Dynafire has 132 chronicles

1. Under the Radar #9: Blaster Master
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on Jul 30 2009

   One of the first games I ever played was Blaster Master on the NES. Up until very recently, however, I had never beaten the game. For one, it is fairly difficult. Second, the levels are very large and non-linear, so it is easy to spend hours looking for the one area that you need to find. I mostly remembered which paths/doors to take on my recent completion of the game, which took roughly 3 hours. However, if you don't know where to go, you'd likely spend at least 6 hours on this game easily. Since there are no passwords or saving, this all has to be done in a single session.
   
   You have two methods of blasting things. There's the "car", which is what you'll use nearly all the time, or you can jump out and start blasting things on foot. The car is by far the best method of doing anything wherever possible since it doesn't suffer fall damage, and it can kill things quickly. By comparison, you die from falling something like 4 spaces vertically while on foot, and it takes many more hits to kill anything. However, there are certain areas that can only be accessed while you're out of the vehicle. These areas change the focus of the game from a side-scrolling shooter to a top-down viewpoint. When you go into these areas, you can upgrade the gun for your guy, though why it doesn't change the power of the guy's weapon in the side-scrolling areas is beyond me. You also get infinite grenades to use. They have a very short range, but hit multiple times and are more powerful than your gun. The objective in each area is to find the boss that could be in any one of these "on foot only" areas, beat them, and acquire an upgrade for the car that will allow you access to the next area.
   
   Most of the time, this task is pretty straight-forward, but there are a few instances where you really need to do some adventuring/critical thinking to figure out where to go. Now, today we have the internet where you can simply look up guides on gamefaqs or similar sites. However, we didn't have this luxury back in the day. We'd have to either have a friend that figured these things out, call the Nintendo 1-900 number (which I never did, by the way), or put the game away in defeat. Areas 4 and 7 are very well hidden since they both require backtracking through previous areas to get to them. (Area 4 is hidden in Area 1 - after beating Area 3, you have to fly up at the very left side of where you first start the game. That's clever, right? Area 7 is hidden within Area 2 - there's a seemingly empty room near the Area 3 entrance - use the wall climb ability to scale the wall and find the entrance to area 7. Hope that saves you some frustration. ) The non-linearity of the game progression adds a sort of adventure element to it, which is what makes this game unique. Most side-scrolling shooters on the NES had little to explore, but that's not really a bad thing. Blaster Master simply took an already enjoyable formula and added on to it.
   
   The bosses in the game generally have a small area in which attacks are effective, making it practically mandatory to have your gun fully upgraded so your bullets just tear right through them. Sometimes, even that's not enough. If you get hit, it downgrades your gun. Usually, a lot of button-mashing will let you win though. Each boss has a pattern, much like many other games of the NES era, and those patterns will be your key to victory for the later bosses. The frog bosses in particular are nearly impossible to beat with the gun. You just have to memorize the pattern, and toss some grenades at it when you can. There is a glitch/cheat that works on some of the bosses where you can pause the game as soon as you hit them with a grenade. The grenade will keep hitting them while the game is paused, until they're dead. Like I said though, it only works on a few of them.
   
   Definitely check this one out on your emulator of choice, or just go out and buy the cart. It shouldn't be any more than a couple bucks.

   
   

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Dynafire has 2 comment s on this chronicle.

1. BEN
   Posted On Jul 31 2009

   I'll try this game out on my retro pocket handheld...when I finally get it back from everyone borrowing that little gem
   
   Like I said on the GoGcast, I also snagged an original NES, so assuming it works, maybe I can try it on the real thing sometime!

2. JackDaniels624
   Posted On Jul 30 2009

   I sucked at this game! I remember you sent me the pic of the ending screen so I tried it...and I sucked