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Renato

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mikeszekely Super Dimension Member

mikeszekely

Posted
Posted

As a kid I'd heard of Blaster Master, but the generic rhyming title and goofy alien cover art never really told me enough about the game to really sell me on it.

Fast forward 34 years, and I'm watching Jeremy Parish's excellent NES Works series on Youtube.  A while ago he put out an episode on Blaster Master, and I start to realize that I must have missed out on a classic that definitely a top 50, maybe even a top 25 game on the console.  Rather than fire up an emulator (or see if I had the foresight to put it on my NES Classic) I decided I'd check out Blaster Master Zero instead.  See, BMZ has two things going for it- 1. It's available on modern systems (Switch, PS4, Xbox One/Series S/Series X, and Steam).  2. It's developed by Inti Creates, a developer responsible for some excellent retro 2D action games including the Mega Man Zero games, Mega Man 9 and 10, the two Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon games, the Azure Striker Gunvolt series, and the Gunvolt spinoff Luminous Avenger iX.

I had other stuff to play so I didn't get around to it for awhile, but today I grabbed my Switch to play with while my daughter was in her dance class, and with nothing else competing for my attention on it at the moment I fired it up.  And when we got home, I made dinner and played some more.  Made sure her homework was done, got her ready for bed, and played some more.  All told, I played until I got to Area 6, which I think puts me somewhere between 50-75% through the game.  Needless to say I'm considering it another success for Inti Creates, and I immediately bought both sequels.  You should too.

Scyla Galactic Diva

Scyla

Posted
Posted
23 minutes ago, mikeszekely said:

As a kid I'd heard of Blaster Master, but the generic rhyming title and goofy alien cover art never really told me enough about the game to really sell me on it.

Fast forward 34 years, and I'm watching Jeremy Parish's excellent NES Works series on Youtube.  A while ago he put out an episode on Blaster Master, and I start to realize that I must have missed out on a classic that definitely a top 50, maybe even a top 25 game on the console.  Rather than fire up an emulator (or see if I had the foresight to put it on my NES Classic) I decided I'd check out Blaster Master Zero instead.  See, BMZ has two things going for it- 1. It's available on modern systems (Switch, PS4, Xbox One/Series S/Series X, and Steam).  2. It's developed by Inti Creates, a developer responsible for some excellent retro 2D action games including the Mega Man Zero games, Mega Man 9 and 10, the two Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon games, the Azure Striker Gunvolt series, and the Gunvolt spinoff Luminous Avenger iX.

I had other stuff to play so I didn't get around to it for awhile, but today I grabbed my Switch to play with while my daughter was in her dance class, and with nothing else competing for my attention on it at the moment I fired it up.  And when we got home, I made dinner and played some more.  Made sure her homework was done, got her ready for bed, and played some more.  All told, I played until I got to Area 6, which I think puts me somewhere between 50-75% through the game.  Needless to say I'm considering it another success for Inti Creates, and I immediately bought both sequels.  You should too.

I think the Jeremy Parish NES Works series is excellent. But I have a hard time paying attention since my systems as a child were the original GameBoy and the SNES and I have no nostalgia for the NES or any of its games. Maybe with the exception of Ice Climber and Xevious, games the mom of a friend played when I  came over playing with his He Man toys.

JB0 Super Dimension Member

JB0

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

As a kid I'd heard of Blaster Master, but the generic rhyming title and goofy alien cover art never really told me enough about the game to really sell me on it.

Fast forward 34 years, and I'm watching Jeremy Parish's excellent NES Works series on Youtube.  A while ago he put out an episode on Blaster Master, and I start to realize that I must have missed out on a classic that definitely a top 50, maybe even a top 25 game on the console.  Rather than fire up an emulator (or see if I had the foresight to put it on my NES Classic) I decided I'd check out Blaster Master Zero instead.  See, BMZ has two things going for it- 1. It's available on modern systems (Switch, PS4, Xbox One/Series S/Series X, and Steam).  2. It's developed by Inti Creates, a developer responsible for some excellent retro 2D action games including the Mega Man Zero games, Mega Man 9 and 10, the two Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon games, the Azure Striker Gunvolt series, and the Gunvolt spinoff Luminous Avenger iX.

