Blaster Master

Blaster Master for the NES is one of the finest games for the platform. The catchy music from the first stage alone is enough to bring back memories to any NES aficionado worth his salt. The story for the Americanized version of the game is supposedly demonstrably different from the original Japanese version, but finding accurate information to corroborate that statement is itself an exercise filled with high-adventure. As it stands, then, we are saddled with the story of Jason, Jason’s frog, a box of nuclear waste in Jason’s back yard, and a sink-hole that reveals a tank and power suit.

Pure gold.

Backstory insanity aside, we have a pretty solid, and fairly challenging game. Like many games your tank starts out with just enough firepower to gun down errant mutated mosquitoes, but by seeking out and destroying giant brains, giant frogs, giant crabs, and giant… mobile blocks you gain the missing components of your tank. Toward the end of the game, your tank becomes actually somewhat useful. It can scale walls, hover, dive underwater, and… unlock doors. However, getting to that point is so ridiculously difficult that most people will never achieve it. You get 3 lives and 5 continues, 15 chances to navigate a meandering maze of insanity.

The different areas are all distinct and have a different feel. As long as you don’t question why there are forests, giant technology centers, and sky in a supposed sinkhole in some kid’s backyard, then it’s quite enjoyable.

Sequels and spinoffs were made for the Genesis, Game Boy, and PlayStation. Of those, I’ve only played the Game Boy sequel, which certainly tried hard to capture the feeling of the NES original, but fell short for some reason that I can’t quite grasp.

3 Responses to “Blaster Master”

  1. [...] years of practicing the Digital Arts can help save the planet from rampaging militaristic aliens or giant mutated crabs then it will all be worth [...]

  2. [...] should be fairly apparent that I don’t have some kind of bias against old games in favor of new games. I kept hearing about how awesome this game was, but it just didn’t [...]

  3. [...] game is hard, but that’s not usually a problem for me. Unless the difficulty comes from difficult controls or a particularly bizarre game play [...]

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