Blade Master is a scrolling hack and slash arcade game released by Irem in 1991. Two selectable heroes, Roy and Arnold, try to save their land from hordes of monsters. There are items to break and power-ups to collect, typical of this genre in the 1990s.
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Chatinho e difícil, musica sem graça, chefes completamente sem graça. Era melhor ter ido jogar Golden Axe de novo hahahaha
Decent beat em up that's a quarter muncher. Would totally be better played with someone especially for boss fights after the 3rd stage where I felt really cornered for most of the time.
As a brawler - a little cool, a little weird, a little boring. The art and music are really lush and quite good, although both repetitve and odd in their own ways. The character designs are somewhat original - our mostly-medieval warrior heroes are battling some kind of clockwork alien race? - but the designs (especially the bosses) are overused and get stale. Combat is boring as hell - one-button, single-attack, no combo stuff. Big yawn. And the two characters aren't even any different moves-wise, even though one is roughly two times larger than the other (at first you think it's the standard beat-'em-up formulation of Normal Guy and Big Guy, but then the Big Guy is roughly the same size as all the enemies, so it makes it seem like the normal guy is just some kind of silly little hobbit).
Worth a look for the vibrant pixel art and the soundtrack, but doesn't really do anything too interesting to back it up.
Worth a look for the vibrant pixel art and the soundtrack, but doesn't really do anything too interesting to back it up.
Played as part of a cool down between big releases. a good Beat em Up. Probably will play again
The art sure is pretty in this game, but the combat feels a little underwhelming. Don’t know why you would ever need to attack directly above you when you’re mid-jump, but it sure is one of the 4 attacks in this game.
Even though Blade Master had all the potential to become Irem's next international arcade blockbuster after Moon Patrol, Kung-Fu Master and R-Type, there might be a reason it is not as well remembered. But look at the screen, aren't the big sprites gorgeous?
For 1991 they look astonishingly close to the airbrush artworks us connoisseurs of 80s genre media adore so much, so the company could have made a fresh take on the subject. The few references of a contemporary reception found online even name Blade Master amongst the most successful releases of the year and rate it surprisingly high. So what is the problem?
Well, just like many other companies at the rise of video games, Pachinko developer Irem saw a future in those new coin up machines and started out with a Space Invaders clone. Though having had quite an impact on the western market with their high-performing trio, now that I think about it, I don't remember their name for very much else.
Part of the reason might be them concentrating on the japanese market. Some of their employees later formed the Nazca Corporation who made a name with Metal Slug, so I don't want to suspect an element of randomness for the results of their products, whose difficulty is traditionally high. Maybe Blade Master just wasn't the clear focus of their development. Maybe it also wasn't Irem's genre.
Hack'n'slash games though had been very successful at the time and I'm pretty sure part of the problem is Blade Master just didn't age well and I might have liked it a lot more back in the day, when you didn't necessarily have the huge selection of other arcade cabinets free to play at one of the museums and clubs formed to make old video games accessible to the public.
Knowing that Kung-Fu Master was originally named Spartan X in Japan and took heavy inspiration from the Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Bruce Lee filmography, it might not even be surprising, that this Master, named Cross Blades! In Japanese, has nothing to do with the 1984 martial arts title, but was drawing from other recent popular tropes.
Blade Master begins with a girl being kidnapped and to rescue her, up to two players can select between the slim sword wielding Roy and the beefy Arnold, being even bulkier than his Austrian cousin.
It's nothing but Final Fight, combined with the fantasy hack'n'slash of Golden Axe or one of the more mediocre but successful fantasy beat'em'ups Capcom was releasing those years. Why shouldn't they try to cash in on that?
It was exactly around the time I began to love playing the equivalents on my Amiga 500 along with excessive sessions of Barbarian. I was practically born into Masters of the Universe and easily transitioned into anything Horror, Rambo or Ninja on the school yard, if it wasn't another barbarian movie like Conan, though I also began to read the stories along with all the old franco-belgian fantasy comics that also influenced the aesthetics of Star Wars. No wonder amongst my most treasured VHS tapes was Yor, the Hunter from the Future.
On first sight, Irem did a great job exactly capturing the different aspects of fantasy artworks. On sprites like Arnold, the muscle definition is on point. You've got demonic designs that sometimes go into that R-Type trademark Giger inspired direction. You get mohawk monster archers as well as ancient steampunk tin objects.
