"Time to get moving! ^-^" ~ Level Select Music
There was a very specific time in my life where I did nothing but draw cars, trucks and other such automobiles with weapons slapped onto them in some form. Think dumb stuff like vans with buzz saws coming out of the sides and probably a big dumb laser cannon on the roof. It was all due to Twisted Metal, and that odd fixation made me gaze at video games with cars in them in a slightly more captivated way. If the car game had explosions on the cover? Oh baby, count me in! Blast Corps was a popular Hollywood Video rental back then, for a pretty good reason and it was because of the cool jet pack robot on the front, and a dump truck that I would come to despise in due time, but more on that later.
Your job in this game is to annihilate everything in the path of the world's most fragile to-the-touch runaway truck carrying active nukes. Some really serious shit for a game approved for kids, but regardless. These are the main carrier missions though, and once the job is complete you can re-enter the stage for a little bit of a break and explore for 100% completion and chill out to Graeme Norgate's OST. (Fun Fact, this piece of music is a remix of the boss theme from Donkey Kong Land. That really knocked me on my ass when I found that out, wish I could stumble upon old Game Boy renditions more often.) It was quite the vibe as they would say for tiny me, when you've got nothing to do you tend to really enjoy just walking around and jet packing with your cool mech friend trying to find that last little blinky light to activate. You think it's a waste of time, but that's just games in general. Checkmate non-believers. You also got challenges in the smaller stages, where you aim to either destroy things or race around a track in an allotted time and other such nonsense. They're a nice little change of pace.
As you would imagine, the Blast Corps have quite the array of battle deconstruction vehicles and mobile suits. Everyone's favorite of course is J-Bomb the jet pack robot, who was popular enough to get a Fangamer shirt that I have in my closet at the moment. Everyone's least favorite is of course, someone who may not need an introduction to fellow demolition experts who have played this. Many a philosopher around the globe in ancient times have pondered questions such as: "why are we here?", "why is the sky blue?", "why did Rare make the dump truck so goddamn awful?"
The dump truck's name is "Backlash", and I assume Vince McMahon named the WWE PPV after it because he's the only asshole I'd imagine who would love using it. To use Backlash, you must take it's dump truck ass and spin it into buildings to destroy them with it's dump truck ass. It's very unwieldy, and Makes one question why a trained demolition crew would bring a dump truck and spin it like an oversized Beyblade at shit instead of just using the bulldozer that's right in front of them. Believe me, I'm making it sound cool, but this thing blows ass, and unfortunately the dickbags at Rare knew it was awful, so they made the player use it A LOT in the final stages. It's dumb, I don't like it, and it's the only reason I can't five star this game despite my mastery at attaching rose-tinted glasses to my face and doing world class mental gymnastics to justify myself in front of a live courthouse full of people who don't give a shit.
It's a shame really, but regardless I stand by the fact that Blast Corps is easily the coolest and most creative game Rare has developed. It's presentation isn't as memorable as Donkey Kong Country 2's pirate adventure theme, nor is it that refined with it's wonky crate pushing physics and trees with hitboxes the size of Wisconsin. It's the way it drops players straight into stages and asks them to solve puzzles like getting a gold medal via a shortcut on a racing course, or how to explode some statue you found hidden behind the train you started in, which had J-Bomb hiding in it for some reason. What was your plan there J-Bomb? Who put you there? Fuck you Rare, why did you make the dump truck so bad?
Another one of those "I just think it's cool" type of games, totally give it a rec if it sounds interesting to you, and really it should, because it was Rare's last gasp before they got tied up in the Mascot platformer coal mines.
There was a very specific time in my life where I did nothing but draw cars, trucks and other such automobiles with weapons slapped onto them in some form. Think dumb stuff like vans with buzz saws coming out of the sides and probably a big dumb laser cannon on the roof. It was all due to Twisted Metal, and that odd fixation made me gaze at video games with cars in them in a slightly more captivated way. If the car game had explosions on the cover? Oh baby, count me in! Blast Corps was a popular Hollywood Video rental back then, for a pretty good reason and it was because of the cool jet pack robot on the front, and a dump truck that I would come to despise in due time, but more on that later.
Your job in this game is to annihilate everything in the path of the world's most fragile to-the-touch runaway truck carrying active nukes. Some really serious shit for a game approved for kids, but regardless. These are the main carrier missions though, and once the job is complete you can re-enter the stage for a little bit of a break and explore for 100% completion and chill out to Graeme Norgate's OST. (Fun Fact, this piece of music is a remix of the boss theme from Donkey Kong Land. That really knocked me on my ass when I found that out, wish I could stumble upon old Game Boy renditions more often.) It was quite the vibe as they would say for tiny me, when you've got nothing to do you tend to really enjoy just walking around and jet packing with your cool mech friend trying to find that last little blinky light to activate. You think it's a waste of time, but that's just games in general. Checkmate non-believers. You also got challenges in the smaller stages, where you aim to either destroy things or race around a track in an allotted time and other such nonsense. They're a nice little change of pace.
As you would imagine, the Blast Corps have quite the array of battle deconstruction vehicles and mobile suits. Everyone's favorite of course is J-Bomb the jet pack robot, who was popular enough to get a Fangamer shirt that I have in my closet at the moment. Everyone's least favorite is of course, someone who may not need an introduction to fellow demolition experts who have played this. Many a philosopher around the globe in ancient times have pondered questions such as: "why are we here?", "why is the sky blue?", "why did Rare make the dump truck so goddamn awful?"
The dump truck's name is "Backlash", and I assume Vince McMahon named the WWE PPV after it because he's the only asshole I'd imagine who would love using it. To use Backlash, you must take it's dump truck ass and spin it into buildings to destroy them with it's dump truck ass. It's very unwieldy, and Makes one question why a trained demolition crew would bring a dump truck and spin it like an oversized Beyblade at shit instead of just using the bulldozer that's right in front of them. Believe me, I'm making it sound cool, but this thing blows ass, and unfortunately the dickbags at Rare knew it was awful, so they made the player use it A LOT in the final stages. It's dumb, I don't like it, and it's the only reason I can't five star this game despite my mastery at attaching rose-tinted glasses to my face and doing world class mental gymnastics to justify myself in front of a live courthouse full of people who don't give a shit.
It's a shame really, but regardless I stand by the fact that Blast Corps is easily the coolest and most creative game Rare has developed. It's presentation isn't as memorable as Donkey Kong Country 2's pirate adventure theme, nor is it that refined with it's wonky crate pushing physics and trees with hitboxes the size of Wisconsin. It's the way it drops players straight into stages and asks them to solve puzzles like getting a gold medal via a shortcut on a racing course, or how to explode some statue you found hidden behind the train you started in, which had J-Bomb hiding in it for some reason. What was your plan there J-Bomb? Who put you there? Fuck you Rare, why did you make the dump truck so bad?
Another one of those "I just think it's cool" type of games, totally give it a rec if it sounds interesting to you, and really it should, because it was Rare's last gasp before they got tied up in the Mascot platformer coal mines.
2 Comments
@DJSCheddar if ya got a lot of stuff to do today, then you could say it's time to get moving! :P
I remember one of the times I rented this and the cart had a file with the space missions unlocked. Was fun, then I never saw them again after that in subsequent rentals until I got to them myself on project64. -.-
I remember one of the times I rented this and the cart had a file with the space missions unlocked. Was fun, then I never saw them again after that in subsequent rentals until I got to them myself on project64. -.-
DJSCheddar
10 months ago
Drifting that goddamn dumptruck around on the moon is permanently imprinted on my brain like tv burn-in.