Watch the opening, play for 30 minutes, and try to beat the first level.
That sounded fine until I thought about it. If I beat Level 1 in five minutes, do I still have to play for the other 25? And what if it takes me more than a half hour to beat Level 1? Am I required to keep playing an hour and a half later? Fortunately Tork sent me a top-secret email with elaboration:
I don't think you could beat the first level in even an hour, so the condition is bogus, really. Just explore and get a feel for the game.
Can do! And thanks for your faith in my game-playing abilities!
I've never played Blaster Master before, so let's see what this puppy is all about.
Oh. Of course.
(Behind the scenes director's commentary material!! The fun part of taking screenshots of these games so far is figuring out what folder on my computer the emulator hides them in. It's also fun when Blogger uploads them in any old order so I have to sort them back out before I start typing.)
Ok, so I'm in charge of some some kid (his name is "Hai," judging from his jumpsuit. That's Japanese for Yes!) who is in search of his mutant frog. Great. If I were Hai, I'd just go find a new frog. But that's not Hai's style. Let's play this bitch.
So Hai drives this little car thing. I'm guessing it's the Blaster, of which he is the Master. It can shoot straight ahead, but it can also shoot up into the air! Even when I don't want it to!
I don't know if this was a problem in the original game or if it's just my controller, but that thing wanted to poin up in the air all the time. When I'd hit the control pad to go right it would often interpret that as an up. I've noticed that a lot of 3rd party usb control pads are kind of squishy in this way, though, and I'll give the game the benefit of the doubt and say that was the problem. It made aiming and jumping kind of hard.
See that little claw thing that looks like it's sticking out of the side of the rock I'm sitting on? Actually it's zooming along the bottom of the screen. Fuck those things. (They shoot themselves at you and it's annoying.)This was a hard part of the game because Hai's Blaster, for all it might look like a tank, does not like to drive through sticks. That means if I fall off a cliff and land in that crap at the bottom of the screen I lose health until I can get back up again. My aforementioned steering problems did not help.
It occurred to me that Tork didn't say I couldn't savestate, but I decided not to use those until I was at least 15 minutes into the challenge.
Hai can get out of his Blaster if he wants and run around in his little pink jumpsuit.
He is laying low and crawling right now. It's so adorable!
But he still doesn't like to go through sticks. Maybe it's poison oak.
Tork said I couldn't get past Level 1. Is this the end of Level 1?
No. It isn't.
I got here right around the 15 minute mark and started saving my progress from time to time. This is Hai's first on-foot expedition!
Ooo! A mysterious door! A door to level 2, perhaps?
No, but it does lead to a new kind of gameplay where you get to dress up like the Pink Power Ranger and run around and shoot things. These parts were the funnest parts.
This was the pause menu and also the weapon selection screen. I did not notice any change in my weapons when I changed them.
Is this the door to Level 2? (No it isn't. It's the door to face explosion.)
Level 1 has an underwater level! Hai is so cute when he swims in his little pink wetsuit!
I like these freaky floating old man flying zombie head things, but they're a little uptight. Hai looks like Hello Kitty in this shot.
Woo! Boss time! And I totally couldn't beat him! I kind of savestated myself into a corner and ended up having to fight the first level boss with only two health. That didn't work out too well.
So in the end, I didn't beat the first level in a half hour, but I came very close. I count it as a near success.
I liked this game once I was past that first jumping scene of hell. The parts of Blaster Master where I was not driving the Blaster were the funnest. Hai is a total cutie. Somebody should tell him he can get a brand new un-mutated frog out of a pond without having to blast his way through an underground labyrinth of horror.
3 comments:
Believe it or not, the big head monster was guarding level two. But you needed the item that you get from beating the brain to kill it.
The tank is a little hard to control, but it's also pretty cool. Your problem with aiming upward may be because of your controller but probably because of the game. I think diagonal up makes it poin up.
I've only beaten this game once, and I got lucky on the final boss. Even with full gun he's a pain. And I hate the crab boss of level five. Screw him.
Lita says she's going to be busy for a few days. I wanted to give her a Genesis game next, but since I need a shorter game, I'm going to give her Pac-Man. Pac-Man 2, that is. Try to beat the first level in ten minutes.
I think Lita had problems with the tank aiming upwards because it was happy to see her.
And yet when Hai climbed out of the Blaster all he wanted to do was hit the deck and crawl around. It was very cute and also very annoying. Fun game, though, all that aside.
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