Blaster Master Zero é um remake do primeiro Blaster Master de NES. Inicialmente eu esperava um jogo de NES bem simples com vibes de megaman, e isso seria o suficiente. Mas ele me surpreendeu bastante com mecânicas bem únicas e estrutura criativa, especialmente considerado o padrão dá época.

Blaster Master Zero é um jogo de plataforma, ação e exploração. Estruturalmente, ele é meio que um proto-metroidvania. Ele não chega a ser um, mas tem alguns elementos como habilidades novas que liberam áreas novas e backtracking. Acontece que cada área tem uma estrutura mais linear, se assemelhando a uma fase normal de um jogo side-scrolling de ação.

O que torna esse jogo único e interessante é a variedade que ele apresenta na sua gameplay. Inicialmente você começa jogando com um tanque de guerra, você tem bastante mobilidade, tiros poderosos, é resistente. Só que, eventualmente, você descobre que é possível deixar o tanque e jogar apenas com o piloto, que é muito mais frágil e fraco do que o tanque, porém ele tem algumas vantagens, como o seu tamanho. Então alguns lugares só são possíveis de acessar com o piloto. Só essa dinâmica já seria interessante o suficiente, mas o jogo tem um outro twist interessante.

Além das sequências side-scroller com o tanque, tem dungeons espalhadas no mapa em que você joga apenas com o piloto e são em uma câmera vista de cima. Essas sequências são um dungeon crawler em que você tem que explorar, derrotar inimigos e coletar itens. A combinação de um jogo side-scroller de ação/exploração com um dungeon crawler é algo bem criativo e ambicioso pra um jogo de NES e me surpreendeu bastante.

Um pequeno problema é o quão simples e fáceis são a maioria dos chefes e inimigos. Alguns são divertidos, mesmo não sendo super profundos, mas boa parte deles se resume a spammar tiros e pronto. As armas são meio mal balanceadas e tem umas BEM quebradas. É meio que compreensível que sendo um remake de um jogo de NES os inimigos tenham padrões simples e não tenham muita profundidade, porém era algo que podia ser melhorado.

Eu também acho que o jogo se alongou um pouco demais. Ele tem um loop de gameplay bem variado, mas eu demorei cerca de 10 horas pra terminar e no final eu já tava sentindo um pouco de cansaço. Apesar de criativo e variado, ainda é um jogo extremamente simples, então não senti que ele variou o suficiente pra me manter entretida por 10h.

Dito tudo isso, Blaster Master Zero é um jogo bem divertido e confortável de jogar. Não tem grandes desafios e nem é super profundo mas se você curte a simplicidade de um jogo de NES e jogos de exploração e plataforma, é uma recomendação bem fácil.

If you're unaware, Blaster Master is originally a very old series of games that started on the NES made by Sunsoft. After a long time in hybernation the IP was eventually given to Inticreates who launched this game as a soft reboot of the franchise with a pretty accurate recreation of the 1st game with a lot of Quality of Life changes and small rewrites here and there. You'll spend half of the game in a 2d sidescroller section using the Sophia tank to traverse the map similarly to a metroid game, and then the other half is spent playing a 3d top-down perspective shooter fighting many enemies in small maps and occasionally a boss as well.

The biggest change to this game is the story, which now has our protagonist Jason as a well researched scientist and his eventual support droid Eve who helps him trying to find his strange frog that escaped through a wormhole. The game isn't very difficult, in fact once you unlock a shield that works sort of like the Mantle from Binding of Isaac it becomes very easy to keep your gun level high to spam wave which is easily the most broken weapon shot type.

Slight spoiler warning, but you can only get the true ending of this game if you basically get 100% (iirc it's at least every sophia upgrade, but you might as well go the full mile at that point) which is a bit of a rude requirement, but it honestly doesn't take that much more effort to do so and I think it's worth adding since it unlocks some pretty fun new content and a really cool final boss. Overall it's definitely the weakest entry in the series, but if you enjoy the gameplay enough to stick with it then it's definitely worth your time!

Revisiting this was a bit disappointing. It's a fun time, but comparing it to my memory of 2 and 3 makes it hard to want to go back to this one. The combination of top-down and side-scrolling is novel, but there's a general feeling of sluggishness with how slow Jason moves when out of the tank, combined with some clunkiness with the tank's controls. Backtracking can be pretty obnoxious, which really doesn't help the pacing problems. Also it just randomly wastes your time occasionally, for what seems like no reason.

Being a sort-of remake of the original Blaster Master holds it back, with some systems that feel dated and not as interesting as they could be. However, the visual style and music is great, and feels authentic. Story's also really simple, but surprisingly nice. It's not deep, but somehow the plot of blaster master being a romance story works.

In short, fun game with some serious pacing problems and dating design. Doesn't overstay it's welcome either, but far from being one of Inti Create's best 8-bit games.

Feels weird giving this a (slightly) worse score than the original considering its so much more playable, but the last few levels were kind of a pain/bore and every time I died from a small jump outside the tank I felt like I was going to lose my mind. The rest is excellent thought l its a nearly spot on remake of the original with some nice extras to boot. Might have appreciated it more if I waited to play it, but good nonetheless. Excited for the next two to have the room to differentiate a bit more.

Poorly crafted level design with meaningless dead ends makes this a hard to love game. Bosses exhibit repetitive patterns and are extremely easy to defeat. While it retained my interest enough to see it all the way through, I can’t recommend it. It’s one of those games I played at a friend’s house on the NES originally, so the nostalgic value is what kept me going. The remake is mostly a face lift with a few other minor improvements, and my biggest beef is in the level and boss design, which carries over from the original. The caves you explore as Jason often have useless dead ends, and at times are completely devoid of anything to discover (you literally just find health and weapon refills that you don’t need). And the bosses can be obliterated with extreme ease. The dialogue is also cringe worthy. It was nice to revisit a childhood game. It just doesn’t have good bones.

recommended via this list

i liked the jason parts a lot more than the tank but i thought the tank was fine. needing every item for the true ending is an idea im neutral on, but having some dungeons just have literally nothing in them is beyond obnoxious. backtracking from the last area also seemed like cancer so im just gonna watch the real ending on YT cause i only missed one item (a map, at that)

On a replay I finally get this game.

This is definitely a remake of the original Blaster Master. Very faithful level design philosphy, enemy behavior, and even your controls are extremely similar to the NES original. Where the game differs and really shines is in the tools you get to play with this go around.

Every weapon (except the stupid wide beam) has a lot of ways to use them effectively and well, it's pretty neat how versatile each tool can be for different situations. Weapons I used way more on the replay were the Mortar and Dash, but all the weapons are pretty fun honestly. Even the on foot weapons are all useful due to variable enemy weaknesses so you're never at a true disadvantage unless you're TURBO boned.

I also really like the small optional bits of story and dialogue you can have between Jason and Eve. It's really nice and cute, and it helps solidify their relationship to make the end of the game pay off better.

Still can't believe his last name is Frudnick though.