Blaster Master is the first best metroidvania

These days, developers have pretty much perfected the metroidvania. It’s completely insania. But I can’t complnainia. 

I’ve quite enjoyed the genre since its earliest iterations on the NES—talking about the original Metroid and Simon’s Quest—even though they were rough around the edges. There are a handful of other proto-vania games on the NES, too. I’d say they deserve their own listicle in the future. But for now, let’s focus on just this one:

My second-favorite “BM”

I’ve loved this game since the first moment I popped it into my spoiled cousin’s NES. (He had everything!) That intro cutscene poked me right in my tender young feels. Not sure why, but seeing that poor kid lose his pet frog down a mystery hole made me sad inside. 

Honestly, I think my empathetic sorrow had more to do with the haunting cinematic music accompanying the video. Sunsoft’s go-to composer Naoki Kodaka really knew how to make the NES sing. You’ll hear his work on Journey to Silius, Platoon, Batman: The Videogame, Fester’s Quest, and a whole huge chunk of Sunsoft’s catalog.

The way Kodaka lulls you into mild sorrow in that opening sequence, then builds the tension leading into the determined and adventurous overworld tune… Now THAT’S What I Call Music! 

So yeah. This game had my attention before the action even started. But once we were rolling across the terrain in that bitchin’ grasshopper tank? Oh man. It was on!

If you don’t know, Blaster Master is split across two different styles of play. The overworld portions have protagonist Jason manning a tank named Sophia III. Sophia is incredibly nimble, able to shoot upward with her cool turret, jump distant platforms, drive underwater… so cool.

Jason can exit Sohpia in the overworld to continue on foot. Outside his tank, Jason’s little sprite is a measly 8 pixels across.and he’s extremely vulnerable to enemies and environmental hazards. But thanks to his small size he can also fit into nooks where Sophia cannot, including the tiny passages that lead into Blaster Master’s top-down underworld segments.

The underworld dungeons are much more akin to Fester’s Quest, with Jason represented as a big, cartoony sprite. I remember thinking what a contrast it was between the gritty overworld Jason and the bright, chibi-esque underworld one. 

Other than Jason himself, the underworld graphics are just as gritty and detailed as the overworld. The enemies are zoomed-in and highly detailed as well, with some big creepy cybernetic skulls and other yucky dudes.

The underworld is also where the bosses dwell, many of whom are big and weird. Beware!

Metroidvania action for the whole family

I swear I’m not trying to pad the word count of this post, but let’s just define what a metroidvania is.

The Oxford English dictionary defines “metroidvania” as…

Haha, just kidding. Oxford has not yet acknowledged metroidvania as an actual word. The scoundrels.

Popularly, a metroidvania involves the player being presented with an essentially open world where—in theory—the player could go anywhere they want. If only they had the right equipment! And so a proper metroidvania has the player roving about a huge single map, backtracking and re-exploring areas as they acquire new items and abilities.

Blaster Master is this precisely. The game is nonlinear, forcing the player at one point to backtrack all the way to where they started and use their newly acquired hovering ability to boost Sophia to a (frustratingly) hidden area where the game continues.

Let’s talk about that for a moment. It took me literally 30 years and the advent of GameFaqs to discover the rest of this game. Like, why would you hide the next area all the way back at the beginning? And hidden literally beyond sight of where you started. It’s like that kneeling tornado trick in Simon’s Quest.It’s impossible to intuit. You need a guide, buster!

I usually take issue with relying on guides and walkthroughs to complete games. I mean, it’s fine if you want to do it, but I always feel more accomplished if I can go without. But if you want to complete Blaster Master with your sanity intact, you have my blessing to follow a guide all the way through. You’re super welcome.

So good, OMG

Blaster Master is one of my favorite childhood games. And it isn’t just me, either. Blaster Master has a great reputation among classic gamers for its exceptional graphics, music, gameplay and everything else. Except maybe the story. Once the opening cinematic ends, the story pretty much does, too.

If you really want to dive into the lore of Blaster Master, definitely check out the Blaster Master Zero series. It really does justice to the gameplay of the original, while expanding on the story and basically every aspect of this awesome game.