Tag Archives: Nintendo Switch Online

Blaster Master Review

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It’s time to look at another classic NES game. Blaster Master is pretty well known compared to most of the other titles on the console. This is due to an extent to newer games in the series being released but also because the original was simply ahead of the curve at the time. It has two different gameplay styles and even switches from 2D to 3D at different points. This is something that was really unheard of back in the day so that’s pretty crazy.

The game even has an intro cutscene which is also super cool. Basically a frog falls into the Earth and gets lost somewhere in the caverns so now the lead has to find him. Fortunately the main character has his trusty robot at the ready and is definitely going to cause some waves. He’ll destroy monster after monster until he finds his friend. That’s part of why this main character is so good. He is absolutely determined to find his pet and won’t rest until he does so. I’d be game for this getting a film at some point. The sci-fi/fantasy elements would really work quite well.

The gameplay varies as I mentioned, but for the most part it’s a 2D shooting platformer. The hub world has this style and then it switches to 3D when you enter a labyrinth. As a result it’s fair to say that you’ll be spending most of your time here. Make sure you figure out how to leave your robot to run around, that part took me a long time and I can guarantee you that you won’t get far if you stay in the robot. For one thing it’s impossible to climb ladders or enter labyrinths if you stay in the bot. The robot is fun though with how it can shoot powerful energy blasts. Naturally it’s a lot stronger than your human self. It seems like you can recover your health if you leave the robot for a little while so if you’re low on health that may be a good exploit. I only used this briefly though so I can’t guarantee that it works all of the time.

When you’re in the labyrinth you need to keep exploring until you see a boss. Sometimes these mazes can get confusing so you’ll find yourself back at the entrance but don’t leave. I did that a few times but ultimately I would need to go back and it would turn out that there actually was a boss there. I’m not sure if every labyrinth has a boss so it’s possible you will be aimlessly wandering but in all of the ones I went too there seemed to be bosses. The game gives you a cool special effect where the whole screen goes dark and then the boss shows up. The game seems to low key have some horror elements to it with that. It’s incorporating some Resident Evil/Metroid there. I’m curious how the final boss would look. Maybe like one of those creatures from the box art?

The graphics are pretty solid. There are quite a few backdrops to explore here and a lot of moving character models. The energy blasts are solid and I like the design for the robot. It feels like a real threat and not a machine you would want to fight in a life or death situation. The soundtrack is less memorable, but it sounded okay to me. The story mode being real was still overloading my mind at the time. The story is a pretty good length especially when you take into account that a lot of the levels are mazes. It can take a while to clear these dungeons. I managed to beat around 3 before I ran out of time. These are the real deal.

When it comes to replay value I don’t imagine there is much after beating the game. I guess you could try to beat the game quicker or through losing fewer lives but there aren’t really any other modes. Your main incentive for playing through this game is absolutely the story. Fortunately it’s a good story and with the quality gameplay at the ready that’s a winning combo. The game is also free if you have the Nintendo Switch Online so you can’t really go wrong there either right?

Overall, Blaster Master is one of those classics that actually lives up to the term. This is a game that has aged quite well to the modern day. You can plug it in and start playing right now. As long as you enjoy platformers or shooters then you will have fun here. It’s also got that Legend of Zelda dungeon exploring so that helps it appeal to even more audiences. This game was surprisingly sophisticated so I’m definitely up for playing future installments at some point.

Overall 7/10

TwinBee Review

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I actually played the sequel to this game before the original back when I was blasting through all of the SNES games. So it’s definitely pretty nostalgic to go back to the original here. The cover still looks like it’s saying TwinBoo to me until I look at it closer. I blame it on the fancy way they wrote the boxart. Either way this is a fun shooter game. It’s definitely one of those really quick one that loops almost right away though. It’s got a pretty fun dynamic to it though and some interesting mechanics even if they take a while to figure out.

So the gameplay here is that of a shooter where the screen is always scrolling up. You have to keep up with the screen and blast away at all of the enemies that get in your way. There are enemies on the ground as well which are tough to deal with since your normal blaster only shoots forward. At the beginning of the game you are able to shoot down a bit with the other button (A or B) but I ran out of ammo very quickly and couldn’t figure out how to get more. I’m sure there’s a way though. For the most part you just keep focusing on blasting away and eventually you will reach the top. At the end of each level there is a boss that must be defeated. There are 6 levels so this may take you around 20 minutes give or take a few.

