A Lost Classic Shifts Into Overdrive... The Blaster Master Overdrive Review

If you were around in the NES days, chances are you played a game called Blaster Master. This beloved classic by Sunsoft was definitely something for the time starring a tank that jumps. It was also a difficult game in the day where a game over screen starts you over from the beginning. Even though it eventually grew into a franchise in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, games that followed never really topped the original. Fast forward to this year and Sunsoft has recently returned into the gaming landscape with a re-release of the original NES Blaster Master on the Wii's Virtual Console service. However, they didn't stop there as they are bringing back the franchise to its original roots with Blaster Master Overdrive on WiiWare. Overdrive is indeed faithful to the original in terms of overall feel and still challenging, but more forgiving. It will provide great nostalgia for those that loved the original while giving new gamers to appreciate a franchise that influenced games like the Assault Heroes franchise.

Blaster Master Overdrive feels like a remake of sorts to the original maintaining its 2D feel while keeping up with modern times. There is a simple story of why you play as a upgradeable tank to save the world from a virus that has decimated humanity. The structure is done "Metroidvania" style (slang term for those that loved Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) in terms of progression in which there are eight areas and most of them can not be accessed without the proper equipment with the S.O.P.H.I.A. tank. There are bosses to defeat within each area on-foot rather than using the tank in order to gain upgrades such as a grappling hook and a drill. It is indeed still a formula that works in today's world of gaming giving players a sense of exploration finding everything they can improve their chances of beating the game such as scattered health and energy upgrades. The tank sections are the major drawing point of the game and they are fun just to go around especially when upgraded. Unlike the original where one death equals a start over from the beginning, Overdrive now has save points in the on-foot sections, which makes things forgiving, but also still frustrating when some save points are too scattered out of the overworld map especially before fighting a boss.

The gameplay still has the same proceed with caution type of approach as playing both the tank and on-foot sections recklessly will result in a quick death. Even with your on-foot character is has upgraded their three weapons (a laser, a spread gun, and a grenade launcher) beyond the first level to even its max, one hit drops their weapon one level, which totally goes along with playing the game cautiously. For the duration of the game, I have to take my time going through every room slowly expecting anything and not affording to get hit losing my weapon upgrades because they make a huge difference especially in boss fights. As I mentioned before, this game follows the Metroidvania formula and you can not reach a certain area out of the gate, there will be a upgrade later on that will let you go reach that area easily. I do want to also take note of the controls in Overdrive where it is only the Wiimote sideways keeping faithful to the NES original. They work well for the tank sections, but I had a harder time with the controls in the on-foot sections. When on-foot, the B button, which is strafing, is your best friend when you are in tough spots. Without strafing, it will be difficult coming out of the later on-foot sections alive especially when certain areas and boss fights will provide bullet hell-like sequences like those insane 2D shumps.

Blaster Master Overdrive definitely looks like a modernized 16-bit game with the occassional varied backgrounds as the eight areas. You got your standard water level, fire level, and ice level, and so on as they look fine. The bosses look bigger than they were in the original even though there is some lack of variety with them in which you have to fight some bosses more than once. The explosion effects are okay, but not great when enemies get defeated. As for the sound, the music sounds fine as well as the theme song is modernized for the current generation. Some of the background music do annoy me like the one in the third area as if it felt out of place in a game like this. The other sound effects on the other hand are great from drilling the opposition to "spider walking" up the walls.

For a normal run of Blaster Master Overdrive, it will take players about eight to nine hours to beat especially if they want to get every health and energy upgrade in the eight areas. I simply enjoyed the game as a nostalgia trip to the 8-bit and 16-bit days even though it still provides a decent challenge yet more forgiving with the addition of save points. The controls can get frustrating at times as well as starting pain with your hands if you're playing for a long stretch of time. Other control options like the Classic Controller and Nunchuk would be nice to see, but I can see why the developers want to keep it fully faithful to the original. For 1000 Wii Points (ten dollars), this game is definitely worth adding to your WiiWare library. Sunsoft is off to a great start bringing back the Blaster Master franchise for old-school gamers to enjoy and it is only just the beginning of the comeback for the S.O.P.H.I.A. tank.

