Blaster Master retrospective and Tengen check-in: One froggy evening | NES Works  

Just imagine how his parents reacted when he vanished into that hole. "We're sending our love down the weeeeeell!"

This man is too professional to only have 65.4K subs. What a multiverse we live in.

As a kid, that story both made no sense at all and also made perfect sense.

I loved this game back in the day. It was a Blaster Masterpiece.

This seems like some sort of milestone for NES Works. You're into the heart of NES games now! Changing the story played into the "weird thing from Japan" to me, and the added intro sequences made it seem intentional. Recounting it felt more like a nightmare than a whimsical start to adventure it seemed as a kid.

I believe "SOPHIA III" is now canonically the name of the tank FWIW.

QVC shopping channel (iirc) pitched Gauntlet after Tengen went their separate way. My mom bought it for me at the time. In recent years, I was happily surprised to find Tengen's Tetris for less than 💰💰💰 and grabbed it.

Blaster Master on NES is one that I remember liking and Blaster Master Zero is essentially a remake that improved the game. It's good that we've reached where Sunsoft starts to release good games though. And 1943 next time maybe? Nice.

This is without a doubt one of the highest achievements to complete for me as a gamer, and among one of the greatest I’ve ever played. And I say this as someone who only first discovered it as a teen decades after release thanks to RU-vidrs, first playing it with emulation and with the 3ds and WiiU Virtual Console. Everything about the game, from the smooth character animation on both SOPHIA and Jason (with a level of attention to detail so heavy that even the tank’s wheels buckle after a great fall, with the animation somehow making the controls feel even better), or the genius gameplay (the lack of knockback here makes it by far the easiest NES title for me to pick up and play as someone who did not grow up with this era of game, Everything, about this game feels years ahead of its time and its frankly inspiring to me that a game so advanced was released in 1988 in Japan. Thank you for this lovely video on a special treasure to me.

I was actually playing this last night on my Switch! Its one of my favs from when I was a kid. But Ill say having been playing the Zero series lately, I forgot how absolutely ridiculous the English plot was. I was like "oh yeah, this ones not about the far future and aliens, its about a kid going to rescue a pet frog that fell down a hole where he somehow found a tank." Although I do have to say I like how Zero combined both plots into something new.

"Yeah, we can do that, too." And they certainly did, in spades. While Konami and Capcom were juggernauts in their own right, my favorite NES developer would easily go to Sunsoft. From their custom sound chips to general improvement in game quality, I'm really looking forward to the NES Works '89 episodes that will cover their works.

Man, Sunsoft had such a disappointing company trajectory. For a few years there, they really were rivaliing Capcom and Konami at the top of the NES 3rd Party heap, but then they got cheap and started outsourcing their 16-bit games, and their star fell just as fast as it had risen. :-/

I'm VERY surprised to learn that the weird frog story wasn't in the Japanese version of the game, it was such a bizarre decision, I assumed that must have always been there. And I assumed Blaster Master was the name of the vehicle in the US version! Shows what I know!

Watching footage of that Stage 5 crab fight with an empty gun bar gave me nightmarish flashbacks. Did you know you can shoot missiles upward? It's hard to do, but hold up with the tank and quickly press Down + B and you'll shoot the 3-way missiles upward.

Gimme more of that sweet sweet Nintendo Power footage

The Blaster Master intro makes perfect sense when your an 8 year old boy.

I think, by far, the thing that drags Blaster Master down is the lack of a battery backup or password system. If you could take a break, it would be a lot less frustrating.

I absolutely LOVE that the screenshot at 19:32 includes Gary Butterfield's Power Worlds books too. I had to do a double take when I saw that, as someone who listens to a ton of Duckfeed stuff.

Blaster Master is the first game I ever bought out of my own money. Instant respect by the editing and research involved here. Great video of one of my all time favorite games! Subbed.

Because it didn't release over here in Europe until 1991, I always believed Blaster Master was a late NES release, but it predates *Fester's Quest*?! Context, as ever, changes everything.

i love how blaster master zero basically combined the american and japanese canons.

So you're saying Blaster Master is one simple romhack (permanent gun upgrade) away from pure genius?