I had other stuff to play so I didn't get around to it for awhile, but today I grabbed my Switch to play with while my daughter was in her dance class, and with nothing else competing for my attention on it at the moment I fired it up.  And when we got home, I made dinner and played some more.  Made sure her homework was done, got her ready for bed, and played some more.  All told, I played until I got to Area 6, which I think puts me somewhere between 50-75% through the game.  Needless to say I'm considering it another success for Inti Creates, and I immediately bought both sequels.  You should too.

Fun story: The original Blaster Master/Metafight is actually fairly influential. It did poorly in Japan, but while japanese GAMERS didn't notice it, japanese DEVELOPERS did.

Before Blaster Master, games had solid color backgrounds and crude chunky sprites with two-frame animations. After Blaster Master, detailed backgrounds made from unique tiles and detailed sprites with relatively lavish animation became the norm.

 

As a modern game, it has some warts. There's limited continues and no save mechanism in a relatively large metroid-em-up, which I consider a serious issue even for the time. There's also the fact that destructible blocks reappear when you pause.  You can actually get permanently stuck by pausing at the wrong point. 

Other pain points it is debatable if they're actually a problem. Some actually carry forward to Blaster Master Zero. (The easy-come, easy-go nature of powerups for your on-foot gun goes straight back to the 8-bit days, though the weapon guard is new for Zero and makes for much less suffering.)

 

 

As far as Blaster Master Zero goes, I'm afraid I can't run out and buy it.  While I adore what Inti Creates has done with the series, and the sheer amount of Blaster Master/Metafight love they have dumped into it(even making weird quirks from localization changes into actual plot points*), I've already bought the game... *sigh* four times.

I originally got it on 3DS, because it was that and Switch. I didn't own a Switch at the time and it was thrilling to have a new Blaster Master game that was ACTUALLY GOOD(and wasn't a reskin of a Bomberman spinoff).

After Zero 2 came out, I bought Zero 1 again so I could have both of them on Windows, where I prefer to play and where my low-res chunky-sprite game can stretch it's legs on a giant screen with literally millions of pixels. VERY important that each pixel be the size of my fingertip so I can appreciate all the subtle details.

When Limited Run Games announced the fancy box with both games and soundtrack CDs and pewter tanks and crap, I bought it a third time so I'd have a permanent copy and some cool trinkets. (Inti Creates actually announced Zero 3 shortly afterwards, so my complete box set ceased being complete before it even shipped. LRG did a very good job making the Zero 3 box extend the 1+2 box.)

And then I imported the Zero Trilogy set from Japan because it had voice acting and I am a shameless consumer whore.

 

 

 

 

*So yeah, one thing I was really curious about when they announced Zero was if it was going to be a remake of Metafight's "alien space empire attacks alien planet Sophia III and Kane Gardner fights back with a prototype jumptank named Metal Attacker" plot or Blaster Master's "Jason's frog got giant and fell in a hole on Earth, then he found a jumptank named Sophia III and started shooting everything for some reason" plot.

Spoiler

And Inti knocked that question out of the park with the final scenes of the game by framing it as a remake of Blaster Master and a sequel to Metafight at the same time.

Spoiler

And then they buried it to the hilt in Zero 3, where you actually visit the planet Sophia.

Spoiler

And the first boss in Zero 3 is Kane Gardner in the motherlovin' MA-01 Metal Attacker! You fight the NES tank with the NES weapon set as the first boss!

Spoiler

And then he namedrops the franchise. Apparently the boss names that flash onscreen are generated by the tank's IFF system. And it turns out that "Blaster Master" is actually JASON'S BOSS NAME.

Spoiler

Seriously, I have no words for how excited I was about that fight and dialog. I still have screenshots, even!

 

 

 

 

 

mikeszekely Super Dimension Member

mikeszekely

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, Scyla said:

I think the Jeremy Parish NES Works series is excellent.

Between books, internet articles, and other Youtubers the NES's catalog has been thoroughly documented.  What I really enjoy about NES Works, and what I feel sets it apart, is the way that Parish provides historical context for the games.  Like, it's one thing to play Super Mario Bros and say, "it's a good game!" but another to talk about how influential it was, and how it's so much more advanced than a lot of other early NES games because a lot of those NES games had been released on Famicom years SMB, when the console was home to mostly ports of single-screen arcade affairs. 

