This is a “retro review” I wrote for GamingFurever.com which, for a while seemed defunct to me, but now I guess it back up again (I just checked now)… however, my reviews don’t seem to be there anymore.
The date on the txt file I found this in was September 14, 2019, but that is not accurate at all. This was written during my deepest depression of two years about 16 years ago. That would more like 2009, not 2019.
Anyways, here it is until I have any additional info:
RetroRodentia’s Blaster Master Review
Ah, what can I say about this game. I’ve had it since childhood. It always taunted me on a sick day home from school, beat me, beat me, you can do it. (Get your mind out of the gutter) I would play it and try to beat it, but every time I fell short. Little did I realize how ridiculously nintendo-hard this game truly is as it gets further to the end. So, yeah, this is another game where I used save states so I could try any part over and over until I got it. I had to, to beat it I really had no choice unless I wanted to be an uber-gamer and try the thing until my thumbs bled. I’m sure there are people out there who can accomplish this feat, but I had to cave in.
Created by Yoshiaki Iwata, Blaster Master was released as Chou Wakusei Senki Metafig
ht in Japan on June 17, 1988. It was released here in November in 1988, pretty close for a Nintendo game of the time. It was praised by critics, but also chided for being too difficult (you think?) It’s actually true the game would’ve been more difficult if it hadn’t been for US developers: in the fourth level the player was forced to make a suicide leap for a ladder suspended in mid-air. WTF?
The game’s story differs on whether you’re playing the Metafight Japanese version, or the United State’s Blaster Master. I’d focus only on the western release of the game if it weren’t for the drastically differing, to the point of humorous, details of the backstory. Here I thought this was a game about a radioactive frog that fell down a hole into a world of mutants who were going to take over the Earth (I added that last part, but it was implicit). That never quite explained the screens where the was open sky… but I overlooked it, this game was beautiful! Here’s the actual japanese backstory: The setting is Sophia the Third, located at the center of Epsilon Milky Way. In the year 2052, emperor Goez, whose conquered all of outer space and declared himself a god, uses his Inbem Dark Star Cluster to invade Sophia the Third (A planet remember.) But, the Science Academy’s Nora Satellite survived, so what do they do? They build an all-purpose tank to be driven by a boy, leading the counterattack. (This of course overlooks the fact that the tank is mysteriously missing seven pieces that it miraculously finds in seven parts of a mutant world.)
So, here we are, literally plopped down onto an alien world in a ‘all-purpose tank’. First off, like I said before, who makes an all-purpose tank, then takes out all the purposeness and strews it across seven worlds full of bad guys so you can make it all purpose again? Doesn’t that seem odd? The game starts out easy enough. If you’ve never played it before you’ll die quickly and easily, but as you get the hang of it it gets easier. That’s the game’s first learning curve, by the time you reach world 6+ the learning curve shoots up like a bad derivative.
The game is moved forward by finding these little doors that your driver can get into where he explores maps from the top down. Only one of these doors per stage leads to the boss that will get you your next tank upgrade. The spatial layout of the title was influenced by meetroid, so the player has to find the next stage door in the right stage. I actually love that sort of gameplay, depending on how its executed. Castlevania Symphony of the Night is like a wet dream to me. Excuse me, I’ll be right back.
Ah, yes, this brings me to the criticisms I have. Several of these have been made before, but I reiterate ’cause it’s my damn review. First, a real game killer is that there are no save points, no passwords, and limited continues. If you finally die on your last continue (which gets used easily) you’re toast. You have to start the game all over… again. Very demoralizing. This wouldn’t be so bad, if the game didn’t get so drastically hard near the end.
My second criticism is definitely the difficulty. There are three things that become difficult from the start if you’re not using a walkthrough. How to find the next stage isn’t always clear, I know when I played it as a wee human, it took me weeks before I realized I can use hover at the beginning of stage one to reach stage three. When I look back on it, I was a little dense, but finding your way, or remembering your way from stage to stage can be difficult. Once you find a stage, you have to scout out all its doors before you find the one that actually has the boss in it. On your seventh playthrough (easily accomplished by anyone who tries to beat the game) it’s not so bad, but when you get to an exciting new stage, the quest starts all over. Third, in top down view you can upgrade your guns to an almost all powerful shoot-through-walls level. However, that requires a full gun meter. Guess what? Every time you get hit, you lose a gun meter point, and your gun quickly degrades into uselessness. Good thing you have grenades.
Of particular note, is level eight, the final level. It’s very difficult to say the least. I ran out of homing missiles near the end and the last tank passage way to the boss, I had to try 25 times to get through. When I finally got to the boss, he was in two stages… good thing I had turbo, or it would have proved impossible. The second stage is just ridiculous, requiring 150 gtenade hits alone.
So, where would I put this game on my shitlist? It actually doesn’t warrant a listing, but I don’t think it warrants one on the gems of gaming either. The graphics for the time were beautiful, the controls were tight, everything about the game shined, and still does so today. It’s just the difficulty, it’s really a killer, and I’d recommend anyone playing it to play it on a ROM machine. It’s a classic that kind of hangs there in the middle. Good, and equally bad. Meh.
Thanks for reading!
RetroRodentia