I don't comment this enough, but I really love your content. Learning about this game was interesting and seeing them use a modernized version of the English story surprised me. I never knew the Japanese story had nothing to do with a lost frog. 🐸

Blaster Master is tied with Bionic Commando as my favorite NES game. I still remember buying it for $14 at Lionel Toys with my paperboy money. Because it looked the coolest of the discounted games. And once I started playing it, I wondered how it could be on discount. Since it was better than practically any of the other games I had played up to that point. I completely agree about the top-down gun loss of upgrades. Especially since several of the gun levels were arguably worst off. Like the second most powerful wave shot that didn't pass through walls or the looping shots that lowered the rate of fire to the forward shot. The lack of continues, password or saves also made this game exceptionally brutal. As it was often a 2+ hour epic to get to the end. Even if you knew where to go. It took me so many games to figure out how to defeat the Plutonium Boss. Especially his second form. Because I never knew of the trick until after finally beating the game.

This has been one of those games I've wanted to love but suck at, so I keep remembering it as more awesome than it actually is. Still wild to me that Sunsoft went on to make Fester's Quest and was like "What if we focused a game around the worst part of Blaster Master, make it even harder and also star a character that hadn't been on TV for 23 years?"

Blaster Master was an enigma to me in my youth. I loved it (and, admittedly, I loved the frog angle because I was a kid in the sticks), but I could never get halfway through it when I was young. The entrance to Area 4 is downright _esoteric,_ and there's pretty much no way I would've known to go back to the first level without the eventuality of the internet to guide me.

The frog story is a very important part of why I remember this one

Believe it or not, while the Nintendo Power ABSOLUTELY sold it, the plot made it memorable. There are dozens of sweeping sci-fi space war stories on NES, but "kid tries to get back his pet frog and accidentally stumbles upon an alien super tank and a secret alien invasion underground" was unique, relateable, and made many kids imaginations run wild. I became pretty obsessed with digging holes after playing Blaster Master and I've heard many people refer to Blaster Master's plot as "the greatest videogame plot of all time" in a way that is both joking and loving. I mean, real talk, some kids really liked pet frogs.

Had this game as a kid. No idea how, but Im sure my parents asked whoever working at the store what was good. I never got very far as a kid but loved this game. Blew my mind being so used to Mario's 'just move right' that you can actually go backwards and in fact, need to go to where you started in the game, to get to world 4. The ending music IMO is also the best ending music on the NES. The ONLY flaw this game has, is that heres no password/save feature. Even if you know what you're doing, it takes like 2 and a half hours.

Excellent feature on Blaster Master! Thank you for this! This became one of the new games, to me, that played as good as it looked back in the day. And Blaster Master Zero is a super re-imagining that definitely gets it all right

While not in the scope of these videos per se, I'd love to see you talk about Sunsoft and how their music in games tended to be as amazing as it was. Out of all the soundtracks on the NES, you can always tell a Sunsoft game simply by listening to the music.

Ok, I know I've watched videos from this channel before. But, I am currently being completely blown away by how he makes this video look like old footage from an 80's VHS tape. I love it!!! I don't ever remember him doing that before.

I remember falling in love with the Tank sections of this game, but being annoyed with the Human sections so I never actually played this very much. Time to add it to the backlog!

The weapon downgrade system in blaster master is made even more infuriating by the fact that some rooms grace you with unavoidable swarms of bullets and homing enemies immediately upon entry. It's a great game, but most definitely one that benefits from QoL features such as save states and rewinds.

That Dai 3 Wakusei factoid is really interesting, I've never even heard of that game. The pre-Donkey Kong golden age is another subject ripe for a deep-dive documentary series. Though nobody should have to suffer through that many characterless Space Invaders xeroxes.

Possibly my favorite NES game. And that's saying a lot.

An absolute classic. I could never beat it legit...but man how ambitious this was during the era. Sunsoft rarely faulted...good times.

Yeah the frog angle definitely hooked me . Didn't realize it was an Alice in wonderland story

Wow this popped up at the perfect time today. Thanks for this one; a TON of nostalgia for Blaster Master.

