Angel_Arle Blaster Master reviews
Part 2: Bomber King: Scenario 2 for Game Boy
Part 3: Blaster Master 2 for Genesis
Part 4: Metafight EX for Game Boy Color
I never really could make up my mind if I truly wanted to stop reviews. While I’ve been trying to do shorter ones, I’ve felt like I wanted to do a series of reviews I’ve always thought of doing. I haven’t fully decided but I think I’ll possibly review every Blaster Master game. I haven’t played most of these games so it’ll be an interesting time if I decide to do them. I should note I might also bring back the Sailor Moon and Rockman reviews but I’ve been undecided. Well anyway, onto the actual review.
Picture this, you’re a game developer who hasn’t made much good. Sure Wing of Madoola, Fantasy Zone (Famicom), and Ripple Island weren’t bad but you just can’t hit it out of the park with something special. What do you do? You go bigger and create an exploration game to surpass the likes of many. That’s when Chou-Wakusei Senki Metafight was born. This game would mix exploration in a tank and gunning down enemies inside rooms from the maze-like areas. Is the game itself any good after all these years? With many sequels down the line, It’s going to be fascinating to see if this will be the peak. This was my 2nd time playing this game. Time to discuss.
Metafight stars a fifteen year old named Kane Gardner who is off to put a stop to the enemy invading. Thanks to the help of a seventeen year old girl named Jennifer Cornet, she builds the Metal Attacker, a tank that can shoot various weapons and gain new abilities throughout the adventure. It’s up to Kane to go through eight areas and stop the villains with whatever tools he has! Now this is just stuff from the manual as the game itself lacks any story, not even an intro.
The game starts with you inside the Metal Attacker as you can shoot forward or upward. You can also jump and it’s a pretty floaty one too. The controls take a bit to getting used to but you should be fine after a while. You’ll be exploring big areas with many rooms and enemies ready to murder you. You want to find the room that contains the boss as it’ll have an item that enhances the Metal Attacker giving it a new ability. Though Area 4 only gives out a key. There’s three special weapons you can use that have limited ammo. The first is homing missiles which are just missiles that can home in on enemies and you’ll send out more depending on the enemy count on screen. The lightning weapon shoots lightning under you and it’s pretty useless as it goes in a few different directions that’s hard to guess and it misses most of the time anyway. The three way missiles will shoot three missiles that go forward and widen out as they keep going. The con with it though is that you have to always use three. To switch weapons you need to pause and select whichever and then press down and attack to use one.
With the select button you can have Kane leave the Metal Attacker and he can go into special rooms. The game switches to a top down gameplay style where you can shoot and use grenades, at least I think they’re grenades. You can strafe with the grenade button to help shoot better. Your gun has a meter which makes it get stronger the more pickups you get for it. It starts out as a normal shot, then one where it begins to shoot curvy shots, and then finally you have shots that go in a weird wavy pattern. The problem is that everytime you get hit, the level for it goes down. Kane also never gets upgrades for himself meaning pickups besides the gun and health will be transferred to the Metal Attacker. Kane also restores full health going into the Metal Attacker. Kane also is frail with small heights in the side scrolling areas so don’t even try using him for platforming.
Level design in the side scrolling areas are pretty fun. Despite the maze-like structures, nothing is ever too frustrating with the Metal Attacker. It helps that the game is very generous with health pickups. Levels are distinct and I’ll go over that in a bit. Enemies can come in a decent amount of variety. Some fly around and some are small and short. In fact for enemies like the landmines or worms, try to get Kane out and shoot them since he’ll go back to full health after the hits and you won’t lose ammo or health with the Metal Attacker that way. I do wish the camera was a bit better at showing what’s down below. What’s weird is pausing the game and unpausing sometimes does lower the camera. You also don’t really have much invincibility frames which can lead to many hits in hazards if not careful. You also only have 3 lives with none to refill with. You do have unlimited continues at the very least though stuff like Gun level reset after a death.
