The notoriously difficult 8-bit classic, Blaster Master, is coming to the Wii Virtual Console this month, and no one will ever beat it this time either.
Sunsoft, a Japanese studio known for creating many 8 and 16-bit classics, is joining with Victor Ireland’s Gaijinworks to revive the brand in North America. The first collaboration will be porting the infamously difficult and genre-busting Blaster Master to the Wii Virtual Console later this month, where it will cost 500 Nintendo points. Blaster Master, itself a port of the Japanese title, Meta Fight, was originally released on the Nintendo Entertainment system in 1988.
As part of the reboot, Sunsoft has a new barebones website but they plan to offer more games by using their partnership with Gaijinworks. For now, they are keeping mum on what those titles might be.
Part of what made Blaster Master so good was that it was a mix of many different genres. It was a side-scrolling platformer when you were in the vehicle, SOPHIA, it was a shooter when you were on foot, which was sometimes 2d and sometimes top-down. The story was … meh, who really cares about Jason’s pet toad and another journey to the center of the Earth? To be honest, I forgot what the game was about but I do remember that it was freaking hard.
The game was similar to Metroid in that you had to go back to previous levels once you unlocked abilities to blast down doors, etc. But unlike Samus’s first adventure, there were no save codes to enter so you had to complete the whole game in one sitting, or leave it on pause and hope to hell that your little sister didn’t get to the TV before you did.
“What? You turned off the Nintendo and erased 8 hours of my life just so you could watch Gummi Bears? Are you kidding me?”
Source: Gamasutra
Published: Dec 7, 2009 10:47 pm