This is another game that I grew up playing and finally beat after years of trying. It’s come in surprisingly handy as an adult, as there have been multiple occasions where I went through the game in front of an audience that had never advanced past the 3rd level.

I love this game and had so much memories of playing it with my family. I was little and I might have just missed one of my brothers beating it, but from what I can recall, I've never seen them made it past the frog boss. But man, getting to play this was one of my most anticipated activity after school and weekends.

I've got the complete NES music vol 1 and 2... hearing all the old tunes really brings back memories, especially when you're doing an NES Works and I recognize the music, even for games I didn't play much (or at all, Like Gumshoe).

This game has always been high on my list of favorite NES games and probably makes the top ten games of all time. It was brutal and often made no sense, but it was so much fun to play for hours at a time on the weekend while waiting for my friends to get home and come get me for bike riding.

Great episode Jeremy. Like myself, I'm sure the nostalgia is strong with this one for many watchers. I recall specifically being spellbound by the boss (who we assumed was the final boss) on the box cover -- and that nobody on the playground had ever gotten to him yet. What an audio-visual delight Blaster Master was, but as you covered, not without it's complications. I think they were very much on the verge of a blockbuster hit if they could have smoothed over some of the more annoying 'features' in the game. A few of my pet peeves: -- As you mentioned, losing the gun upgrades every time you get hit -- really frustrating. -- They introduced the wall climbing abilities kind of late and those would have been cool to use more in the 'meat' of the game. -- The key was a completely bogus upgrade. Just imagine if there was one other cool powerup in its place. -- The pause trick bug kind of made beating the bosses feel cheap. Although anyone who's tried to beat the frogs without it deserves a purple heart (especially the orange one). -- As mentioned, the hit detection can be a bit janky. Both in you getting hit and you trying to hit enemies. Despite all this it's a great game deserving of praise. Been looking for a new Switch game and Blaster Master Zero looks like it might be a fun trip down memory lane. Keep up the great content -- really enjoying it.

These are some awesome times for the NES. Love the Video Works and Retronauts Podcast.

I've always assumed the frog burrowed into the ground. It never once occurred to me there might have been an open shaft just sitting there, because THAT WOULD BE STUPID. Also I think mentioning the leap of faith in the famicom version was notable, but it might be something you're saving for the future 3 second episode on Metafight: "This jump be whack, yo."

For it's time. Blaster Master is quite an impressive game. Enjoyed re-playing the game even now. it's quite a unique game in the NES library. Hope we get some Sunsoft love for Batman and Gremlins 2 NES too. Also. Kudos to Inti Creates for the 3 Blaster Master Zero games. Continuing the series into moden times and added quite some improvements.

I loved the atmosphere of this game, ever since the intro music

Jeremy, I had more inspiration that caused me to love this game back then. The cartoon “Jase and the Wheeled Warriors.” The tank Jase drove had various weapons much like “Sophia.” Ahh, after school cartoons were so awesome back in the 80’s.

Ah. Metal Attacker. Well that's just nice and frustrating as I swore it was Sofia lol. Thanks for your diligent work.

Thank goodness I lived near an Ames in South Jersey! They seemed to carry whatever they felt like. They still had C64 games for sale into the early 90s and also sold Tengen games and other stuff you didn't really see anywhere else. I miss Ames, lol

I know this is nothing new for you but I wanna thank you for taking the time to keep the proper aspect ratio for gameplay, and not just stretching everything out to HD depths

One of my favorites that I still own til this day.

Once more I would like to thank Jeremy Parish for the use and credit of my commercials. Someday I'll add more, I promise this. Blaster Master is a game I rented, but I didn't actually own until the late 90s when NES games were super cheap. I didn't actually complete it until the mid 2000s with the aid of the excellent maps on VG Maps by user sonyball in 2007 which show every map in the game along with the location of everything within the maps. Blaster Master's maps are enormous and it's quite easy to either get lost or go the wrong direction. Even _with_ the maps you still will still have a very challenging time.

I got this game on my birthday thanks to a KB toys salesman in the mall. He said it was rad, and he was right. Bought it on his recommendation with extra bday cash.