I like the progression in Metafight with the first area being a pretty good beginner level that gets you comfy with the rules of the game. Areas 2-4 have a lot of verticality to them showing more of how it won’t be easy to find where the boss is. Another brilliant design of Metafight is not finding the boss isn’t all doom and gloom. It’s still a good source for finding refills to stuff you need. Area 5 shows off the water level. You were taught earlier how the water worked here earlier and now you must traverse a lot of it with Kane alone. It makes for an interesting change of pace and really demonstrates the Metal Attackers feats when even easy enemies take multiple hits to die from Kane’s gun. Area 6 has ice physics that make the controls even more tricky to get used to. Area 7 has a lot of walls to break through with dangerous lava that can be hard to get out of. Area 8 has a lot of deadly spikes and with this game’s low i-frame count, you’ll have to be very careful though it does have an issue I’ll bring up later.
Rooms that Kane goes into are probably the low point for the game for me mostly because the gun just isn’t consistent enough to hit enemies leading to hits that don’t feel like your fault. The game also has a bad problem with how enemies spawn. It sometimes feels cheap with how they’ll just come out of nowhere. It’s here where some of that early Sunsoft jank shows up meaning they haven’t fully reached the confidence they would later. I’m also unsure why they would put instant death in these rooms. While I never fell into them, it feels like a poor design choice. The ice physics rooms are probably the worst areas as the controls just don’t work well with them. Even worse, some rooms just have you enter with enemies about to hit you and it almost goes to the same level of Metroid 1 in terms of cheapness when entering doors. When you have a mechanic that relies on not getting hit, I expect good enemy placement.
Bosses are all done in the top down sections and they can be pretty challenging with their size and Kane’s movement in general. It’s really hard for me to tell if grenades or the fully powered up gun do more damage. I’m not really a big fan of them but they do at least for the most part feel diverse enough to at least be memorable. I can only think of one similar boss which are the frogs. If you struggle with some bosses there is a glitch you can exploit. For bosses 2, 4, 6, and 7, shoot a grenade and pause as it hits and they’ll take continuous damage, just unpause after 15-20 seconds and they’ll be dead. Beating a boss will give you one of those upgrades for the Metal Attacker.
The first upgrade the Metal Attacker gets is the hyper shot which gives it more power, simple enough. The second upgrade is a crusher shot which can destroy blocks you once couldn’t destroy, opening up more areas for you. The next one is interesting as it’s a hover ability. If you were wondering what the H pickups were, well these refill your hover as it drains fast. This also marks an interesting point as you’ll have to go back to the very beginning of the game to find an area you can hover to that leads to area 4. This game has backtracking and I’m mixed on it because while the game does provide shortcuts or short routes to get back to where you go, it never really feels well thought out besides for the sake of just doing it. I’m not sure if I’m in the minority for it but I've never been the biggest fan of it. The upgrade in area 5 will help the Metal Attacker swim in water which is very nice. We also have the 2 wall upgrades letting you travel on the wall and ceiling. Sadly Wall 2 is a terrible upgrade because going off the edge will have you travel on the wall below you making jumps a pain in the ass! Half the reason area 8’s spikes are hard to avoid is because of this design choice.
Metafight does look pretty good for a Famicom game of its time. While enemy sprites aren’t the most interesting color wise and the game does rely a lot on dark colors, it still has some good looking areas. The tiles presented to form locations look pretty nicely detailed and a lot of them look unique from each other even if some aren’t the most visually cool looking. I do like how being in the top down levels zooms in the action making the sprites look bigger and the bosses massive sprites are impressive though the entire room becomes black to compensate for it, outside of the final boss. The music is what really impresses me with the first area having this heroic feel to it where it feels like Kane is fully prepared to defeat anything in his way. It gets you motivated for the journey. I really like the 4th area’s theme with how creepy it sounds along with the frog croak at the end hinting at what the boss truly is. The 5th area really gives a feeling of the unknown when entering the water, it sounds…mystical? I don’t know how to describe it. The rocking tune of Area 7 really gets you pumped with all the lava around. I could go on and on about how good the tunes are and while not everything is a hit for me personally, I still love it. Easily one of the highlights.
