Blaster Master is one of those old games that seems to be stalking me, begging me to play. I've read about it over and over, again. But, the negatives you mention keep me away. You're right about the benefit of using an emulator or whatever system with save states. I was only able to finally beat one of my first rivals, Ninja Gaiden, that way.
The concept is interesting...though I would hope there's more to the story than just chasing down a mutated frog in a mysterious tank that just sits in an underground hole.
I'd say this is more like Broderbund's The Guardian Legend than Metroid. TGL is noted for great music and has the game divided between vertical scrolling (flight) sections and four-way top-view map exploration with weapons of varying strength.
Yeah, from a story standpoint, that’s it. Just about a boy and his frog. Fortunately, none of that really matters as it doesn’t really come up in any meaningful way throughout the game.
The original Japanese version (MetaFight) has a boarder story with anime influences. But back then anime wasn’t en vogue in North America the way it is now. So Sunsoft’s American division opted to change the story to something they thought would be more palatable to Western audiences.
Thanks for mentioning The Guardian Legend. I originally intended to give it a mention in the article. But only I’ve played it a few times and wasn’t familiar enough with it to make any meaningful comparisons beyond the obvious visual similarities at this time.
TGL has been one game that might have been missed out on if I didn’t dare to get past the cover design, which was a little scary. I bought the game purely based upon magazine reviews citing the music was exceptional (and the graphics were decent, too). I was pleasantly surprised, overall, but the game is not for the weary! It will test you without the power of an emulator/save states. Just as Heavy Barrel tested me. Neither is as daunting as Super Ghouls and Ghosts making you go through the game twice to reach the happy ending, but they have their frustrating aspects…like speed, glitching graphics because of speed and the sheer amount of enemies coming at you from all sides.
Blaster Master was one of my favorites of the era, even though I was never able to totally beat it back then. Every time I got a tiny bit further it felt like I had unlocked a whole new game, but some of the backtracking and gauntlets are really rough, even for the time.
It's also one of the series I was most sad to see kind of vanish - there were a few spinoffs and reboot attempts, but until the Inti Creates trilogy started it was pretty much abandoned. That Zero trilogy is pretty solid on its own, though it has its own flaws, but there's one thing it introduced that I feel is just such an obvious and simple fix for the Gradius Syndrome problem so many games like it have where every hit also makes it harder to not get hit [by making you weaker, thus forced into longer combat or more risky combat] - they gave you an [optional] single-hit, regenerating shield, but not for your health, just to prevent you from losing gun power unless you take multiple hits too close together. So it's still a risk, you still have to play well, and gun power remains useful as a drop, but you don't feel like you've gotten punched in the face every time there's a wonky hitbox or something. Every game with a similar system should add something like that.
I totally get what you mean when you mention sadness over seeing the series vanish a bit over the years. I had that same feeling throughout the late 90s when it seemed that the series was all but forgotten. Then sometime between 1999/2000, Blaster Master: Blasting Again was announced as an upcoming PlayStation release.
It was a real rollercoaster back then because as the original 2000 release date approached, news broke that Sunsoft was no longer going to release it in the US, and it looked like it was going to be stuck in Japan only. Some time later, Crave Entertainment picked up the publishing rights and released it a year later in 2001. If memory serves correctly, it was released at the bargain bin price of $10.
It felt like such a steal back then to get a brand new game for $10. I felt so relieved to see that the Blaster Master series wasn't dead in the US. It was one of the series that I always wanted to see more of.
If you haven't yet, you should definitely check out the Blaster Master Zero series. One of the things that's interesting about them is that they decided to incorporate parts of the western NES story, references to the later sequels, and even canonized some of the Worlds of Power novelization, which themselves were mostly just stories made up by a guy who played through the NES games himself.
Oh for sure! I have Blaster Master Zero on my Switch. I played it a couple of times for a few minutes, but haven’t had time to really focus on it yet. But I like the way the tank feels and everything. I know it’ll be a good time when I play it for real.
I l just now finished reading your review and watching the promo video. Your writing, analysis, and recall-storytelling is amazing. Well done, Jamie!
