I think one of my favorite aspects of doing this column is reliving something from my childhood that doesn’t really exist anymore. And no, I’m not talking about NES games. I’m talking about going in blind. For most of the games in this column, I get a recommendation from a friend, take the name, and start playing. Since the days of early NES, the world began to popularize magazines that previewed upcoming games, and then later the internet, and all around it’s just not common anymore to see someone walk into a store and just take a chance on a game they’ve never heard of before. Most of the time, we go the store because we’re psyched about something we’ve been hearing about for months.
For a lot of players at the time, Blaster Master was most likely a game people started to popularize after going in blind; Chô Wakusei Senki Metafight, the Japanese version of this game, did not sell well, so I would imagine if the internet existed in the same capacity back then people wouldn’t have been as willing – but eventually the game got such good reviews it would later get sequels on the Sega Genesis, the PS One, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and even on Wii Ware later down the road.
Now there are some great things about this game that I can’t stress enough, but before I get to any of that I absolutely cannot help but make fun of the story they contrived for the North American release. So the main character, Jason, has this pet frog who just jumps out of his tank one day and just happens to go for the box of radioactive waste in the dude’s backyard, causing the frog to mutate and apparently also causing a hole in the ground that envelopes them both. The main character then finds a tank and a driver’s suit, then hops after his deformed pet.
The first time I saw this cut scene, I had to pause and rewatch it several times to ask questions, ones I’m sure that fans of this game have probably all asked before (though probably more as adults than as children). Why did Jason have a box of radioactive waste in his backyard to begin with? Why did the frog mutate from just touching the outside of the box – and if the outside of the box is equally dangerous, how did they get the box there to begin with? Why was there a tank at the bottom of a hole underneath said box of radioactive waste? And why did the tank just happen to have the exact same size driver’s suit that Jason would wear? And why, in god’s name, does Jason mount this tank he’s seemingly never seen before, just assuming that this will somehow help him recover his lost mutated pet?
I went to Wikipedia to see if they had any better sense of what the plot was, hoping to get answers to at least one of these questions, and I got a description on Master Blaster’s page that had nothing to do with any of that:
In Chou Wakusei Senki Metafight, the game takes place on the planet Sophia the 3rd, located near the center of the Epsilon Milky Way, in which an advanced civilization flourished. In the year 2052, the emperor Goez, who has conquered the rest of outer space and declared himself as a god, and his “Inbem Dark Star Cluster” invade and conquer Sophia the 3rd. The only survivor of Goez’s raid is the Science Academy’s Nora Satellite, who has escaped and plans to build a weapon to defeat Goez’s forces. They build an all-purpose tank called “Metal Attacker” that is driven by a boy named Kane Gardner to take the lead in the counterattack. The game’s opening sequence shows Metal Attacker dropped into the battlefield.
…What? Seriously, what?
Eventually, I just decided that it was an NES game and I wasn’t meant to get an adequate backstory, and then started to play it.
I know I have been saying this a lot with my articles, but the music in this game is absolutely top notch. Like any good game, the first level’s theme sucks you in right away, getting you both excited to play and appropriately pumped for all the things you are about to shoot. Of course, this feeling is short lived when you realize just how frustratingly difficult the game can get. It has the Mega Man aspect of spikes that kill you in one hit (which makes considerably less sense when you’re driving an armored tank that is at least sturdy enough to survive a dangerously radioactive box living on top of it). It has the Castlevania aspect of requiring you to revisit old areas with new power-ups. It has the early Legend of Zelda aspect of top down action – occasionally.
So, while insanely fun and eclectic, there is at times a lot going on, and it’s easy to get caught off guard by everything happening at once. The first time I discovered a top down part of the game, I didn’t even know the game could do that, and I was dead within minutes from having to learn a new part of the game.
I would be arrogant to omit, however, that some of the difficulty was my own fault. The combination of catchy music and just suddenly discovering a tank out of nowhere evoked my inner child, so the phase of new gaming where I normally test controls and feel out the area was replaced with me laughing maniacally as I charged forward, shooting everything and anything. The first time I saw the spikes, I assumed they were grass given the pixel colors and appearance. I fell for this several times before I got the hint. Granted, I assume some of the difficulty was just a developer from the 80s deciding it would be fun to screw with small children; I can’t tell you how many times the tank fell into water, requiring me to carefully scale a few blocks in a struggle session to get out several minutes later – only to be hit by an enemy waiting for me and fall in once again.
While I was mostly joking about the plot holes – it’s a fair claim that most games from this era do not exactly have the capacity or patience for a fleshed out story – I do think one area where the game could have been better was the lack of any method of saving the game, be it via save points or passwords. A frustratingly difficult game is one thing, but having to take it all in one sitting can be a bit much for some players. IGN, when reviewing Blaster Master, even went as far as to recommend players exploit glitches in order to beat bosses. It’s also worth noting that the title of that article is “Screw This Game,” if that says anything about the difficulty.
This game is ideal for someone who is a pet owner, like Jason. Because, if anyone, a fellow pet owner would be able to look at the aspects of this game that make absolutely no sense or are downright cumbersome, and see past all that to see the true joy. And much like owning a pet, making progress in this game and watching things develop and grow will be a reward that justifies everything else.