Score = 8/10

Pros:

• Faithful remake to the original retaining the "Metroidvania" formula.
• Save points make the game more forgiving, but still a challenge.
• Tank sections are great especially when upgraded moving down the opposition.

Cons:

• On-foot sections can be frustrating at times especially trying to be very cautious keeping your weapons intact as well as control issues.
• Lack of controller options (only playable with the Wiimote sideways)
• Some of the music feels out of place, but still a decent modernized soundtrack

Roses, Kunais, & Hayates... Oh My!!!

UPDATE - This post now has the trailer featuring the three characters at the beginning and a tease of the new character Hakan. Yes, this trailer is amazing stuff. I'm already digging the background themes for Ibuki, Dudley, and Makoto. It looks like from the footage so far, they seem to play similar to their 3rd Strike counterparts without the parrying stuff. Makoto's supers in 3rd Strike are definitely in Super SF4 from what I seen. I don't care yet for the English voices for the recently revealed characters yet as I'm still rolling with Japanese voices for everyone, but they seem fine to me. Bring on April 27th already and to those that played it last week at USC = Jealous!!!!

UPDATE 2 - Japanese version of the trailer is below... (better voices as they even got the 3S Makoto voice!)

Original post is below...

It is only a matter of time when the rumored characters from the Street Fighter III series, Dudley, Makoto, and Ibuki, will be confirmed for Super Street Fighter IV and it seems be the case today with the first reveal of the heavily requested characters on this week's Famitsu as well as other leaks from some site in Europe. Obviously fans of the franchise like myself have already marked out over this news and further making SSF4 my "game of the forever." Graphically, it looks Dudley, Makoto, and Ibuki have made the translation to the Street Fighter IV engine very well maintaining their looks from the III series. As for how they play compared to their days especially in 3rd Strike, who knows as it is early to tell the similarities and differences right off the bat from the Famitsu scans and the latest leaked photos. Even though I haven't had much experience with 3rd Strike, I'm still willing to give these characters a shot as being potential mains for me when Super comes out. I just hope they are still 3S enough to be competitive against the rest of the roster. I have a feeling Ibuki will be low tier, but still very dangerous in the right hands like Vega & Dhalsim, while Dudley and Makoto are upper mid tier assuming they play completely identical to their 3rd Strike counterparts. In the meantime, enjoy the announcement tonight and hopefully a new trailer in the coming days, so let's fight like gentlemen I guess!

The latest on my YouTube channel for 2/7-2/14

Since I feel like blogging, here's another week in my YouTube...

We start with some arcade awesomeness of some dude "Role playing" House of Dead 4 like he is some thug with uzis. Pretty dope he's still able to do well in a game like that and he makes the rest of us feel lame because he's more gangsta. I feel so out G-ed watching this.

My music video for this past week belongs to "Rude Boy" by Rihanna. Its definitely a cool music video and its RiRi being RiRi. What else can you ask for? This is one of her better songs on her latest album as that and "Hard" are my standouts when I "reviewed" the album. Some people could relate this song to their Valentine's Days today...

Lastly, I gotta plug where I'll be at in less than 2 weeks which will be The Block's Dave & Busters in Orange for the "Level Up" Tournament aka Project Blocks. I will be playing both Street Fighter IV and Tekken 6 there, so we will see how well I can do. As long I don't go two & out in both games, then I'm a happy camper. Then again, I'm still trying to find time to get in the groove due to school and playing Blaster Master Overdrive for review (That better be done before I get Mega Man 10 on WiiWare). At the end of the day though, I'm still looking forward for more good times hanging out with the fighting game community especially some of NorCal's finest are coming to down to compete.

