese cartridge and North American/European releases have been identified by players post release, such as music tracks appearing in game along with the title screen adding "メガロポリス" (katakana for megalopolis) where other copies display the Datenmeister logo.

[45][46] A limited "Investor's" edition was sent to early backers of the project and contains a pink cartridge, along with a leather thong, a map of the game, and a handwritten postcard from Godde.

[51] Other users have found on certain revisions of the Sega Mega Drive require a 32X to be plugged in to boot, despite Paprium not being a 32X game or taking advantage of the 32X's additional hardware.

[3] Writing for Air-Gaming, Julien Boisseau gave the game an 8/10, praising the graphics and sound, but also left criticism against the $130 price tag.

[2] Sega-16's Sebastian Sponsel gave the game a 7/10 praising the hardware and huge graphical improvements put forward by WaterMelon but ultimately felt that "these are all just neat dressing that in the long run don't serve to cover up the flaws inherent in the core design".