A Boy And His Frog - Blaster Master

So, now that we're all clear about the premise of this game - you drive a tank and a big frog is involved somehow - it's time to begin.


Our journey to the center of the Earth is already quite Verne-ish, with underground weather and everything... And yes, there is a ceiling up there somewhere. What, did you think that intro had nothing to do with the actual game? Oh ye of little faith!


As far as I know, there are no official names for the enemies you encounter in this game, so like Adam I've taken it upon myself to name them. The walking guy I call a Walker, the thing that's dropping bombs on me is a Bomber, and the flying guy is a Flier. The grass I call Horrible Death Not To Be Touched Under Any Circumstances.

Most enemies leave behind "P" pellets which fill my POW guage. If my tank, Sofia the 3rd, runs out of POW, one more hit will cause her to, well, go POW. Fliers drop "H" pellets, which would fill my HOV guage, except that I have to find that upgrade first.


Crawlers. They circle around a platform endlessly, like Metroid's Zoomers, but they can also leap off the wall if you cross their line of sight, which extends out from the top of their head. They can get annoying in numbers.


In the adjoining vertical chamber is a Turret. These ceiling-mounted guns will start shooting if you hang around for long. I use Sofia's amazing ability to fire upward to take it out.


The next room is pretty. Blaster Master treats you to some great scenery for a NES game. Um, you can't land on this tree, I'm just in mid-jump. (Did I mention the tank can jump?)

There's a ladder here leading down to a building. I'm not going to bother going in here, but it's a cool little cave, and it's a chance to show Jason's role in the game - being small and relatively helpless. Jason has his own wimpy little gun, and can crawl, swim, and enter buildings. His personal POW guage gets refilled every time he gets into Sofia.


There's some Bombers here who helpfully scroll themselves off the screen before doing any harm. There's also another building that I'm going to ignore.


I call these floating guys Snipers because they like to hover above you and take potshots. They're mildly annoying. There's a water area down and to the left of this region that you can raid for goodies, but I'm going to pass on it for now. Instead I make my way to the right...



Where there's another water area. I call these squid-like guys Bloopers because copyright infringement is fun. Unlike real Bloopers, though, these squids will actually hurt you if you stay on the bottom of the ocean.


My goal: A really big ladder. Sofia can't swim or climb ladders, so it's time to progress on foot. Also, Sofia can't aim upwards when underwater. It's due to a leaky plutonium spigot. Or something.

Enter Blaster Master's second gameplay mode, a Zelda-like overhead view where Jason gets a chance to better display his talents. He has a GUN guage which can be powered up, but every hit he takes to his health also reduces his GUN power. You may recognize this as the basis of Cave Story's weapon system. Unfortunately, in Blaster Master this system is very unforgiving. Jason doesn't get many invincibility frames after taking a hit so it's possible to lose a lot of your health and firepower in a few horrifying seconds. GUN powerups are also relatively rare.

These gray boxy things are Sliders. They slide toward you if you stand in their line of sight, which is either horizontal or vertical, and you don't necessarily know which it's going to be until they come at you.


I call these gray guys Soldiers because they walk toward you and shoot.

Jason also has an infinite supply of grenades. These act as a more powerful limited range weapon. You can extend their range somewhat by moving in the direction you want to fire.


A barrier! These blocks can be destroyed by shooting them, but I can also just slip behind the wall here thanks to the hidden pseudo-3D depth. I could use the same trick to get that "P" if I needed it.


This guy is immobile and shoots at me. I'll call him a Guardian. Grenades take him down quickly enough.


Augh! A Big Giant Head! Scary looking, but not that dangerous as long as you take 'em on one at a time. Grenades will make short work of them, and they leave behind three-way missiles, a weapon for Sofia. There's no trick to getting this "P" that's blocked off by spikes - it's just bait to make you waste effort.


Hmm, a room that lights up like a strobe light. I'm either in a disco or I'm about to fight a boss...

Augh! Big Giant Brain!


The Big Brain slowly moves toward you, but the orbiting mini-brains are the real threat. Their orbit gets more elliptical as the fight goes on, making it increasingly awkward to find a place to stand.


Dumping grenades into the Brain as quickly as possible is the only plan here. Autofire will end the fight before it even starts.




Hey, a flatbed scanner!


In a rare concession to the player's sanity, you always get sent back to the entrance after beating a boss.

Back to Sofia... And now her cannon has gotten a nice upgrade.


