Blaster Master (book)

Blaster Master

Mass market - USA - 1st edition.

Author Peter Lerangis Published 1990-07-?? Type Fiction, Novelization Genre Science Fiction Themes Action, Adventure, Science fiction Age Group Children

Blaster Master is a young adult novelization of the video game Blaster Master published by Scholastic in July of 1990. It is the first book in the Worlds of Power series. Like all books in the series, it is attributed to "F. X. Nine," but the internal text lists the author as "A. L. Singer," which is a pen name for Peter Lerangis.

The book essentially makes a new story out of the game's general theme. The strange intro is novelized, a few new characters are added, and a proper back-story is created.

Personal

Own?	Mass market, USA, 2nd edition
Read?	Mass market, USA, 2nd edition
Finished	1991

My mother allowed me to buy this book from a monthly school book catalog in 1991. Although I didn't know anything about the game on which it is based, I knew it was an NES game, and that was enough to enticed me. Though I found the book a bit childish when I read it, I still enjoyed it enough to seek out and play the game. It was only then that I learned how little the book had to do with the game. I still have my badly worn 2nd edition copy and have read it several times. I've read a few other books in the series, and, so far, this one is my favorite.

Review

Overall:

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The book is fun and properly geared toward children.
• The book has a much more interesting backstory than the one found in the game, which is: "boy's pet frog escapes and leads him to radioactive waste where he falls into an underground cavern and steals a futuristic tank that just happened to be there."
• The characters created for the book add important camaraderie to the main character, and allow dialogue to what would otherwise be a dialogue-free story. The character Eve was even ret-conned into later installments of the canon games!

Bad

• The book uses a lot of artistic license adding to and changing a fair amount of the game.
• Some of the writing is a bit hokey, but then, it is written for elementary school students.
• The jokes surrounding Eve's inability to grasp American idioms are pretty bad.
• The book glosses over the later levels, bosses, and power-ups of the game with a single page.
• I know it was implied in the game's American introduction, but it doesn't make much sense for Jason to believe that one of the bosses was his pet frog, or that any of the bosses were really pets. The first and third area bosses are clearly not pets, and how does a pet lobster escape an aquarium into the underground anyway?

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

• 

  1st edition, US mass market.

• 

  2nd edition, US mass market.

• 

  UK mass market.

Representation

Strong female character?	Pass
Bechdel test?	Fail
Strong person of color character?	Fail
Queer character?	Fail

Links

 

• atarihq.com/tsr/odd/scans/bm.html - Review.
• gamebooks.org/Item/3632 - Game Books.