I should mention the US version named Blaster Master. It’s mostly the same but it’s got a new story starring a guy named Jason who chases after a frog and leads him to a tank and it’s up to him to find the frog. They even made an intro song for this cutscene which sounds nice and the area you travel out of when starting the game looks different to match the cutscene. The ending is a little different too but it just removes the chibi versions of Kane and Jennifer off the end screen and the final shot before credits added the frog. I should also discuss how continues work. You only have three in this version. Now I personally think this was done since it was usual for the time but I wanna bring up that the manual for the Japanese version supposedly mentions you have 5 continues when in the actual game it’s infinite. Could this suggest the US version is more complete? Honestly, I’m not sure. This game is already long enough being about 3-5 hours depending how you play and there’s not even a password system. Despite this, the game ended up being more popular in the US.
We would see this game rereleased a couple of times. The first one being put in Memorial * Series: Sunsoft Vol. 4 for the PS1. It also came with the game Ripple Island. It plays fine but sadly the audio is pretty bad especially on the percussion so I wouldn’t recommend it at all. The game would see a couple of emulated rereleases via stuff like virtual console. The most interesting one has to be the NSO rerelease of the game as they also gave it an SP version that lets you start at the final area with everything maxed out so if you struggle with this game, maybe play this one if you want to see the toughest part of the game.This also applies to the US service of NSO.
This game is an interesting turning point for Sunsoft. At this point, many of their games would be very high quality and they would become respected around that time. While Metafight didn’t do too well when it came out, it would be considered a hidden gem in Japan. As for me, it’s a good game if flawed. While I appreciate what it sets out to be, I can’t help but feel some of Sunsoft’s early jank is still presented here. It’s got problems I can’t look past but with stuff like Rough World, Hebereke, and Gimmick being created after this fine work, Sunsoft would have it good for a while. Metafight wouldn’t see another Japanese game for many many years. Though with that said, we do have what I like to call a filler episode for the next game. Next time it will be the Game Boy game, Bomber King: Scenario 2. (That is if I actually feel like continuing this).
Part 2: Bomber King: Scenario 2 for Game Boy
Part 3: Blaster Master 2 for Genesis
Part 4: Metafight EX for Game Boy Color
I never really could make up my mind if I truly wanted to stop reviews. While I’ve been trying to do shorter ones, I’ve felt like I wanted to do a series of reviews I’ve always thought of doing. I haven’t fully decided but I think I’ll possibly review every Blaster Master game. I haven’t played most of these games so it’ll be an interesting time if I decide to do them. I should note I might also bring back the Sailor Moon and Rockman reviews but I’ve been undecided. Well anyway, onto the actual review.
Picture this, you’re a game developer who hasn’t made much good. Sure Wing of Madoola, Fantasy Zone (Famicom), and Ripple Island weren’t bad but you just can’t hit it out of the park with something special. What do you do? You go bigger and create an exploration game to surpass the likes of many. That’s when Chou-Wakusei Senki Metafight was born. This game would mix exploration in a tank and gunning down enemies inside rooms from the maze-like areas. Is the game itself any good after all these years? With many sequels down the line, It’s going to be fascinating to see if this will be the peak. This was my 2nd time playing this game. Time to discuss.
Metafight stars a fifteen year old named Kane Gardner who is off to put a stop to the enemy invading. Thanks to the help of a seventeen year old girl named Jennifer Cornet, she builds the Metal Attacker, a tank that can shoot various weapons and gain new abilities throughout the adventure. It’s up to Kane to go through eight areas and stop the villains with whatever tools he has! Now this is just stuff from the manual as the game itself lacks any story, not even an intro.
