When I was in junior high I hung out with this kid, Tim who lived a block away from my dad's house. We did all the stuff that you did in junior high in the mid-90s. We played street hockey and skateboarded. We listened to Adam Sandler and The Jerky Boys albums. I think Tim was on the same CYO basketball team as me, though my memory is a little fuzzy. What I do remember is playing NES games. We played lots of NES games.
For some reason Blaster Master stands out. It was a popular game, at least in a sort of cult way. And I thought it was good. But not really a game I wanted for my own collection. Though Blaster Master was one of those random NES games that hit at just the right time. Released in the US in late 1988, it came out just as Nintendo Fever had really come over America. Gamers were hungry for new and cool games to explore, and the cover art for Blaster Master was hard to ignore. What none of us knew at the time was that Blaster Master was a localization from Meta Fight, a game that Sunsoft had released a year earlier. The insane plot of Meta Fight was butchered and we kids in the states got a game about a kid who chased a frog into a giant hole in the ground and then... for some reason he was like this futuristic soldier with a gun who rode around in a crazy tank that could jump. But then again, most of us had also played a NES game about a plumber who ate mushrooms and threw fireballs and fought turtles, so I don't know. I guess nothing felt exactly odd about video game plots back then. We just didn't overthink things. It was all about gameplay. And Blaster Master was certainly interesting in that regard. It's kind of two games in one. You've got the driving around in the tank and shooting stuff in a large side-scrolling overworld that screams Metroidvania. And then you go into caves and suddenly you're out of the tank and you're weaker and you have a gigantic head and everything takes place in a kind of overhead Legend Of Zelda style take on a run and gun. So let's take those two things and discuss them then and now. Then would be like 1994 when I was playing this game in Tim's room. And now would be today, with a few days left in 2023 when I'm super stressed out because we're in the process of moving into an apartment and putting our house up for sale... The sidescrolling overworld is iconic. There's no doubt about that. I mean the look and feel of this game. The way that the tank (Sophia) moves and can shoot in various directions - it's all pretty impressive. Sunsoft was an interesting developer because I often felt like they were reaching too far. They had great ideas and tried to really push some new ideas in development. Sometimes they succeeded and sometimes they failed. Their games were often a mix of awesome and jank. Yes, Blaster Master is a classic but it's also not perfect. Back then, the labyrinthian overworld felt incredible. I loved exploring and getting lost and finding neat new areas and trying to see if I could break the game in any meaningful way. Now, I feel like it's too big and I just don't have the time or patience to revisit it fully. I am a firm believer that youth is wasted on the young. You think back to a time like junior high and you remember all the stupid crap that seemed really important and dramatic and it was all so dumb. You realize how good you had it when you had an abundance of free time on your hands and little to no real responsibility. The overhead sections are also a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, they're a neat change of pace. They have that classic Sunsoft overhead shooter thing going on (think Fester's Quest, etc). And the boss battles are definitely fun and interesting. But as a dude in his 40s who's been playing games for the vast majority of his life, I can also set aside any nostalgia and view this with a more critical eye. Your character sprite is so huge that it makes dodging most attacks a fool's errand. Likewise, maneuvering can be a pain. If you look at something like Zelda, you're basically moving on an invisible grid where every step puts you in the next square. It's simple yet elegant. Meanwhile, Blaster Master is more open movement, where you can step "between" any such invisible square. And you can fire in multiple directions rather than the cardinal four. This offers more variety on the surface, but it also means that a tiny inch can mean you get hit when you think you're safe. And your character's huge hit box doesn't help. Along with that, sometimes you find difficulty in lining up shots because things just aren't as refined with the controls. So I appreciate the freedom that Sunsoft was going for, but it can be frustrating. I should point out that for a game that I've always liked but never loved, I have still played Blaster Master a fair share. Not just back on Tim's NES, but I also had the Game Boy Color remake (Enemy Below) years later. And today I'm playing the re-remake, Blaster Master Zero on PS4. I guess I just found the whole concept of Blaster Master Zero interesting. Here's a remake that also incorporates all the lore from the series (including the original Meta Fight, along with stuff as obscure as the Worlds Of Power book) and cleans up the look of the game and adds a bunch of quality of life improvements. Not to mention that Inti Creates is an interesting company. Formed in the late 90s by a bunch of ex-Capcom staff, Inti Creates has gone on to have a legacy of making good to almost-good games that fall into a nu-retro aesthetic. As a brief reminder, they're responsible for the Mega Man Zero/ZX games, which I think are probably equally beloved and maligned, depending on your stance on Mega Man. They were also responsible for Mega Man 9 and 10, which were games developed for PS3 which looked like old NES games. And they made the Gunvolt series, which is basically just Mega Man Zero But Not Made By Capcom games. Plus they made Might No 9, which was most certainly intended to be a bootleg Mega Man 11 except it was horrible and then Capcom made a real Mega Man 11, which was kind of good but generally incredible compared to Mighty No 9. Most importantly to me personally, Inti Creates made the two Bloodstained: Curse Of The Moon games, which were like hardcore throwbacks to Castlevania's NES trilogy. I guess my point is that Inti Creates now is a lot like Sunsoft back then. Here are some very interesting and very retro games that know exactly the lane they're in. And sometimes they fail and sometimes they succeed. But gosh, aren't you kind of glad that they're at least doing something that isn't just following the current trends? I mean, I'm not exactly a huge fan of Inti Creates (though I did buy Mighty No 9) but still, I don't expect them to make a battle royale any time soon, either. They just do what they want to do, which is what they've effectively been doing for decades. I'm not sure that they even care if anyone pays much attention. They just want to keep making these Mega Man-ish games. So yeah, here we are thirty years after I first played Blaster Master and I'm playing it again and I like it. I don't love it. I don't have the patience nor desire to explore this world any further. But I'm also still sort of pleased that Blaster Master Zero exists. And it has two sequels that aren't remakes. I'm probably more interested in checking those out than spending any more time with this original game. But I guess I enjoy thinking and talking about Blaster Master than I do playing it.
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