Reviews
Game
In Blaster Master you play a young boy named Jason whose pet frog escapes into a swamp and onto a box of radioactive waste. This mutates the frog that then disappears down a pit in the swamp, and Jason follows. When Jason gets to the bottom of the pit there is a huge mechanized tank waiting for him to drive. Best intro ever!
The game plays as an action/adventure. You drive around in your tank, killing enemies, and picking up power-ups. There are also small underground tunnels that you must leave the safety of your tank to enter. Once inside you'll find better power-ups, and eventually the boss of the area. The bosses are often difficult, but are pretty creative, like giant crab monsters, huge fire spitting frogs, bizarre blobs with orbiting fireballs, and several others. Upon beating each boss you're given a special device which will enhance your tank and let you get to the next area. These enhancements include more powerful weapons, the ability to hover, the ability to maneuver underwater, and even the ability to climb on walls and the ceiling. Although the progression of each area is linear, their locations are not. Part of the fun of the game is having to go back and forth through old areas with your new power-ups and breezing though the sections that used to be really hard.
The game is a lot of fun, but it is not without its faults. It's awfully difficult. A save ability or even a password system would have helped greatly because the game is very long and it's annoying to have to replay all the old parts every time. The gun that you have in the tunnels is really annoying. Because enemies don't move when they're off screen they have very annoying patterns. Also, the blocks replenish themselves as soon as you leave the screen, which makes it difficult to remember which ones you've cleaned out in a room. The last two tank enhancements make the controls very difficult.
However, Blaster Master is still one of the better NES games and has a nice cult following.
Music
Blaster Master has very nice music--in particular areas 1 and 3 and the ending tune. The soundtrack is quite an accomplishment for Naoki Kodaka since it was one of his first soundtracks for a videogame. It's also technically impressive for the weak NES audio chip. The Boss Intro music repeats forever in the rip, but in the game (and the Vorbis recording) it's played seven times.
Ripping
Ripping NES music is a very arduous process that is beyond the scope of this site.
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_Master
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