Towards the end they have all the reason to throw multiple, almost screen filling knights at you. Their armour has so brilliantly shining effects, they just had to present them in different shades of metal. The showdown punishes you with lightly dressed worm-women detailed directly from the wet dreams of any virgin 80s fantasy geek. Damn sure I would have wasted plenty of credits on Blade Master at the time!
The credit sequence at the end though rushes through quite a bit of text with a story I didn't feel much connection to throughout my conquest. I think it was Stage 3, when you suddenly storm on a bizarre bumblebee vehicle, which is a concept that felt closer to my impression of an Irem game, but is a unique experience in Blade Master and doesn't play exceptionally enough to repeat it as well, to be honest.
All the rest of the game is fought as a pedestrian and the more you reach the end, elements get reiterated. It almost appears as they maybe had bigger plans with this program, but had to finish it at some point.
Or maybe it's closer to the truth they didn't expect a majority of players to reach that far, which corresponds with how enemies are thrown at you without mercy or the feeling increased skill would help saving credits and keeping your change.
Blade Master doesn't reward you with anything but highscore, which is sad, as Irem should be familiar with a power up system, looking at the super hard, but very pleasurable R-Type. If the items you pick up give more than just some energy back, I must have missed it constantly dying.
That's a big issue within the tight limits of a side scrolling beat'em'up or hack'n'slash. In the limited moveset of the two buttons Jump and Attack, you want some variability through changing armory and rides, in this context maybe even spells or at least some creative gore.
All Roy and Arnold do is literally hack and slash without any additional graphical extravaganza. While mashing the attack button, the game might even miss your jump input, so you fail at one of the few alternate actions: Penetrating stunned larger enemies with your weapon while they're on the ground.
No dashes, no suicide escape moves. Instead, you might get frustrated, especially at later stages, when you need to wiggle around the corner pixels to pass a bridge or didn't manage to jump over a gap again.
Even though Irem put in great effort to please the player's eyes with their design, they don't really want to do much with it. It feels to me there wasn't a story concept behind the wide variety of enemy characters and I didn't see much connection to the landscape as well, other than one instance you wade through water as you defeat sea creatures.
The music, for the most part, might have also been used in a Shmup, but didn't generate the desired atmosphere for a fantasy game, like the grandiose Golden Axe score for example. The few voice samples thrown in don't help either as the protagonists surely aren't as barbaric as the caveman grunts imply.
Blade Master appears to be like just another skin for a generic thieving machine that puts you on test how long you want to explore the beautiful but boring battle ballet before you're totally broke. It's missing gameplay ideas and atmosphere so today it's hardly one of those admittedly imbecilic applications to play with a buddy while chatting about the good old days.
But it really should be and I'd even expect Irem to have been capable of the extra effort. There's a fascination to how touch and go it is, that thin line dividing Blade Master from being a genre classic by feeding delicacies for one and unseasoned rice for another course of the same menu.
Actually, the concluding confrontation with the worm-women illustrates that quite well. They're designed like they could give you all the genre sweetening T&A aesthetics, but their anatomy just has the T and instead of the expected A, there's an enormous appendix incessantly penalizing the player.
For 1991 they look astonishingly close to the airbrush artworks us connoisseurs of 80s genre media adore so much, so the company could have made a fresh take on the subject. The few references of a contemporary reception found online even name Blade Master amongst the most successful releases of the year and rate it surprisingly high. So what is the problem?
Well, just like many other companies at the rise of video games, Pachinko developer Irem saw a future in those new coin up machines and started out with a Space Invaders clone. Though having had quite an impact on the western market with their high-performing trio, now that I think about it, I don't remember their name for very much else.
Part of the reason might be them concentrating on the japanese market. Some of their employees later formed the Nazca Corporation who made a name with Metal Slug, so I don't want to suspect an element of randomness for the results of their products, whose difficulty is traditionally high. Maybe Blade Master just wasn't the clear focus of their development. Maybe it also wasn't Irem's genre.
Hack'n'slash games though had been very successful at the time and I'm pretty sure part of the problem is Blade Master just didn't age well and I might have liked it a lot more back in the day, when you didn't necessarily have the huge selection of other arcade cabinets free to play at one of the museums and clubs formed to make old video games accessible to the public.
Knowing that Kung-Fu Master was originally named Spartan X in Japan and took heavy inspiration from the Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Bruce Lee filmography, it might not even be surprising, that this Master, named Cross Blades! In Japanese, has nothing to do with the 1984 martial arts title, but was drawing from other recent popular tropes.