An interesting game that was hampered by early tech limitations, in that it featured no password or save feature.

somehow I played Fester's Quest for many hours but never this one, why?? I remember the Nintendo Power coverage even!

One of the few NES games we had and I loved it. I'd say a lot of that was due to the soundtrack as I don't remember ever getting very far into it.

This and Rygar were my go to games the summer before Mario 3 came out

You hit the nail on the head with how I felt about Blaster Master back in those days! BM was the 4th game I ever owned for the NES and I absolutely loved and hated the game. I loved the graphics, play control, music and overall feel of the game. But I absolutely hated the power down system when Jason took damage. All of my friends back then felt the same way as they would borrow the game and usually bring it back to me a few days later complaining they kept dying because they lost weapon power. I was never able to beat the game but boy did I spend a lot of hours trying back then!

Did the grenade pause glitch also work in Fester's Quest? Was it purpousely put in by that time?

Nice video Jeremy. Surprised you didn't mention Fester's Quest and Gremlins 2 by Sunsoft basically utilize the same Blaster Master viewpoint and frustrations.

Absolutely enjoyed this game when it first came out. I hadn't even realized that it was considered a "metroidvania" before the term was ever adopted. I totally agree and they managed to still be unique. Honestly, despite the issues with the gun, I still felt that the challenge wasn't too hard especially when compared to some of the other NES games of its time. It's satisfying when you beat it. :)

Nintendo licensed Choose Your Own Adventure books in the US and Blaster Master was one of them, I remember not understanding how moving to different pages worked and just read the whole thing

I missed the boat on Blaster Master as a kid. I knew about it, but never got around to playing/renting it. Didn't play till decades later. When I did, my initial reaction when doing the first overhead stage was: "oh yuck, this is just like Fester's Quest" :/

I have memories of playing this game with a friend many years ago...

I'd say from this point on Sunsoft probably became the best third party developer for the NES, behind Capcom and Konami. At least in the west.

It was the lack of continues let alone saves or passwords that really did this game in. I loved playing this game and always wanted to see it through to the end, but eventually I just got sick of running that first hour or so every time before getting cooked. Maybe it's time I go back and give it the old save state try!

First off, the key to doing well in the overhead areas is to STRAFE. Like, all the time. ABS = Always Be Strafing. The ability to move freely while keeping the enemy in your sights and blazing away is *everything.* I didn't really see it happening in this gameplay footage, though. Oh, and I adore how Sunsoft was willing to ditch the Metafight angle completely and go all-in on Jason and his frog. They even canonized the Blaster Master novelization from the Worlds of Power line. Wild, but wonderful. Does Kojima have the guts to do that. I think not. ;)

I had that Worlds of Power book when I was young, I remember loving it - lol

I really enjoyed playing blaster master as a kid but I never actually understood what the goals were. It was more just the excitement of driving the jumping tank car thing.

I loved this game. This and bionic commando were my favorite non first party NES games.

Now we know where Sunsoft originated the infuriating GUN system for Fester’s Quest.

I was one of th3 kids who drooled over the pages in those early Nintendo Power mags "what.. is.. THIS?" I really wanted that model tank they made, too! This was on a short list of games I think I rented first, and then bought. The overhead scenes were a bummer, but not anywhere near enough to distract from the overall coolness of this exceptional game. Yeah it felt a but cheap exploiting that boss pause trick, but also kind of leveled the playing field a tad for how busted the whole Jason Gun system worked. Not enough is ever said about how well this game looked, sounded and played, especially given the time it released. I was always bummed it never got the proper recognition it deserved alongside the likes of Metroid!

Fun fact: In the 2013 Wayforward title "Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I Don't Know," there is an egg grenade sub weapon which lets you use the same pause-grenade trick from Blaster Master.

It might be just a coincidence, but the plot of the US version of Blaster Master reminds me of two animated series that had toy lines during the 1980s. Jeremy Parish alluded to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which featured animals mutated by radioactive waste. The other series was Inhumanoids, which had humans using high-tech suits and vehicles to battle monsters beneath the surface of the Earth. Also the idea of a child following an animal down a hole into a strange world is reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland.