The latest on my YouTube channel for the week of 2/1 - 2/5/10

Here's a week roundup of what I been watching on YouTube and some thoughts about some of the videos.

I stayed up for the long awaited reveal of Sega's "Project Needlemouse" which turns out to be Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 for the downloadable services (XBLA, PSN, & WiiWare). Of course, the loyal Sonic fans were freaking out as the announcement went up on GameSpot as if this will be finally break the long curse the hedgehog has dealt with with crappy game after another. For once, Sega and Sonic Team are probably doing something right finally going back to Sonic's 2D roots (the only time Sonic has been good) taking advantage of the 2D HD retro revival on consoles (Mega Man still being 8-bit as an example) and took them long enough to realize how retro is still cool. Maybe Sega also finally realized the potential of downloadable game services and they could do so much more than just re-release the classics by actually making arcade-like HD experiences on consoles such as this, Outrun Online Arcade (still mad that it never came out on the US Playstation Store) and After Burner Climax (also finally coming to XBLA and PSN). Anyway, Sonic going back to 2D is the best thing for him and hopefully there is no more of unnecessary crap like his useless friends taking over, Werehogs, and so on. Then again, I'm still skeptical Sega and Sonic Team will mess this up knowing their recent track record with Sonic, but its a step in the right direction with Sonic 4 being episodic and downloadable. I'm also predicting once all the episodes are downloadable, Sega will bundle them in a disc for those that prefer their releases on a physical form than digitally soon. Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 is expected to come out later this year and I would buy it in a heartbeat to still support the notion that old-school is still cool in the new decade.

Next up is obviously some Street Fighter IV stuff as Sonic Hurricane released another amazing combo video featuring Abel. Take note of his "infinite" at the end of the video, which is just crazy stuff. Totally not realistic in a tournament situation, but his "infinite" seems useful if the execution is on point.

We now move on to the dancing portion of this post as ABDC season 5 is off and running (another one tonight and I'm not doing recaps) as I will showcase past crews still doing amazing things for the world to see. Above is the latest episode of So Real Cru TV as the ladies do their thing and below is one of the sickest dance routines I have seen in a while with ANBU Black Ops (Kaba Modern's Mike Song is behind this as well as some members from Kaba and Quest Crew) totally killed this themed piece from beginning to end. The song selection is awesome (Shots, Mortal Kombat Theme, and the Naruto Theme = what?) and various dance sequences from the popping, tutting, and breaking are just insane. Every time I watch this video, I am at a loss of words at times of all the awesomeness.

That's it for now... more later.

A UStream Experiment...

Today I got myself a new phone, aka the Droid and I have messing around with it throughout the day. Turns out the UStream app was also for Android phones than just iPhones as I thought, so I decided to turn it on and see what happens. For this first clip, I decided to stream some random Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 action, but different things are expected to come out of "The Life & Times of G Unit Ver1." I think the experiment sort of worked and we'll see what happens in the future.

The Legend of Zelda... A Retrospective on the NES one.

Some random day last weekend, I had some Wii Points left over and even though I rather save for upcoming Virtual Console or WiiWare games like Mega Man 10, I decided to buy a classic I should of bought a long time ago, which is the first Legend of Zelda game on the NES. I'll be honest, I've never beaten it till tonight and running through that game for the first time felt as satisfying as the 3D Zelda games I beaten (Ocarina of Time and Twlight Princess). Now of course, any 2D Zelda game past or present has been a little more harder than the 3D ones due to precision and how much damage you would take from enemies, but going through the first game, I have seen all the foundations it established for the rest of the franchise to be what it is today. I also tried to play this game with limited help from the interwebs for videos as I wanted to feel like the 80s playing it, but I couldn't resist when I was stuck or something isn't right like not being prepared equipment wise for a certain dungeon. With the first game, I have experienced the frustrations like players would feel back in the day from getting lost in the overworld wandering what to do next, dying too much (50 times for me till I killed Ganon at the end), and lots of backtracking.