One interesting mechanic here are the bells. They show up when you blast a cloud and change colors as you blast them. I only noticed white and blue, but I believe yellow and red may be present somewhere too. I couldn’t really figure out what they do though. White seemed to just increase your score and Blue would maybe give you a bit of extra speed. Beyond that they didn’t have a noticeable impact. It’s an interesting mechanic to have to blast your power ups as you go through the stage. I can’t think of any other games that really do that and it gives you an extra thing to focus on. It gives the gameplay a little more depth because now you have to decide what to prioritize, getting the power up or blasting the enemies away.

As always the rewind feature will be super helpful here. Without it the game may ultimately prove to be a little too tricky. These games have definitely proven to be extremely difficult in the modern day. I still think I wouldn’t be quite as big a gaming fan back then as I am today with all of the modern conveniences. If anything I probably would have mostly stuck to RPGs once they started coming out since they always had save features at least. RPGs and fighting games, the rest of the genres would have lagged behind a bit.

As for the graphics, I’d say that they hold up pretty well. The levels are nice and bright with a good amount of variety. The enemy designs are good too and I didn’t notice any lag during the game so the system was able to handle all of the models pretty well. The sound is more on the generic side so I don’t think you’ll be remembering much there. Lately quite a few games haven’t exactly wowed me with the soundtrack but they can’t all be winners.

Sometimes I’ll throw in a tip or two for a game like this, but there isn’t a whole lot to say beyond the obvious. Be careful with going too high up in the screen or you’ll be surrounded and will likely be defeated. Always take down as many enemies as possible. If you can’t take down the grounded units then at least beat the aerial ones. I’d also say to keep all of your aerial bullets during the opening levels because they will be incredibly handy later on in the game. That’ll be when you will really wish that you had some at the ready.

Overall, TwinBee is a pretty fun game. Ultimately what holds it back from a higher score is what holds most of the NES games back. It’s just too short. As fun as a game is I can’t totally recommend it when it’s under 30 minutes. This one’s free so you should still check it out but it won’t last long. There is also effectively no replay value here since there is nothing to do after beating the game. I suppose you can work on increasing your score at least.

Overall 5/10

Eliminator Boat Duel Review

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It’s time to look at another classic NES game. This is another title that I was not familiar with before. I’ve never heard of any game quite like Boat Duel but the premise looked interesting. I am planning to try all of the NES games after all so it was only a matter of time before I got to this one. It’s definitely pretty reasonable although some parts of the game have aged better than others. I’ll give it props for the mini cutscenes and trash talking during the game though.

The basic plot of the game seems to be that you are an up and coming boat driver and so now you’ve decided to take down all of the previous bosses. This will be tricky since none of these guys plan to go down without a fight. That’s fine by you though. So you go through the levels and keep on beating various opponents. At least to the point I had gone up to they didn’t reuse any character models so that was pretty good. There was a reasonable amount of effort put into the game and I always applaud effort like that. The gameplay switches between 2D and 3D. I personally enjoyed the opening phase of the 3D levels more than the second.

How it works is you quickly accelerate when the judge gets you the signal. The trick is to actually start right before she tells you too, but the timing for this is very precise since if you go too soon then you’ll end up incurring a yellow flag which will cost you 1000 bucks. Once you get this head start you go to phase 1 of the gameplay. Essentially what happens here is that you have to outdrive the other boat to the goal so try not to bump into things. Then you head into phase 2 which is more of an overhead view than 3D and the same rules apply. You can boost to gain a little speed and even jump. Then there’s also the interesting mechanic where bumping into bombs and other obstacles is actually good as it speeds you up. It’ll cost a bit of damage but you can repair it later. You get to face the next opponent after you beat the current one 2-3 times.

After each race you are taken to an upgrade screen where depending on how much money you have you can upgrade various things. I recommend maxing out the damage each race since it’s super cheap to do this and then you can allow yourself to bump into everything. By the point I stopped I had nearly every upgrade maxed out so I feel like I was pretty close to winning it all. The opponent racers are incredibly fast so if you make one mistake then it could be game over. My main advice here is to use the rewind feature but otherwise I’d say just try and memorize the stage layouts. The stages actually are re-used quite early on so after a while you’ll probably start to remember where the next turns are and such.

The gameplay is pretty interesting but not quite as exciting as your average racing game. There’s just only so much you can do while you’re on a boat so it’s not quite as thrilling. as being in a car. The opponent car also feels a little too powerful at times even when you can see that they haven’t put any real upgrades into the speed while yours is maxed out. I suppose it’s to be expected to an extent but you’ll probably shake your head a bit at that. It just feels like you should be steam rolling the guy. As mentioned though, the trash talking between levels is pretty fun. The graphics are also pretty sound. The sprites have aged pretty well so you always know what is going on. The levels may be a bit repetitive but they are well designed.