Back to the left area of the stage...


With my new Hyper cannon, I can beat this barrier creature that's blocking the way to the next area.


Down a mineshaft full of... Well, mines. Drive cautiously...


To Be Continued!

Oh, nice, I'd forgotten this was coming. I haven't actually read all the posts yet, but I'm excited enough about this game that I had to skip ahead just to post that it's awesome. Also, love your introductory plot summary. So, yeah, awesome!

(I keep speculating in the back of my head about the possibilities for a *good* 3D sequel to the franchise, but I don't actually think it'll ever happen.)

Blasting Again was pretty fun, though. I enjoyed it, in any case.

Also, bonus points if you also include a list of quotations from the Worlds of Power book based on this game.

Bloopers?



Those are Metroids!



Gray zombie Metroids! Aaaaaah!

I read the book a long time ago, but I don't own it. I read it in one sitting at a friend's house and enjoyed it.

There's a podcast where someone reads it. I'm afraid to listen.

I love the concept, graphics, music and gameplay of Blaster Master. However, the length of the game saddled with the lack of a password or save system has kept me from ever making a serious attempt at the game. Just out of curiosity, if I were to take a serious stab at the game, without any maps or FAQS, how much time should I set aside?

Not really speaking from experience, but I'd say about 5 hours or so.

Also, the GBC version DOES have passwords. And enemies are available in colors besides "grey".

5 hours? Yeesh. Though, when I was a kid, playing a game for 5 hours in one sitting certainly wasn't too much of a stretch.

So far so good. Your intro write up was completely awesome.

I first played Blaster Master at a friend's house and neither of us could ever get very far (at best I think we made it to the hover upgrade). However thanks to the convient placement of the tank at the bottom of the pit, we always just assumed that the giant mutated frog further mutated into the tank (especially since it was a JUMPING tank). It wasn't until many years later that I was able to beat the game on an emulator that I learned better.

It was very Kate Beaton-esque (that's a good thing!)

I'm enjoying this, like ProfessorS, it's a game I've started but never finished. Looking forward to seeing how it plays out.

I can remember all the hype around this game when it was first released and being bummed when my parents didn't get it for me. None of my friend's parents did either so I never had a chance to play it. Later in life with emulation I got to see what it was like. While loving the visuals I wasn't digging the gameplay and never stuck to it.

Look forward to seeing how this ends!

Yeah, this is a game I probably would love if I had played it as a kid, but I never did.

I love the intro, though!

Man, this was one of the first games I owned! Not only that, but I also had the Worlds of Power book! I was a pretty awesome kid (not really).

Unfortunately, some jerkface broke into our house and stole my NES (and all my games -- including this and Bubble Bobble), so I never managed to get very far in this game. Therefore, I look forward to this thread very much.

(I got a replacement NES later on -- from my grandparents -- but never reacquired Blaster Master. An eight year old can only afford so many games!)

Theoretically, I should still have that Worlds of Power book somewhere (as I never threw it away or gave it away), but damned if I know where to search for it.

My dad bought me this game from the bargain bin next to the checkout aisle in a grocery store. I love this game.

Never could get past the stupid iceworld boss, though. I eventually had to use save states on emulation to complete it and the last boss was a joke.

Other fun trivia: My cousin once convinced me that the little crystals that the second boss and the ice level boss shot were bits of milk. I saw no reason to doubt this.

Also, after playing the ice level and slipping around, I went into the kitchen in socks and slid around on the tile for a bit.

Good times.

Also, I always thought of the "soldier" enemies as dogs. Look at 'em. They look like Ralph from the Muppets, kind of.

Oh, final note: The entire reason I found Toastyfrog in the first place was thanks to a search for "Blaster Master."

This game is dear to me!

I always called them "Hounds" for JUST THIS VERY REASON!

I kid you not.

This is a true statement.

I had this too, but I never beat it because it's really frickin' hard. I only learned the whole, totally real story from the book, which my ten year old self informs me was "wicked rad." I'm going to choose to believe him instead of trying to read the book again.

Hey guys, don't forget the book is canon.

Which is cool because that's pretty much all my BM experience is anyway.

Or you can abuse the pause bug.

Blaster Master is one of those games I love the hell out of but have never finished because it requires the diligence to leave your NES on. The closest I ever came was getting to the middle of Area 5.

I got as far as the ice level, just once. This game defeated me.

