Blaster Master

I've had an interesting relationship with Blaster Master for the NES. It's a game I had always admired from afar. I loved its pretty visuals, catchy music, and novel gameplay loop... but I could never really get into it? Believe me, I've tried, but I could never get past the first few areas. Well, no more, this time I want to beat Blaster Master once and for all, and really dive into what makes the game such a cult classic.

Meet Sophia & Jason

Blaster Master makes one hell of a strong impression with its first area, The Forest. Area 1 starts you off in Sophia, setting you down a fairly linear path as you get a feel for the controls, all the while Naoki Kodaka's blissfully heroic score plays in the background. Sophia handles wonderfully, it's floaty enough to make reliable jumps but weighty enough to feel satisfying to use. Its blaster shots feel punchy and powerful, and its animations help it feel like a realistic vehicle, suspension and all. Area 1 is fairly small and contained, but it's also just open enough to give you an impression of how Blaster Master's exploration works. Eventually, you enter a big room with a bunch of paths, both above and below the water. One path takes you to an enemy you can't seem to hit, and one underwater path takes you to the game's dungeon where you can get the item you need to defeat it. At this point, you should have discovered that you can exit Sophia and play on-foot as its driver, Jason. You'll need to jump out and leave your car every once in a while to squeeze through gaps, climb ladders, and take out enemies smaller than the Sophia's cannon, but what you'll mostly be doing as Jason is enter top-down dungeons.

The top-down Jason segments are... fine. They're reasonably polished and rarely actively unfun, but they pale in comparison to the Sophia segments for a single, fundamental reason: Jason doesn't have any permanent upgrades. While you do upgrade Sophia over the course of the game, they don't affect Jason. His upgrades are solely temporary, going away if you get hit. It's a real missed opportunity to further integrate the two gameplay styles, and it makes the Sophia bits and the Jason bits feel more disjointed. There's another issue though, and it's that Jason's fully upgraded weapon kinda sucks. It has a wide radius, but a hitbox that's all over the place. Just face a wall of destructable blocks and open fire, and you'll find that you can't break every block in what should be your blast radius. This isn't a huge issue with bosses since they're big enough targets, but it can make dealing with enemies incredibly finicky and annoying. As a matter of fact, it really is the boss fights that shine the most in the Jason segments, they're all varied, intimidating, and can be quite fun. Area 1's boss is a floating brain with projectiles that spiral around it in an eliptical shape, not unlike Patra in Zelda 1. It's a neat visual trick and a fun first boss that isn't too hard.

Having Second Thoughts

Area 2: The Castle is a far larger and more visually-complicated area than the first. It looks regal and ornate, and the music is slightly tenser remix of the Area 1 theme. However, while the presentation is stronger than ever, Area 2 where Blaster Master's flaws will start to expose themselves a bit. Despite its size, this is a much more cramped area than the first, with more enemies and longer vertical rooms. This reveals a few issues with the game. First, enemies won't spawn if they're too close to the top or bottom screen meaning they can spawn on top of you if you're not incredibly cautious. Second, sometimes enemies will be right by the door when you enter a room and there's nothing you can do to prepare for or avoid it. The enemy variants in general are also just more annoying here, particularly the slugs which you can only defeat with the limited homing missiles or by getting out of Sophia and shooting them with Jason. And as you'd expect, the Jason labyrinth isn't much better, it's very samey and easy to get lost in, and the boss takes a while since it has massive claws it can use to block your already unreliable shots. It was here that I was starting to have second thoughts, was Blaster Master really as good as people were saying it was? Have the rose-tinted glasses I previously had towards it worn off?