The game starts with you inside the Metal Attacker as you can shoot forward or upward. You can also jump and it’s a pretty floaty one too. The controls take a bit to getting used to but you should be fine after a while. You’ll be exploring big areas with many rooms and enemies ready to murder you. You want to find the room that contains the boss as it’ll have an item that enhances the Metal Attacker giving it a new ability. Though Area 4 only gives out a key. There’s three special weapons you can use that have limited ammo. The first is homing missiles which are just missiles that can home in on enemies and you’ll send out more depending on the enemy count on screen. The lightning weapon shoots lightning under you and it’s pretty useless as it goes in a few different directions that’s hard to guess and it misses most of the time anyway. The three way missiles will shoot three missiles that go forward and widen out as they keep going. The con with it though is that you have to always use three. To switch weapons you need to pause and select whichever and then press down and attack to use one.
With the select button you can have Kane leave the Metal Attacker and he can go into special rooms. The game switches to a top down gameplay style where you can shoot and use grenades, at least I think they’re grenades. You can strafe with the grenade button to help shoot better. Your gun has a meter which makes it get stronger the more pickups you get for it. It starts out as a normal shot, then one where it begins to shoot curvy shots, and then finally you have shots that go in a weird wavy pattern. The problem is that everytime you get hit, the level for it goes down. Kane also never gets upgrades for himself meaning pickups besides the gun and health will be transferred to the Metal Attacker. Kane also restores full health going into the Metal Attacker. Kane also is frail with small heights in the side scrolling areas so don’t even try using him for platforming.
Level design in the side scrolling areas are pretty fun. Despite the maze-like structures, nothing is ever too frustrating with the Metal Attacker. It helps that the game is very generous with health pickups. Levels are distinct and I’ll go over that in a bit. Enemies can come in a decent amount of variety. Some fly around and some are small and short. In fact for enemies like the landmines or worms, try to get Kane out and shoot them since he’ll go back to full health after the hits and you won’t lose ammo or health with the Metal Attacker that way. I do wish the camera was a bit better at showing what’s down below. What’s weird is pausing the game and unpausing sometimes does lower the camera. You also don’t really have much invincibility frames which can lead to many hits in hazards if not careful. You also only have 3 lives with none to refill with. You do have unlimited continues at the very least though stuff like Gun level reset after a death.
I like the progression in Metafight with the first area being a pretty good beginner level that gets you comfy with the rules of the game. Areas 2-4 have a lot of verticality to them showing more of how it won’t be easy to find where the boss is. Another brilliant design of Metafight is not finding the boss isn’t all doom and gloom. It’s still a good source for finding refills to stuff you need. Area 5 shows off the water level. You were taught earlier how the water worked here earlier and now you must traverse a lot of it with Kane alone. It makes for an interesting change of pace and really demonstrates the Metal Attackers feats when even easy enemies take multiple hits to die from Kane’s gun. Area 6 has ice physics that make the controls even more tricky to get used to. Area 7 has a lot of walls to break through with dangerous lava that can be hard to get out of. Area 8 has a lot of deadly spikes and with this game’s low i-frame count, you’ll have to be very careful though it does have an issue I’ll bring up later.
Rooms that Kane goes into are probably the low point for the game for me mostly because the gun just isn’t consistent enough to hit enemies leading to hits that don’t feel like your fault. The game also has a bad problem with how enemies spawn. It sometimes feels cheap with how they’ll just come out of nowhere. It’s here where some of that early Sunsoft jank shows up meaning they haven’t fully reached the confidence they would later. I’m also unsure why they would put instant death in these rooms. While I never fell into them, it feels like a poor design choice. The ice physics rooms are probably the worst areas as the controls just don’t work well with them. Even worse, some rooms just have you enter with enemies about to hit you and it almost goes to the same level of Metroid 1 in terms of cheapness when entering doors. When you have a mechanic that relies on not getting hit, I expect good enemy placement.
Bosses are all done in the top down sections and they can be pretty challenging with their size and Kane’s movement in general. It’s really hard for me to tell if grenades or the fully powered up gun do more damage. I’m not really a big fan of them but they do at least for the most part feel diverse enough to at least be memorable. I can only think of one similar boss which are the frogs. If you struggle with some bosses there is a glitch you can exploit. For bosses 2, 4, 6, and 7, shoot a grenade and pause as it hits and they’ll take continuous damage, just unpause after 15-20 seconds and they’ll be dead. Beating a boss will give you one of those upgrades for the Metal Attacker.