I still remember when I finally beaten Blaster Master that one weekend at my cousins house back in 1993. The AC wasn't working and it was hot in that house for a little while but I was determined to finish this game and how sweet it was. Everything about that game was awesome from head to toe my favorite was the music in the game especially from stages 5 and 6 which to me sounded like they came from both Gradius and Life Force. I've played Blaster Master 2 for Genesis but I just couldn't get into it like the first one on NES maybe I'll give it a go now just for fun despite the reviews and opinions about it since then.

Yes! Blaster Master! One of my favorite NES games ever, and one of the original "MetroidVanias"!

blaster master's one of the best. i absolutely utilized the boss pause cheat.

Shout out to Blaster Master Zero gotta be one of my favourite trilogies.

Blaster Master is an brilliant nes game and I will play it. 😀👍🎮

It is humorous that the Blaster Master Zero reboot trilogy managed to marry all of the twists and turns of the original Blaster Master/Metafight series (including referencing the often-forgotten PSX game in the series' true ending) considering we got a random story about a boy and a frog while Metafight was about a dire metallic alien apocalypse.

I could never beat this game as a kid. I think Jason failing to save his frog is canonical because in Fester's Quest, the streets are overrun not only by an alien invasion but also an endless supply of radioactive frogs.

As a kid, I always used grenades against all the bosses. I never had gun upgrades. Couldn't beat the final boss, but I had all the rest down pat.

Can't wait to see you cover Ufouria.

I do still find it funny that the most prominent Blaster Master prescence on the internet today is "Massive plantgirl dobahonkeros," at least as far as I can tell. Not that I'm complaining mind you...

I always thought his frog turned into the tank.

What's amazing about Nintendo Power is how honest it was: sure, it was an advertising tool, but it really did feature the strong 3rd-party games prominently. Stuff like Blaster Master, Power Blade, Battletoads, Double Dragon, etc. It could easily have shamelessly promoted the poorer 1st-party games, but it didn't.

This is another example of a publisher realizing that simple arcade ports weren't going to cut it on the NES in the era of Mario and Zelda. Deep adventure games were the future now, and Sunsoft needed to either risk being left behind or get in line. They chose the latter and the rest is history. And you're right about Tengen being erased from the official list of NES releases. In fact the 1993 Namco re-release of Pac-Man was billed as the "first official version" in the December 1993 issue of NP.

I loved the Worlds of Power novel as a kid.

My god I love that RoboWarrior BGM

Love blaster master. The new ones are fun too.

This game is so dope. It's the gamiest game that ever gamed.

A note on the nonsense storyline, I remember reading the novelization of this game as a kid (Worlds of Power: Blaster Master). As I recall, I found it pretty enjoyable back then. Now I find it impressive that someone managed to stretch that frog bit into three acts.

Another great video. I enjoyed learning about Blaster Master's localization. I miss the classic Sunsoft era, and they seemed to disappear after making generic Looney Tunes SNES games.

And yet Sunsoft thought the top-down levels were so good they even made a whole game out of them in this game's spiritual successor, Fester's Quest. And that game is even more punishing than Blaster Master.

I haven't played this game and learning the US version of the story made me crack up considerably.

I honestly thought the story was entirely intentional given it doesn't look too out of place for video game stories of the time, or even something like A Boy And His Blob. In retrospect, however, it is blatantly ridiculous, but I can't say it was the wrong move - certainly better to have this patent absurdity than something that would pass off as sci-fi cliché. It's seriously impressive how much Sunsoft evolved from Atlantis no Nazo into this in such a short span of time. Glad to finally know the name of the tank, too!

I didn't know this game had limited continues until I was playing it on WiiWare and got sent back to the title screen trying to finish Area 5. Curse you, mutant lobster boss!

For me Blaster Master is one of the best NES games ever made and it is one of only a few difficult NES games I enjoy enough that I bothered beating it. The Zero series really didn't grab me like the original NES game did. As frustrating as getting to the final boss and losing all your continues might be, I consider the glitch where you can get permanently stuck in a wall in Stage 5 to be way worse. You can't even die to get yourself out of it. Your only option is to reset the game and start over. How things like that ever make it through to a released game is beyond me.