Jeremy Parish

Metroidvania Works 17: Blaster Master & Bionic Commando (Patreon)

Published:

2023-06-21 11:21:07

Imported:

2024-04

Tags:

Bionic Commando blaster master capcom metroidvania sunsoft

Content

Ah, we've reached the deepest depths of the part where the Metroidvania Works timeline-in-progress overlaps with material previously covered on NES Works. Thank goodness these are both stellar games that are always fun to talk about and see in action, eh?

Blaster Master would probably be the pinnacle of pre-metroidvania evolution if not for its over-reliance on the top-down sequences. Heck, just move the bosses into the main spaces and let players fight them in the tank and you've got a masterpiece. Instead, it's just a lot of really good design ideas with a single really bad design albatross around its neck.

And speaking of Albatros—heyo!!!—Bionic Commando is brilliant, no notes. Not quite a pure metroidvania game due to its map structure, but even as a series of self-contained levels it presents the player with a lot of freedom of movement around the game world and involves a great many interlocking elements that feel very true to what we would eventually come to know as... the metroidvania.

Anyway. Some good eating this week.

Files

The kids are all Reich: Blaster Master & Bionic Commando | Metroidvania Works 17

I'm afraid it's true: This episode consists entirely of games that showed up less than a year ago on NES Works. Good thing that, as the kids say, these games slap. Plus, they represent critical improvements on the whole "metroidvania" way of life. In fact, I would call Blaster Master the purest and most robust attempt to creating a proper metroidvania to have appeared to this point in human history. I would, except that those miserable top-down sequences drag it down and dilute its impact. Not that this is necessarily a good episode in which to complain about "purity"... not when the second featured title involves putting a stop (again) to the genocidal bigotry of Adolf Hitler and his legion of goose-stepping morons. Still, while the premise of Bionic Commando is an all-timer—you are a lone soldier with a really cool grappling arm who has to blow up a lost Third Reich superweapon, and also Hitler—that alone doesn't afford the game a place in the lineage of the metroidvania. However, the fact that you do it in a fairly open interconnected world that incorporates skill- and tool-based gating along with a rudimentary experience system? That definitely makes this masterpiece a mini-metroidvania forebear. Production notes: Video Works is funded via Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! Plus, exclusive podcasts, eBooks, and more! Why watch when you can read? Check out the massive hardcover print editions of NES Works, Super NES Works, and Virtual Boy works, available now at Limited Run Games (https://limitedrungames.com/collections/books)! Look forward to SG-1000 Works: Segaiden Vol. I this August and Metroidvania Works Vol. I in 2024. NES footage captured from Analogue Nt Mini. Video upscaled to 720 with xRGB Mini Framemeister.