Really nice remake of Blaster Master!
The gameplay reminds me of a metroidvania with some top-down sections.

The movement is good with nice abilities but goddamn, the backtracking is not fun since there's no fast travel.

The game is very very easy but a blast to play, nonetheless.

I'd never played any of the original Blaster Master games, but I had friends who had them and so was familiar from seeing them as a kid. I enjoyed this a lot - a fairly straight forward side scrolling action game mixed with top down action scenes with light exploration. On balance the side scrolling action is stronger, but the top-down scenes provide variety and are fun in their own right.

The story is passable, the pixel art strong and the music enjoyable. Feels like there is a lot of room to develop these ideas further, which the sequel confirms.

Keeps a lot of the NES core gameplay mechanics and the game feel is very similar to the original

Some rough edges, like some of the enemies and bosses are really easy to cheese, but I’d rather they stay more faithful

The power ups add variety and make it feel very Metroidvania-y with certain sections gated until you get certain powers

The story is ridiculous very bad anime cliche nonsense, I skipped over most of it

Absolutely worth a play I enjoyed this a lot

An unexpected hidden gem, this is a very fun 2D Metroidvania. As a remake of an old NES game, I expected this to be a difficult game to get into but this was surprisingly easy to pick up and learn. The story here is pretty outlandish and nothing groundbreaking yet works for the type of game this is. The pixel art is also really nice to look at with some good use of colors and world design.

The game controls well with tight controls and very responsive attacks. You mainly shoot projectiles, either in 2D or in a top-down perspective, and the response time is instant. I loved mowing down enemies with the stronger upgrades you get.

My biggest gripe is the difficulty spike near the end of the game. Once you got to a certain point, the bosses and the enemies were tough to maneuver around. I also felt that the bosses in the 2D side-scrolling sections didn't have obvious or even subtle queues for where to strike, so I had to retry quite a lot. And since this is an old-school game, if you save a bit too far back, you replay everything.

Overall I can recommend this game to people who want an old-school game with some nice modern tweaks. It is also on sale quite frequently for very cheap, usually ~5$ CAD, and for that price, it is worth it.

When Claire recommended me this game, I asked if it was a metroidvania and she went "ehh, kind of" and I feel like that's the best way to describe what blaster master zero is.
You get a big levels/areas like a metroidvania and you find multiple "dungeons" within those areas. Those dungeons are a top-down shooter and at the end of it you get a boss and an upgrade. It's a neat little thing that feels.. really great, actually. I enjoyed that mix of genres a lot.

Most of the game can easily be bypassed with the best weapon in the game that is really not that hard to get or lose, but all the other weapons are cool aswell because they interact with a lot of stuff, making it so everything is worth using atleast once.
The bosses are varied and interesting but sadly die too fast if you use the best weapon in the game (which there's no reason not to tbh) so please do your best to not stick with the best option unless you're struggling because the bosses are really fun to dodge and hit but most of those attacks can be easily missed unless you make it fair for the bosses lol

The game's story isn't as deep so there really isn't much to talk there, but the level design is actually quite clever. There's always a way to backtrack from the entrance of an area to the exit without much of a hassle and even without opening the map, it's kind of hard to get lost due to the level design being really good at showing you where to go even when it gives you multiple paths.

The true ending section was really cool and I wish this game had even more puzzles like the ones featured there so I'm looking forward to the next games in the series.

During my brief play of the original 8-bit Blaster Master, I remember being awed by the change in scale as I switched between piloting and going on-foot. That shift still impresses in this remake, along with the tank's floaty jump and the arcade style power-ups (qualities that both remind of and predict Cave Story). Some of the upgrades surprise with their believable side-effects, like how the flame-thrower neutralizes slippery ice floors.

But the game is laughably easy; only the end areas show moderate challenge. The formalizing and entrenching of its proto-metroidvania structure also robs the remake of the original's mystique.

Blaster Master Zero is not a nostalgic or classical game, it is simply an action game for NES developed in this day and age: things that happen when you respect a certain vision of video gaming so much that you don't use it for a pandering exercise in style. Inti Creates proves once again that it can handle the bitmap with great skill, simply using it to build a game and not so much to please nostalgic or artistic instincts, making the most of the already excellent base offered by the original and improving it even further. Although it does not present particularly memorable moments of challenge, its multifaceted structure makes it always interesting and for the price at which it is offered one of the best titles currently available on today's consoles. Truly a great way to bring back that strange title from Sunsoft, half-forgotten among the glories of the NES.

This was the first indie I played on the Switch and playing the demo bought a smile on my face I could not wipe off so I had to have this game. In saying that, I have played though the game twice, the second time was not as great as I recall. The levels were abit long and kind of all over the place in the end. I did not enjoy back tracking for like 5/6 minutes to previous stages just to progress to the next level.
Don't let that scare you. I had a great time playing this game The secret caves with the top down view invented variety I enjoyed. The pixel art was bang on looking like a SNES title. The music and story both very very good. I enjoyed the upgrades given and a trial on how to use them. Also to mention the boss battles had variety and fun as heck, especially with the build up cut scene. This is a retro game remake done right.

This is a gold standard remake. I played the original Sunsoft game a LOT as a kid, and never made too far during my rentals. It had no save feature, no passwords, so you got as far as you could in the two or three hours you could play before you had to turn the NES off.

All this entry really does is add polish. Graphics are better, you have more weapons options and flexibility, but the core game feels the same. The car jumps and lands with weight, Jason moves like a turd, but the outside threats are programmed around those things, which is important (something 2 fails at).

So when you go into a battle or are traversing the world, nothing feels unfair. Creature movements almost always fit around how your character moves. Nothing is faster than Jason without also telegraphing where it's going, nothing is impossible to dodge in the car if you know what you're doing. This does make the game not feel too challenging, but it also never feels unfair.

The story is, well the original was about a guy looking for his frog, so it's a lot better, but it's still nothing to write home about.

Still, I've played this three times in the seven years since its release, so that's something.

Nice metrovenia adventure game, I wasn’t aware that this was remake/ reimagine of an old game.

I like how the game have two different mode one where you explore using a mount (machine in case of this game) and one where you go inside a dungeon and explore by foot. And the upgrade and the weapons types are cool too.

Didn’t thought I will enjoy it this much 😁. And the game have acutely decent story and true ending with post game content.

Looking forward to continue playing the second and third installments 🤩.

I always had a soft spot for the original NES game due to the music and some fun ideas, but like in most other retro titles, I never got very far. Now I'm glad that I was finally able to beat this game, even if it's a different version.

The sidescroller part is the highlight here. I always thought it was cool using a vehicle to shoot monsters, even if the controls need some getting used to. The top-down sections, however, are either boring or straight up pointless. Most of the time you destroy everything with no real effort, then you reach the end and there's nothing besides pick up itens. The bosses have cool designs, but they die so easily it's disappointing (not always, but still).

After the bad ending, I almost considered leaving it at that, but it was actually worth going out of my way to do the true ending because the final area was the best in my opinion. It was still annoying having to go back to previous areas to get everything I missed, though. Shortcuts would've helped tremendously.

If the out-of-tank parts were a little better, I'd consider this game to be great. Maybe the sequel is an improvement, but this is a story for another day.

Gameplay: B
Level design: C
Visuals: A
Music: A
Difficulty: Medium