Blade Master begins with a girl being kidnapped and to rescue her, up to two players can select between the slim sword wielding Roy and the beefy Arnold, being even bulkier than his Austrian cousin.
It's nothing but Final Fight, combined with the fantasy hack'n'slash of Golden Axe or one of the more mediocre but successful fantasy beat'em'ups Capcom was releasing those years. Why shouldn't they try to cash in on that?
It was exactly around the time I began to love playing the equivalents on my Amiga 500 along with excessive sessions of Barbarian. I was practically born into Masters of the Universe and easily transitioned into anything Horror, Rambo or Ninja on the school yard, if it wasn't another barbarian movie like Conan, though I also began to read the stories along with all the old franco-belgian fantasy comics that also influenced the aesthetics of Star Wars. No wonder amongst my most treasured VHS tapes was Yor, the Hunter from the Future.
On first sight, Irem did a great job exactly capturing the different aspects of fantasy artworks. On sprites like Arnold, the muscle definition is on point. You've got demonic designs that sometimes go into that R-Type trademark Giger inspired direction. You get mohawk monster archers as well as ancient steampunk tin objects.
Towards the end they have all the reason to throw multiple, almost screen filling knights at you. Their armour has so brilliantly shining effects, they just had to present them in different shades of metal. The showdown punishes you with lightly dressed worm-women detailed directly from the wet dreams of any virgin 80s fantasy geek. Damn sure I would have wasted plenty of credits on Blade Master at the time!
The credit sequence at the end though rushes through quite a bit of text with a story I didn't feel much connection to throughout my conquest. I think it was Stage 3, when you suddenly storm on a bizarre bumblebee vehicle, which is a concept that felt closer to my impression of an Irem game, but is a unique experience in Blade Master and doesn't play exceptionally enough to repeat it as well, to be honest.
All the rest of the game is fought as a pedestrian and the more you reach the end, elements get reiterated. It almost appears as they maybe had bigger plans with this program, but had to finish it at some point.
Or maybe it's closer to the truth they didn't expect a majority of players to reach that far, which corresponds with how enemies are thrown at you without mercy or the feeling increased skill would help saving credits and keeping your change.
Blade Master doesn't reward you with anything but highscore, which is sad, as Irem should be familiar with a power up system, looking at the super hard, but very pleasurable R-Type. If the items you pick up give more than just some energy back, I must have missed it constantly dying.
That's a big issue within the tight limits of a side scrolling beat'em'up or hack'n'slash. In the limited moveset of the two buttons Jump and Attack, you want some variability through changing armory and rides, in this context maybe even spells or at least some creative gore.
All Roy and Arnold do is literally hack and slash without any additional graphical extravaganza. While mashing the attack button, the game might even miss your jump input, so you fail at one of the few alternate actions: Penetrating stunned larger enemies with your weapon while they're on the ground.
No dashes, no suicide escape moves. Instead, you might get frustrated, especially at later stages, when you need to wiggle around the corner pixels to pass a bridge or didn't manage to jump over a gap again.
Even though Irem put in great effort to please the player's eyes with their design, they don't really want to do much with it. It feels to me there wasn't a story concept behind the wide variety of enemy characters and I didn't see much connection to the landscape as well, other than one instance you wade through water as you defeat sea creatures.
The music, for the most part, might have also been used in a Shmup, but didn't generate the desired atmosphere for a fantasy game, like the grandiose Golden Axe score for example. The few voice samples thrown in don't help either as the protagonists surely aren't as barbaric as the caveman grunts imply.
Blade Master appears to be like just another skin for a generic thieving machine that puts you on test how long you want to explore the beautiful but boring battle ballet before you're totally broke. It's missing gameplay ideas and atmosphere so today it's hardly one of those admittedly imbecilic applications to play with a buddy while chatting about the good old days.
But it really should be and I'd even expect Irem to have been capable of the extra effort. There's a fascination to how touch and go it is, that thin line dividing Blade Master from being a genre classic by feeding delicacies for one and unseasoned rice for another course of the same menu.
Actually, the concluding confrontation with the worm-women illustrates that quite well. They're designed like they could give you all the genre sweetening T&A aesthetics, but their anatomy just has the T and instead of the expected A, there's an enormous appendix incessantly penalizing the player.