Overall, Boat Dueling seems like it has a lot of potential. I’m sure you could make a pretty interesting remake of this at some point. While it’s a cool concept I guess the reason most probably wouldn’t make a game like this is because for that you could just make one about cars and it would probably do a lot better. You just can’t top cars after all. Still, I think you’ll have a reasonable time here and it’s worth a quick check. What’ve you got to lose other than time right?

Overall 5/10

ARMS Review

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It’s time to look at a fighting game Nintendo churned out a while back. It was one of the big titles for the Switch since it utilized the Joy Con features a lot. That being said, it got quiet very quickly after it came out. It was seen as pretty gimicky but those who stuck around with it did enjoy the game a lot. Well, now it is currently free on the Nintendo Eshop for a few days so I decided to check it out. This way I’ll save myself 60 bucks from actually buying it. It is a great fighting game and there’s a lot of fun to be had here.

When you boot the game up you will notice one thing missing from the start. There is no Story Mode. I was pretty surprised to see that there wasn’t even an Arcade Mode to play through with unique openings and endings. There is 0 story in this game and I think that’s pretty inexcusable for a modern day fighting game. You have to at least do the bare minimum which is have some still images while there is some dialogue about the character. We don’t actually know anything about these characters as a result which is pretty iffy. We’re literally just fighting for kicks now.

So the main modes here are the offline tournament mode and battling people online. The former is fun enough for learning the controls of the game. You get to face off with the computer in traditional fights as well as some minigames like basketball and punching through the rings. The basketball game is very fun and it’s something people have made stages for in Super Smash Bros all the time. The fact that it’s an official mode here it pretty awesome. I can see people having a lot of fun with it here. The shooting though the rings is not quite as fun. It’s basically just a normal fight since the rings barely seem to matter. Landing hits on the opponent is still the best way to win.

As for the main gameplay, it’s a 3D brawler with a similar setup to Pokken. All of your attacks are long range though. You can punch from one side of the stage to the other. You can also try to grab an opponent which will go through the guard. It’s a pretty straight forward fighting game so you’ll get the hang of it quickly. Once you store up enough energy you can use a final smash as well. You’re also given the option to switch your punching equipment between every round. It affects the range of your punch and how strong they are. Test out each weapon until you find one that you really like.

With the points you earn you can then head to the shop and buy some new weapons. It’s a little different than most traditional shops though. You don’t actually pick the equipment that you want. You’re put into a level where you punch at boxes and such. Occasionally a big box will show up containing a random equipment. You have to punch it to obtain this piece. Based on the length of time you chose for this minigame will determine how many items you get. It’s a bit of a roundabout way of unlocking things but it’s fun enough. I’m fine with it as long as duplicates don’t show up. It’d be annoying to play through the whole thing and find out that you just got an old piece.

The character roster isn’t amazing, but it’s decent. It’s big enough where you can’t call it small, but at the same time it could have benefited from a few more characters. I can see how people would like using motion controls for this, but I definitely like traditional for the best. It’s still pretty interesting to use the mechanics since punching with one arm at a time isn’t something you usually do in fighting games. It helps to keep the game a little more fresh and that’s never a bad thing. Particularly since the gameplay is all you will be here for.

The graphics are top notch. It looks and feels a lot like Pokken to me. I wonder if some of the same people were behind this one. It’s all very vibrant and that’s a good thing. The soundtrack is also very lively although a little less memorable. It works well enough while you’re fighting which is the important part. You always want some fast themes to fight to since it helps you keep your speed and tempo up. A slow theme would absolutely defeat the purpose if you ask me.

Really the only thing holding this title back from being better is the lack of content. It really feels like there is nothing to do here beyond fight people online. While fighting people is the main draw in the first place you should really have something else to do as well. I’ve mentioned this a lot in the review but a quick arcade mode would have done wonders. The replay value here is technically limitless but it’s very narrow and as I result I can’t imagine spending 60 bucks on it. I would have felt quite ripped off. You just can’t make a game without any kind of story and sell it for 60 bucks. Even all of the sport games have stories and franchise modes nowadays.

Overall, ARMS is pretty fun. It’s the kind of fighting game that has a lot of potential and automatic replay value. You can keep on busting people online and have fun learning new tricks and strategies. It can be a bit bare bones in terms of offline content though which keeps it from being further up on the list. If you don’t have the Nintendo Switch Online then you need to avoid this game. There is almost literally no reason to buy it if you can’t go online. Still, I do love fighting games and on a technical level this one succeeds quite well. Hopefully when we get a sequel Nintendo remembers to add online this time.

Overall 7/10