Hard to say. Without FAQs, it'll take a lot of exploration. I don't want to discourage anyone from playing it, but I suspect this is a game that's more fun after you've spent your childhood figuring it out. It's not the most evil of NES games, but it's not very newbie-friendly, either. I certainly wouldn't think less of anyone using savestates to tackle it a little bit at a time and avoid the frustration of running out of lives.

I have a stalled, save-stated, cheats-enabled game on my computer. Even with all that cheating, I still got lost and frustrated without using an FAQ (three or four levels in). As a kid I played the first level over and over again at a friend's house, but never got much farther.

Good luck!

I don't know how I managed this game back before FAQs. I guess a lot of free time and the infinite, inexplicable game-related patience of a child paid off.

Man, my strongest memory of this game is never being able to get past the boss of level 5 as a kid. Every goddamn time I played I'd get to him and die to his unstoppable flurry of bubbles.

After revisiting the game as an adult I found I could get past him with little trouble, only to always die on level 8. Really seemed like designers started to run out of ideas or time or something around that level. I'm interested to see how you manage it.

Also, I never read the book as a kid. I demand a link or summary or something. Demand, I say!

Interlude: Welcome to Context

Blaster Master was released in North America toward the end of 1988, followed closely by Bionic Commando. Mega Man 2, Ninja Gaiden, and The Guardian Legend arrived soon in the following year. This was a good time to be a kid with a NES. Third party developers were taking a second look at game genres and finding new possibilities. Blaster Master was like Metroid and Zelda duct-taped together. Bionic Commando was a platformer with no jumping. Mega Man 2 was a modular design that left the order of events up to the whims of the player. Ninja Gaiden added manga-like cutscenes and a fast-paced plot that today's story-driven games could stand to learn from. Guardian Legend was a sort of sister in spirit to Blaster Master, mashing up Zelda with Galaga.

Today there has been a backlash against newbie-friendly titles like Wii Sports, with some calling it the demise of challenge in gaming. To a veteran of 1988 this is comical. All five of the games I mentioned above are punishingly hard by today's standards. The easiest of them, Mega Man 2, heralded the future of game design by allowing players some freedom in how to face each challenge, and ensuring that a reasonable solution could always be found by a gamer who was patient enough. The existence of reasonable solutions was not a foregone conclusion in those days; certainly it is not in Blaster Master. It may be the hardest NES game that is not just a glorified torture device for children, although video game Stockholm Syndrome being what it is, your mileage may vary.



In Japan, the game was called "Meta Fight," which sounds more like a badly translated Nietzche title, or maybe a Pynchon short story. The game had a generic sci-fi plot, lacking even the U.S. opening. In America, Sunsoft came up with the name Blaster Master, which tends to be remembered by girlfriends as Master Blaster, even after they buy you a copy of the game on ebay(I love you). The game was given a minimal premise with plotholes you could drop a planet into, but miraculously, it turned out to be a vast improvement. The strangely touching intro in which an every-teen hero chases his pet radioactive frog into a hole in the ground gives the game a heart to go with its great gameplay. It's nonsensical, and doesn't logically connect with the game at all(Where did the tank come from? Is the giant frog in area four meant to be the same frog? Why, then, is there another giant frog in area seven?). Somehow, though, it's just an endearing enough story that it doesn't matter. One can easily imagine a Sunsoft employee finding this plot scrawled on a napkin in a diner where Stan Lee had just eaten breakfast. Stan Lee, of course, rejected it for being too scientifically unsound.

The manual elaborates a little bit, naming the hero Jason and the frog Fred, and explaining that an unseen villain called the Plutonium Boss is in command of all the game's various monsters, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Taking this dubious plot and the more memorable features of the game, a novelization was written as part of the Worlds of Power series. In my memory, it was the only one of those books worth reading, although I'm hesitant to put that to the test. The book was later adopted as canon, which is... I don't know. Heartwarming? Terrifying? Interesting, anyway.

The adaptation I'd like to see would be a computer-animated action film, with no dialogue, kind of like the early parts of Wall-E. Just a silent journey into a marvelous subterranean world. I think it'd be great. I think Pixar should do it, and win an oscar, and mention me in their acceptance speech.

I alternate between calling it Blaster Master, Master Blaster, and BLASTOR WORF!

Also, thanks to this thread, I had a dream last night that I discovered a super secret TRUE final level to Blaster Master which takes place in an under sea tunnel. Unfortunately, I was never able to witness the boss.