The first upgrade the Metal Attacker gets is the hyper shot which gives it more power, simple enough. The second upgrade is a crusher shot which can destroy blocks you once couldn’t destroy, opening up more areas for you. The next one is interesting as it’s a hover ability. If you were wondering what the H pickups were, well these refill your hover as it drains fast. This also marks an interesting point as you’ll have to go back to the very beginning of the game to find an area you can hover to that leads to area 4. This game has backtracking and I’m mixed on it because while the game does provide shortcuts or short routes to get back to where you go, it never really feels well thought out besides for the sake of just doing it. I’m not sure if I’m in the minority for it but I've never been the biggest fan of it. The upgrade in area 5 will help the Metal Attacker swim in water which is very nice. We also have the 2 wall upgrades letting you travel on the wall and ceiling. Sadly Wall 2 is a terrible upgrade because going off the edge will have you travel on the wall below you making jumps a pain in the ass! Half the reason area 8’s spikes are hard to avoid is because of this design choice.
Metafight does look pretty good for a Famicom game of its time. While enemy sprites aren’t the most interesting color wise and the game does rely a lot on dark colors, it still has some good looking areas. The tiles presented to form locations look pretty nicely detailed and a lot of them look unique from each other even if some aren’t the most visually cool looking. I do like how being in the top down levels zooms in the action making the sprites look bigger and the bosses massive sprites are impressive though the entire room becomes black to compensate for it, outside of the final boss. The music is what really impresses me with the first area having this heroic feel to it where it feels like Kane is fully prepared to defeat anything in his way. It gets you motivated for the journey. I really like the 4th area’s theme with how creepy it sounds along with the frog croak at the end hinting at what the boss truly is. The 5th area really gives a feeling of the unknown when entering the water, it sounds…mystical? I don’t know how to describe it. The rocking tune of Area 7 really gets you pumped with all the lava around. I could go on and on about how good the tunes are and while not everything is a hit for me personally, I still love it. Easily one of the highlights.
I should mention the US version named Blaster Master. It’s mostly the same but it’s got a new story starring a guy named Jason who chases after a frog and leads him to a tank and it’s up to him to find the frog. They even made an intro song for this cutscene which sounds nice and the area you travel out of when starting the game looks different to match the cutscene. The ending is a little different too but it just removes the chibi versions of Kane and Jennifer off the end screen and the final shot before credits added the frog. I should also discuss how continues work. You only have three in this version. Now I personally think this was done since it was usual for the time but I wanna bring up that the manual for the Japanese version supposedly mentions you have 5 continues when in the actual game it’s infinite. Could this suggest the US version is more complete? Honestly, I’m not sure. This game is already long enough being about 3-5 hours depending how you play and there’s not even a password system. Despite this, the game ended up being more popular in the US.
We would see this game rereleased a couple of times. The first one being put in Memorial * Series: Sunsoft Vol. 4 for the PS1. It also came with the game Ripple Island. It plays fine but sadly the audio is pretty bad especially on the percussion so I wouldn’t recommend it at all. The game would see a couple of emulated rereleases via stuff like virtual console. The most interesting one has to be the NSO rerelease of the game as they also gave it an SP version that lets you start at the final area with everything maxed out so if you struggle with this game, maybe play this one if you want to see the toughest part of the game.This also applies to the US service of NSO.
This game is an interesting turning point for Sunsoft. At this point, many of their games would be very high quality and they would become respected around that time. While Metafight didn’t do too well when it came out, it would be considered a hidden gem in Japan. As for me, it’s a good game if flawed. While I appreciate what it sets out to be, I can’t help but feel some of Sunsoft’s early jank is still presented here. It’s got problems I can’t look past but with stuff like Rough World, Hebereke, and Gimmick being created after this fine work, Sunsoft would have it good for a while. Metafight wouldn’t see another Japanese game for many many years. Though with that said, we do have what I like to call a filler episode for the next game. Next time it will be the Game Boy game, Bomber King: Scenario 2. (That is if I actually feel like continuing this).