Baby Steps

Thankfully, Area 3: The Factory, is a solid improvement and the point where the game started to click a bit more for me. This is an even larger area with even more branching paths, but it's filled with unique environments that make it a joy to explore. The issues with enemy spawning is still an issue, and they will be for the rest of the game, but I've even started to find ways to work around them. And the music is absolutely incredible, so upbeat and fun, it's easily my favorite track in game. The Jason labyrinth is a lot less complicated, but the boss is one of my favorites in the game, a manically teleporting cube that shoots out a ton of projectiles and can even clone itself to throw you off. It's a very fast-paced and deceptively complex fight, but it's still fair and fun, and it doesn't overstay its welcome. Once you get this area's item, the Hover, you really get hit by just how well-designed Blaster Master's world is. You need to backtrack to the start of Area 1 to get to the next area, but as it turns out, Sunsoft hit a bunch of hidden shortcuts across areas that you can only access with upgrades. In a console generation filled with backtracking issues, Blaster Master dodges it completely. On top of that, on your way back to Area 1, you'll start to discover even more areas that you just can't access yet, teasing you for when you return for Areas 7 & 8. 

However, it's with the Hover that we get yet another glaring issue. I actually love using the hover, it feels really nice and weighty, but it's also limited and doesn't refill over time. You need to collect fuel from enemies to hover, and sometimes, they just won't give it to you. I had to spend a bit of time grinding for hover fuel just to even access Area 4, and there are so many mandatory hover bits later on in the game that I kinda just got scared of using it when it wasn't completely necessary. Blaster Master really could've used more optional permanent upgrades, like health boosts or hover fuel boosts. The only upgrades in Blaster Master are the mandatory story ones, which removes a lot of incentive to fully explore this massive, incredibly well-designed world. I really think this would've dramatically improved the game for me, though from what I can tell, it seems like the Zero games did actually fix this. I should play them sometime.

The Introduction Of Variety

By Area 4: The Catacombs, I was worried the game would start to get repetitive, but my fears were allayed by one of the more unique areas in the game. Area 4 doesn't have many rooms, but one of these rooms is a massive maze of sewers you have to navigate to get to the dungeon. This might sound completely tedious and unfun, but I really found it to be a neat change of pace, and Sophia's controls are so fun that even bumbling around a maze is still fun. The segment also doesn't go on longer than it needs to, and you're quickly onto the Jason dungeon, which is one of the best in the game. Rather than being a maze, this dungeon tasks you with walking along thin platforms suspended over water, all the while dealing with some of the more aggressive enemies you've faced at this point. There's something really satisfying about precisely making your way across these bridges, weaving your way around enemy bullets at the same time. If Blaster Master started to click by Area 3, I'd say Area 4 is when I fully locked into its rhythm.

The item for this dungeon is a key which seems underwhelming at first, but it leads to yet another neat change of pace. To exit Area 4, you hit a room with two locked doors that can only be opened from the outside. In between both doors is a ladder, meaning that you'll have to enter the first door, dismount Sophia, make your way up the ladder as Jason, and carefully navigate your way back down to the other side to open the door for Sophia to exit. This is the first time you really have to spend time as Jason outside of a dungeon, and it's a fun wrinkle that once again feels like a breath of fresh air. However, little did I know that this charming puzzle was meant to prepare me for the most polarizing area in the game.

Area 5: Underwater is where you finally unlock the ability to swim as Sophia, but man is it a gauntlet getting there. You enter the area and immediately face a long drop to the bottom of the sea, and Sophia is too heavy to get back up. So from here on out, you need to dismount as Jason and swim all the way to the dungeon on your own. It's not as bad as you'd think, though. Jason's swimming controls are a bit slow but still very precise, enemies drop health refills frequently, and most importantly, getting hit in the overworld doesn't deplete your gun upgrades in the top-down segments. Almost as mercy, the dungeon and boss are some of the easier in the game, but it's when you exit the dungeon that Area 5 starts to drag. First off, there's no shortcut back to Sophia, you need to retrace your steps. After how well Blaster Master has been mitigating backtracking, this was a bit of a let-down. Then you return to Sophia and can finally try out the swimming ability, and it feels great, it's super fast and easy to position yourself... but there is a problem. You use your special weapons by holding down and pressing B. You need to hold down to swim downwards, so it's very easy to accidentally launch your limited special weapons while swimming. To get to the next area, you need to go through a pretty lengthy detour around Area 5 and it does start to really overstay its welcome, but man is it worth the wait.

