Growing up in the 80s, my friends and I played a lot of NES games. One of our absolute favorites was Blaster master. It had a lot of unique elements to it for the time, specifically, the back and forth exploration of areas, and the cool car, which you could eject from. Though at the time there wasn’t a term for it, it was very much in the vein of Metroidvania games. Mostly open world exploration, returning to zones with new abilities and upgrades, all very much hallmarks of that type of game.
The series seemed to, not really go anywhere though. There were a few Game Boy games, and a PlayStation title, but not a lot of entries in the series, until recently, with the Blaster Master Zero series. The first game in the series is essentially a remake of the first, original Blaster Master game, though it adds quite a lot of new elements and story to help flesh things out.
It also adds in a lot of new modernization to the game, with the ability to save your game being the big one. The original Blaster Master was a lot of fun, but it was a little brutal with what was needed to complete it. You pretty much just had your 3 lives (or whatever) and had to do everything in one go. And while the game wasn’t super difficult, accomplishing that did get tricky. I think the farthest I ever got on the original game was like zone 4 or 5. The lives issue aside, it also meant doing it all in one sitting. So having save games in the new game, is a huge improvement.
But it’s not a straight remake, as mentioned. Many of the overhead on foot zones are more fleshed out, making that part of the game play more enjoyable. It was always kind of an annoying chore before. There are also some bosses that show up in the main world now as well, so you are not just limited to the car for travel and bosses on foot. The core plot is expanded, giving some reason and motivation to the existence of Sophia-3 (the car), beyond, “Some kid fell in a hole while chasing his frog”.
The best part though is that it still FEELS like the old titles. There is a slight floatyness to the car and a bit of clunkiness to the on foot areas that aren’t bad elements at all, but they do exist and help Blaster Mater “feel” like Blaster Master, and they are both very particular to this game series. It also helps to make the two different play modes seem different. The floay car makes sense since it tends to continue rolling slightly when stopping, which contrasts well with how the on foot hero plays, since he is just a dude in a suit.
It’s definitely a fun remake of the original game. It’s honestly more fun than the original since it’s removed a lot of the tedium. It has all the right feel for game play and design, even the newer areas, which makes it feel just right as an update to the original game.