 

6 hours ago, Scyla said:

But I have a hard time paying attention since my systems as a child were the original GameBoy and the SNES and I have no nostalgia for the NES or any of its games.

I'm assuming you're a native European and not a North American expat, right?  I've read that the European market for the NES was a bit more reserved, and many gamers at the time preferred computers like the ZX Spectrum that we didn't have on this side of the pond.  But here, it'd be difficult to overstate the cultural impact of the NES.  The videogame market crash all but ended the market for home consoles, and Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln managed to market the NES as a toy, get it into enough homes to build demand, then use their newly-established position to lock down the entire market.  Nintendo strictly controlled who could get a license to develop for the NES, how many games they could publish in a year, which games they could even publish.  Plus, Nintendo was the sole manufacturer of the cartridges and controlled the distribution of NES software, so Nintendo ultimately controlled how many copies of a game a publisher could produce and how many copies of a game different stores were allocated.  They'd abuse their early market dominance to strangle competition by blacklisting developers who made games for the Atari 7800 or the Sega Master System and retailers who sold said software.  Needless to say, if you were a kid in the late '80s and early '90s you had an NES.  So, yeah, watching NES Works for me is like revisiting my own childhood.

3 hours ago, JB0 said:

As far as Blaster Master Zero goes, I'm afraid I can't run out and buy it.  While I adore what Inti Creates has done with the series, and the sheer amount of Blaster Master/Metafight love they have dumped into it(even making weird quirks from localization changes into actual plot points*), I've already bought the game... *sigh* four times.

Oh, good.  I'm not the only one that does that.  I don't do it with everything, but with these smaller, less expensive retro-style games (or actual retro compilations) I have this tendency to buy it first on Switch for the portability.  Then I'll buy it again on Steam, because I know at some point Nintendo will release a new hotness that won't be backwards compatible and the Switch will wind up in a closet somewhere (it's basically what happened with my 3DS, after all).  Then, when I do get an urge to replay, instead of busting out the Switch or firing up my PC, I'll buy a third time on PlayStation and go trophy hunting.  I've done this now with Shovel Knight, both Mega Man Collections, both Mega Man X Collections, the Mega Man Zero/ZX Collection, Mega Man 11, the first two Gunvolts (I bought 3 for the Switch, but haven't bought it for the others yet), both the iX games, the Castlevania Collection, and the Castlevania Advanced Collection.  Eventually I'll buy my third copies of Shredder's Revenge and the Cowawbunga Collection, too... I haven't gotten around to the "Windows for posterity" copies yet, but I did buy both my portable Switch versions and my PlayStation trophy versions (I even got the platinum on the Cowabunga Collection).

 

3 hours ago, JB0 said:

(even making weird quirks from localization changes into actual plot points*)

As I understand they even worked in elements of the "Worlds of Power" novelization (although, to be fair, I think Blaster Master: Blasting Again did that first, and Inti Creates might have simply been copying from them).  That's impressive to me... while I didn't read the Blaster Master novel, I did read the Mega Man 2 one, and if it was any indication those authors were not afraid of inventing their own mythos to fill in the gaps of the NES's limited storytelling.

Scyla Galactic Diva

Scyla

Posted
Posted (edited)
5 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

Between books, internet articles, and other Youtubers the NES's catalog has been thoroughly documented.  What I really enjoy about NES Works, and what I feel sets it apart, is the way that Parish provides historical context for the games.  Like, it's one thing to play Super Mario Bros and say, "it's a good game!" but another to talk about how influential it was, and how it's so much more advanced than a lot of other early NES games because a lot of those NES games had been released on Famicom years SMB, when the console was home to mostly ports of single-screen arcade affairs. 

 

I'm assuming you're a native European and not a North American expat, right?  I've read that the European market for the NES was a bit more reserved, and many gamers at the time preferred computers like the ZX Spectrum that we didn't have on this side of the pond.  But here, it'd be difficult to overstate the cultural impact of the NES.  The videogame market crash all but ended the market for home consoles, and Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln managed to market the NES as a toy, get it into enough homes to build demand, then use their newly-established position to lock down the entire market.  Nintendo strictly controlled who could get a license to develop for the NES, how many games they could publish in a year, which games they could even publish.  Plus, Nintendo was the sole manufacturer of the cartridges and controlled the distribution of NES software, so Nintendo ultimately controlled how many copies of a game a publisher could produce and how many copies of a game different stores were allocated.  They'd abuse their early market dominance to strangle competition by blacklisting developers who made games for the Atari 7800 or the Sega Master System and retailers who sold said software.  Needless to say, if you were a kid in the late '80s and early '90s you had an NES.  So, yeah, watching NES Works for me is like revisiting my own childhood.