Blaster Master's Best Gauntlets

Area 6: The Icy Caves is my favorite area in the game. It's a purely linear gauntlet of tricky platforming across slippery platforms, limiting the amount of enemies in exchange for a focus on movement. As someone who's always loved ice physics, I liked playing around with the momentum in Area 6, and the platforming never got too demanding to be frustrating. The crusher is also put to great use here, as you have to break blocks to form a staircase for Sophia to climb up. It's a pure showcase of Blaster Master's greatest strengths: satisfying tank platforming, beautiful visuals, and incredible music. Even the Jason labyrinth follows this philosophy, expanding on the Area 4 labyrinth by having you walk across slippery ice-covered bridges. I particularly love that part near the end where you can choose to save time by taking a dangerous and incredibly thin path covered entirely by ice, or go the longer, safer way around. Sadly, the boss is just a harder reskin of Area 2's boss, and this won't be the only one. This area's upgrade is the ability to scale walls, and you'll immediately recall a bunch of tall vertical walls you passed by in Areas 2 & 3. Thankfully, the sheer amount of shortcuts makes going back across the map feel relatively pain-free.

I've heard a lot of complaints about the wall climbing in Blaster Master, but honestly I don't really get it. You can only climb onto a wall by driving up to it, so I never found myself accidentally clinging onto stuff while platforming. Once you enter Area 7: The Lava Caves, you're greeted by straight-up thrash metal, immediately telling you that things are getting real. This area is yet another long, linear gauntlet, but instead of being purely focused on platforming, it's a test of everything you've learned throughout the game. There's tricky platforming across large lava pits, corridors focused purely on combat, and rooms filled with breakable blocks that you have to drill through somewhat tediously (fun fact: breakable blocks respawn when you pause so don't pause in this area unless you want to be stuck). As such, the Jason labyrinth ups the ante yet again. The bridges you have to cross are a single block wide, and the lava surrounding them isn't as generous as the spikes in other labyrinths, killing you in a single hit. Unfortunately, the boss fight is yet another reskin, this time of Area 4's boss. Shame that the worst bosses in the game are the ones that get remade. If you thought Pyribbit is bad, Fire Geroll makes him look stable by comparison. He's constantly hopping around the room, hardly ever letting you get a hit in. It's long and frustrating, the worst boss in the game hands down.

A Non-Euclidean Conclusion

This final upgrade lets you walk across ceilings, and you'll now stick to platforms when you try to walk off them. I'll concede, this can be a bit disruptive for platforming, but the fact that you can walk across ceilings now means that you don't even need to do that platforming to begin with. It's a subtly powerful ability, but once it clicks, you can use this final upgrade to skip most rooms and combat encounters with minimal effort. At least, until you get to the final area, Area 8: The Biomass Caves. As you'd expect from an alien lair stage, Area 8 is incredibly weird and unconventional in its level design. It's full of dead ends, slowdown inducing amounts of enemies, and weird multi-dimensional puzzles built around the wall climb that demands you be slow and deliberate with your platforming. I wouldn't call this one of the best areas in the game, but it is a worthy final challenge. The Jason labyrinth is no less weird, it's just a giant room filled with breakable blocks and doors that lead to nowhere, but the final boss is pretty great. Blaster Master has a two-phase final encounter, first facing off against a giant monster stuck in a wall called Skelevenom who shoots tons of bouncy projectiles at you, and then facing off against the much more mobile Goez, a humanoid figure with a shield and a whip. Both fights are fun, but I especially like the balletic encounter with Goez because of how unique it is to face off against someone more your speed.

The End

Completing Blaster Master after all this years gave me a much greater image of how I feel about it. Its best qualities shine far brighter than they used to, but I'm also more cognizant of the things this game drops the ball in. Blaster Master has an incredible core. Moving Sophia around feels great, the world is impeccably designed and fun to explore, the visuals are lush, and the soundtrack is one of the best of its time.  However, the flaws with this game are very apparent. Enemies that spawn on top of you, less developed gameplay for Jason, incessant slowdown, a lack of incentive to fully explore, and a very slow first half. I can understand why it took me so long to get into it, it's not until the fourth area when Blaster Master starts tossing in unique scenarios that really take advantage of all the game's systems. However, by the end, the pros far outweigh the cons for me. Blaster Master won me over, and now I can definitively say that I love it, not for what I perceived it to be, but for what it is.