I went into this game knowing what I seen from previous speed runs and go from there. The first Zelda did something games today rarely do, which you are thrown into this world and beat the game. The sense of exploration was there finding secrets, being surprised of how much damage you take in a single hit (pending if you don't have the blue ring or even the red ring at the end of the game), and so on. Early on, you can not as reckless as you can be with limited health and even with as many heart containers because the difficult enemies will take out if you go in the various dungeons guns blazing. This is especially the case later on against rooms filled with Darknuts or Wizrobes, as you feel like you actually approach them with a gameplan in mind and timing your attacks. Even with lots of heart containers, you still like you're not safe from everything, you're some badass with all these weapons mowing everyone away compared to the 3D games. Maybe that's the classic philosophy behind old school and new school where later Zelda games, you rarely feel like you are in trouble unlike Zelda 1. It is some trial and error effect that works, well for me, in a classic game like this.

I also did approached Zelda 1 in a completionist mindset trying to do everything the game offers, such as get every weapon, have the max health, explore every dungeon room (this was the case with the final dungeon), and so on. From what I seen, the formula didn't really establish itself until A Link To The Past (which I also have on my Wii via the Virtual Console but haven't finished that one yet) as the items you get within a certain dungeon, you don't use them to defeat that boss (Ganon being the exception with Silver Arrow). Most of the bosses can be taken out with just the sword and bombs for certain ones. I never realized how valuable the bombs in this game compared to modern Zelda games opening more doors in dungeons, taking out multiple enemies at once, and opening hidden areas in the overworld. These days with Zelda games, the usage of bombs have been limited to doing the same thing, but it is not as powerful than it should be. Your sword is still your bread and butter (with long distance powers at full health) in every situation and I often used the boomerang a lot too in this game compared to the bow/arrows since it required Rupees to use.

For the start of a legendary franchise that influenced all of gaming, being Game Informer's best game of all-time, and a phenomenon in the late 80s when the NES was the hotness, The Legend of Zelda definitely established the foundations and standards for games then and even today. Now that I finally experienced this landmark game from beginning to end, I have realized how this game was amazing at the time. The sense of adventure was definitely something ahead of its time then and pushed players to explore the world taking chances on what they see. We'll see if I decide to play the harder second quest or even finish A Link to the Past, but playing through Zelda 1 was definitely one of those times I feel like killing time to do something. This ain't a review of Zelda, but for something I have missed for quite a while, it is a good thing I got around to doing it. (The videos up in this post is not me playing, but a speed run by one of the best Zelda players around in the Speed Demos Archive community).

Music Roundup for January 2010...

With January coming to a close, I might as well try to remember how the month went by for me in terms of music.

I'll start off with my favorite song right now, which is "Hey Daddy" (Daddy's Home) by Usher as the video went up this morning on MTV. Even though most of his new album, Raymond vs. Raymond, has been apparently leaked, it is about time Usher put up an official music video for one of his songs. This is your typical Usher right here doing his thing and that's fine by me because I'm still eagerly waiting for the official album to come out since his last one was somewhat of a disappointment.

I have also been in a Sade mood lately with her new album out in a couple weeks. She has been on the comeback trail with "Soldier of Love" and its an awesome song. It is just nice and relaxing to hear some true soul music every now and then. I'm just hoping the album will deliver.

Lastly, I'll probably get hate for this for putting it up, but this month has been the rise of Ke$ha for her hit song "Tik Tok." I gotta admit, this is another of those one hit wonders every radio station plays and gets the club rolling. Yeah, people are sick of hearing of this nonsense, but hey we have to deal with it. This was definitely a song going crazy when I was at Vegas earlier this month in the clubs. I guess everybody will be trying to wake up feeling like P. Diddy now.

There's so much more I can cover for this month's music roundup, but I'll leave it for now. Since I update my top 10 songs I have been blasting on a daily basis, just check out that for more of your music needs.