Collection essentials #41: Blaster Master (NES)
Side-scrolling platformers and action games were all the rage right from the start of the Nintendo era thanks to, of course, Mario, which basically created a blueprint for platformers going forward. The structure of a Mario game is that it consists of a series of levels/stages that you conquer one at a time. When you reach the end of one, the screen goes black and you’re dropped into the next one.
But what if a game was basically one huge level? Nintendo gave us the first take on that concept, and then Sunsoft gave it a shot with this game as well as another one I’ll get to later. When a game is one huge level, progression is handled by requiring the player to find certain upgrades and power-ups to be found in order to access certain sections of it. In a way there are distinct levels, but rather than finish one and then start the next, you are free to roam between them as you like.
Now, about Blaster Master itself. In this game, you control a tank that somehow can jump like Mario. Cool! And you can also exit the tank. When you do, your pilot appears rather tiny and his gun very weak. But exiting the tank is the only way you can go into doorways, which lead to areas with a much-different gameplay style. Much like I pointed out previously for Bionic Commando, these sections are from a top-down perspective and lets the character move in all four directions instead of just left and right. Your character appears much larger, more like what you’d expect in a typical action game. Throughout the game, there are both temporary and permanent upgrades you can get for both types of gameplay.
Blaster Master is…well, it’s right there in the title, it’s a blast. This is one of the best games on the NES. However, there are some cons that hold it back a bit. One thing that’s unfortunate is that there’s no way to save your progress, so the game must be beaten in one sitting. And that’s no small task, because this game has more content than most other games from this era, and finishing it will almost certainly take multiple hours of play, especially if you don’t know where you’re going and want to freely explore. There’s also a limited number of continues, so even if you dedicate an evening to it and make it near the end, if you mess up too much, you could get booted all the way back to square one.
Another flaw involves the gun power-up system for the non-tank segments. Your basic gun is pretty darn wimpy. But once you get it all the way up to power level 8, you are a wrecking machine! It’s so much fun to tear through everything with the level 8 gun. But if you take any damage at all, you lose a level of gun power. This can cause things to unravel quickly, because with less gun power it will also be harder to avoid taking more damage since you’re not killing stuff as quickly. And on top of that, if you lose a life, not all parts of the game have gun power-ups immediately available without taking a huge detour, and that’s a real drag. On top of that, ALL the boss fights take place during these segments, meaning your gun power-up is even that much more important. (Is a non-gamer gonna know what a boss fight is?? A boss is a big and strong enemy that takes extra effort to defeat, typically at the end of a level)
Blaster Master did spawn a series, but unfortunately none of the sequels matched the quality or popularity of the original, so it’s perhaps not quite as iconic of an NES game as it could have been for that reason. There was a remake made for modern platforms some years back called “Blaster Master Zero” that changes and adds an awful lot, and it’s pretty fun, but has the issue of being far too easy. Well, there’s a hard mode, but you can’t even select it until you’ve finished the game once, which kinda baffles me. I wouldn’t say Zero replaces the original, though, like some remakes would, I just look at it as an alternate experience. It’s also worth noting that, if you have a Nintendo Switch with an active online subscription, you can go play this game right now as it is one of the free games made available to subscribers. This also mitigates one of the issues of the original version, as on the Switch you can save progress whenever you want.
I didn’t grow up with Blaster Master, unfortunately. It was one of those games I remember hearing the name of every now and then before acquiring as an adult. And once I played it, it exceeded my expectations to now be considered one of my favorite games on the console. I have made two serious attempts at beating Blaster Master in my life so far, and I have…not succeeded yet. But I probably will someday, I think, maybe. It is, after all, an absolutely essential game that I plan to always have.
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