Oh, good.  I'm not the only one that does that.  I don't do it with everything, but with these smaller, less expensive retro-style games (or actual retro compilations) I have this tendency to buy it first on Switch for the portability.  Then I'll buy it again on Steam, because I know at some point Nintendo will release a new hotness that won't be backwards compatible and the Switch will wind up in a closet somewhere (it's basically what happened with my 3DS, after all).  Then, when I do get an urge to replay, instead of busting out the Switch or firing up my PC, I'll buy a third time on PlayStation and go trophy hunting.  I've done this now with Shovel Knight, both Mega Man Collections, both Mega Man X Collections, the Mega Man Zero/ZX Collection, Mega Man 11, the first two Gunvolts (I bought 3 for the Switch, but haven't bought it for the others yet), both the iX games, the Castlevania Collection, and the Castlevania Advanced Collection.  Eventually I'll buy my third copies of Shredder's Revenge and the Cowawbunga Collection, too... I haven't gotten around to the "Windows for posterity" copies yet, but I did buy both my portable Switch versions and my PlayStation trophy versions (I even got the platinum on the Cowabunga Collection).

 

As I understand they even worked in elements of the "Worlds of Power" novelization (although, to be fair, I think Blaster Master: Blasting Again did that first, and Inti Creates might have simply been copying from them).  That's impressive to me... while I didn't read the Blaster Master novel, I did read the Mega Man 2 one, and if it was any indication those authors were not afraid of inventing their own mythos to fill in the gaps of the NES's limited storytelling.

I‘m aware of how the video game market in the US developed after the crash and how Nintendo dominated the market until the arrival of the Sega Genesis.

In Europe it was probably similar. As I said knew someone who owned a NES and saw them in stores.

However I grew up In a rural area so computers weren’t that present in the households (I got my first PC in 95). And I wasn’t particularly interested in gaming because most gaming systems I saw were arcade machines. My mom would never give me money to play and the prices were much too high to spend my scarce allowance on an experience that might be over in a couple of seconds (I tried it once or twice). I don’t know the exact prices but one game was expensive. Maybe 2 to 3 times the amount of my weekly allowance. Other places with arcades were Billard parlors but they were off limits since you had to be 18 or over to enter since they sold alcohol and people smoked in them.

However that all changed when I brought back an original GameBoy from a trip to the states with my parents in 1990 I believe. I can still remember going into a ToysRus taking the little slips of paper for the system and Super Mario Land to the cash register and retrieving the console from the booth.

The GameBoy was released later that year in Europe and suddenly all my friends had GameBoys too and I could trade games and talk to people about it.

What really got it going was the release of the SNES in 92. The biggest grocery store in town had one unit on display were you could play Super Mario World. I would spend hours after school (or even during school hours) waiting for my chance to play the game.

I had to have that system. To me it looked as good as any arcade game I‘ve ever seen at this point. (the NES never looked that good) And you could play it at home in color (only my grandma had a color TV; we still had a black and white one); imagine that. So I begged my mom to get me one for Christmas.
 

It was an insane request to make. Never would my mom spend this much on a single present. The  price of the system was three times the amount of all my Christmas gifts combined. But somehow my mom had pity with me and gave into my begging. So I was gifted an SNES as a combined birthday and Christmas gift from my whole family when the Super Mario All-Stars bundle came out in 93.

My life was not the same afterwards. And again suddenly all the kids at school had one. You could buy the games in local stores and magazines were available covering what happened in the video game world, like the equivalent of the Nintendo Power.

This was something I never noticed with the NES. So maybe I was too young for it or just not interested.

Edited by Scyla
JB0 Super Dimension Member

JB0

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

As I understand they even worked in elements of the "Worlds of Power" novelization (although, to be fair, I think Blaster Master: Blasting Again did that first, and Inti Creates might have simply been copying from them).  That's impressive to me... while I didn't read the Blaster Master novel, I did read the Mega Man 2 one, and if it was any indication those authors were not afraid of inventing their own mythos to fill in the gaps of the NES's limited storytelling.

