Captain Ibis
Squad Member
In this 2019 GDC session, Paperboy co-creator John Salwitz delivers a Classic Game Postmortem of Atari's 1985 arcade hit.
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Retro Classic Game Postmortem: Paperboy
- Thread starter Captain Ibis
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Captain Ibis
Squad Member
No matter what happens in gaming, Atari will forever be known as the coolest company bar when they weren't giving programmers in game acknowledgment. But just the types of games that they were allowed to create is so awesome.
There's just something so charming about games like Paper Boy.. so simple yet so much fun.. I wish I'd of got the chance to play it at the arcade. The best feature in my opinion is the Death character.. so good.
There's just something so charming about games like Paper Boy.. so simple yet so much fun.. I wish I'd of got the chance to play it at the arcade. The best feature in my opinion is the Death character.. so good.
Yep they made simple and enjoyable games in that era. Not 400 different control combinations overcomplicating gameplay.
Wahesh
Beast by Name, Beast by Nature
I remember that game on Sega hehe. You would have all these little hazards on the footpath and needed to avoid them. I remember the lawn mower, dogs, and guy break dancing lol. Awesome game.
Captain Ibis
Squad Member
I can't remember where I first played it but no doubt Sega.. I love how a game about delivering papers is so iconic.. I'd of loved to have seen a version of the game with all the characters they wanted to put in such as the ducks in suits lol
Wahesh
Beast by Name, Beast by Nature
One thing that's good about Paperboy is that they didn't try to remake it or make newer types of games that took away what it was all about. I like it when they keep their original charm.
Captain Ibis
Squad Member
At one stage those 3D style games were all the rage. Why, I don't know because 2D was almost infinitely better.
Wahesh
Beast by Name, Beast by Nature
Wow I didn't even know there was an N64 port of the game. Mind blown.
I always liked the Master System version as that was the first version of it I played, and then later on when I got MAME32 I played and liked the arcade version. But the charm of game doesn't appear to be there on the N64.
Wahesh
Beast by Name, Beast by Nature
I know right. I remember in 1998 people were all boasting about how great their N64 and PS games where. No doubt some games where good but I preferred the charm and looks of 2D platform games. One of my mates at school was quite resourceful when it came to these games and I remember once he brought in a licensed product of Apogee games. It contained 8 games (fully installable) spread over 4 floppy disks. He gave them to me, I copied them, installed the games, then gave him the disks back the next day at school lol. Some of those 8 games included Paganitzu, Secret Agent, Halloween Harry, Bio Menace, and 2 of the Commander Keen games. I spent countless hours playing and replaying those games.
Captain Ibis
Squad Member
Haha neither. I found it when I was on YouTube the other day.. must have been so bad it didn't make it into most rental stores!
Wahesh
Beast by Name, Beast by Nature
I took a look on Wikipedia and it had a whole lot of ports to other consoles, but the N64 was the only console of that era that ported the game. The look and feel for that gamw was for a 8 and 16 bit (Genesis/Arcade) consoles. Most other companies had moved on from that type of game but Nintendo tried to squeeze a few more dollars out of it lol. Didn't work too well I don't think.
Captain Ibis
Squad Member
surprisingly it was still a Midway production, but I suppose back then there was no real "bar".. everybody was still learning the new software.. I know there was a lot of early n64 games that were flops.. Nintendo of course niailed Mario 64, because they are Nintendo. I remember hearing a story about how the Bubsy 3d developers wigged out when they saw an early release of Mario 64 lol
Wahesh
Beast by Name, Beast by Nature
I remember I used to see them play Bubsy on that 90s kids TV show Amazing. I thought that game was awesome, it looked really good. Then when I had a chance to play it, I couldn't even finish the first stage lol. Looks can be deceiving!
Captain Ibis
Squad Member
Yeah the game play is rough, and it cops a lot of criticism for that these says, but I feel a lot of Nintendo players back then were more forgiving, or at least more patient.. I never loved the game play but other elements made me enjoy the game, particularly the graphics.
The Bubsy story is actually quite interesting.. the creator actually had no background in platformers, he was an sci fi writer who started creating role play type games which were generally text dominant.