Thanks dad ☺️
Blaster Master is one of those old games that seems to be stalking me, begging me to play. I've read about it over and over, again. But, the negatives you mention keep me away. You're right about the benefit of using an emulator or whatever system with save states. I was only able to finally beat one of my first rivals, Ninja Gaiden, that way.
The concept is interesting...though I would hope there's more to the story than just chasing down a mutated frog in a mysterious tank that just sits in an underground hole.
I'd say this is more like Broderbund's The Guardian Legend than Metroid. TGL is noted for great music and has the game divided between vertical scrolling (flight) sections and four-way top-view map exploration with weapons of varying strength.
Yeah, from a story standpoint, that’s it. Just about a boy and his frog. Fortunately, none of that really matters as it doesn’t really come up in any meaningful way throughout the game.
The original Japanese version (MetaFight) has a boarder story with anime influences. But back then anime wasn’t en vogue in North America the way it is now. So Sunsoft’s American division opted to change the story to something they thought would be more palatable to Western audiences.
Thanks for mentioning The Guardian Legend. I originally intended to give it a mention in the article. But only I’ve played it a few times and wasn’t familiar enough with it to make any meaningful comparisons beyond the obvious visual similarities at this time.
TGL has been one game that might have been missed out on if I didn’t dare to get past the cover design, which was a little scary. I bought the game purely based upon magazine reviews citing the music was exceptional (and the graphics were decent, too). I was pleasantly surprised, overall, but the game is not for the weary! It will test you without the power of an emulator/save states. Just as Heavy Barrel tested me. Neither is as daunting as Super Ghouls and Ghosts making you go through the game twice to reach the happy ending, but they have their frustrating aspects…like speed, glitching graphics because of speed and the sheer amount of enemies coming at you from all sides.
Blaster Master was one of my favorites of the era, even though I was never able to totally beat it back then. Every time I got a tiny bit further it felt like I had unlocked a whole new game, but some of the backtracking and gauntlets are really rough, even for the time.
It's also one of the series I was most sad to see kind of vanish - there were a few spinoffs and reboot attempts, but until the Inti Creates trilogy started it was pretty much abandoned. That Zero trilogy is pretty solid on its own, though it has its own flaws, but there's one thing it introduced that I feel is just such an obvious and simple fix for the Gradius Syndrome problem so many games like it have where every hit also makes it harder to not get hit [by making you weaker, thus forced into longer combat or more risky combat] - they gave you an [optional] single-hit, regenerating shield, but not for your health, just to prevent you from losing gun power unless you take multiple hits too close together. So it's still a risk, you still have to play well, and gun power remains useful as a drop, but you don't feel like you've gotten punched in the face every time there's a wonky hitbox or something. Every game with a similar system should add something like that.
I totally get what you mean when you mention sadness over seeing the series vanish a bit over the years. I had that same feeling throughout the late 90s when it seemed that the series was all but forgotten. Then sometime between 1999/2000, Blaster Master: Blasting Again was announced as an upcoming PlayStation release.
It was a real rollercoaster back then because as the original 2000 release date approached, news broke that Sunsoft was no longer going to release it in the US, and it looked like it was going to be stuck in Japan only. Some time later, Crave Entertainment picked up the publishing rights and released it a year later in 2001. If memory serves correctly, it was released at the bargain bin price of $10.
It felt like such a steal back then to get a brand new game for $10. I felt so relieved to see that the Blaster Master series wasn't dead in the US. It was one of the series that I always wanted to see more of.
If you haven't yet, you should definitely check out the Blaster Master Zero series. One of the things that's interesting about them is that they decided to incorporate parts of the western NES story, references to the later sequels, and even canonized some of the Worlds of Power novelization, which themselves were mostly just stories made up by a guy who played through the NES games himself.
Oh for sure! I have Blaster Master Zero on my Switch. I played it a couple of times for a few minutes, but haven’t had time to really focus on it yet. But I like the way the tank feels and everything. I know it’ll be a good time when I play it for real.