Yeah. Blasting Again did it first, but it was really just namedropping Eve. Who died offscreen before the game started, as did Jason.

Zero, I feel, did it harder, though Zero Eve is not the novelization Eve. The first world of Zero 2 seems an overt homage to the origin of Novel Eve and Sophia 3.

 

The novelization of Blaster Master had a LOT of elbow room for improvization, as the manual story leaves gaping holes. There's no explanation how we go from "chasing after a pet frog" to "driving a jumptank in a one-man war against the Plutonium Boss", and the novel wrote a big sci-fi story to fill in the gaps(chasms, really). Probably the most fun Worlds of Power book to write, since there was so much blank space.

I think that's why it is best-remembered of the series. 

...

Kinda wish I still owned it, actually.

mikeszekely Super Dimension Member

mikeszekely

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, Scyla said:

I‘m aware of how the video game market in the US developed after the crash and how Nintendo dominated the market until the arrival of the Sega Genesis.

In Europe it was probably similar. As I said knew someone who owned a NES and saw them in stores.

 

7 hours ago, Scyla said:

You could buy the games in local stores and magazines were available covering what happened in the video game world, like the equivalent of the Nintendo Power.

This was something I never noticed with the NES. So maybe I was too young for it or just not interested.

I mean, yeah, Nintendo sold some systems in Europe.  European NES was definitely a thing.  But you probably didn't notice it because Nintendo wasn't able to exert the same level of control over the European market, eventually outsourcing NES distribution to Mattel and a few other local companies.  But between the distribution issues, higher prices in Europe, and the aforementioned competition from a thriving home computer market meant that the NES was never force there that it was in the States.  The NES didn't just dominate sales here, it was a cultural phenomenon.  We had cartoons (Super Mario Bros Super Show, Captain N, The Power Team), we game shows like Video Power, we had clothing and merchandise, heck, we even had the Nintendo Cereal System.  In addition to Nintendo Power we had hint books, we had novelizations of NES games.  You didn't just know somebody who had a Nintendo here, you owned one because everybody had one (lifetime sales are something like 33.5 million units in the US- that's more than the all of the European NES sales and the Japanese Famicom sales combined).  In the late '80s and early '90s if you between the ages of 7-15 if you weren't playing Nintendo, chances are you were thinking about playing Nintendo or talking to your friends about Nintendo.

Like you, I'd eventually move on to the SNES, and I have a lot of great memories there (on in particular is bad winter storm hit just before winter break ended, forcing the local schools to remained closed for over an extra week... I'd gotten A Link to the Past for Christmas and spent the entire extended break playing it from start to finish).  But, partly due to the larger cultural impact, and partly due to my age (I got an NES when I was 7, and the SNES when I was 13, so the NES was definitely my more formative years), I get a lot more nostalgic for the NES.

Incidentally, I'm not surprised that the Gameboy made more of an impact on you.  I'm not sure what exactly changed, if Nintendo was able to get distribution back under their own roof or what, but lifetime Gameboy sales between North America and Europe are much closer, at around 43 million to 40 million.

Anyway, I finished Blaster Master Zero (got the good ending, too) and I stand by my recommendation.  I'll start BMZ2 tomorrow.

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Scyla Galactic Diva

Scyla

Posted
Posted

The Gaming Historian released a video on Super Mario Kart:


I really find it interesting how the game evolved from the first idea to the finished product.

Black Valkyrie BOMBA!

Black Valkyrie

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Scyla said:

The Gaming Historian released a video on Super Mario Kart:


I really find it interesting how the game evolved from the first idea to the finished product.

 

Wow really intersting, never knew about its concept. 

 

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Scyla Galactic Diva

Scyla

Posted
Posted

If found a couple of SNES games while visiting flea markets and specialty shops.

Nothing too exiting but I rented those games as a kid so I’m glad I have them in my collection.

No box or manual and some or the cartridges are in a rough shape. But they all work and fit perfectly in my collection.

IMG_8418.jpeg.d9d0f76ecda3213c734ae2811f884692.jpeg

IMG_8547.jpeg.f131445b9470142c4933a55ae95a78e9.jpeg

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