By: David (@frienshipguy_)
Every week we’ll be recommending you a game, and either an album or a movie to check out. This week I’m recommending recently released Blaster Master Zero and the movie Turbo Kid.
Turbo Kid draws loads of inspiration from obvious post-apocolyptic source material, and turns it on it’s head. It’s an absolutely over the top movie with low-budget special effects that really tie the whole thing together into a neat package of absurdity. That’s entirely the draw of it, to be honest.
I remember hearing about Turbo Kid through a few twitter followers singing it’s praises, and honestly anything named _Turbo Kid, _or using any adjective that’s appended to a _Street Fighter _title has my attention. The general premise is an alternate, still-gritty rendition of some dystopian future, but instead of the greasy, oil ridden War Boys from Mad Max, we get hilariously adorned costumes and impromptu weapons that are reminiscent of the _Fallout _series, and a hero that essentially uses a Nintendo Power Glove as his weapon of choice. Also there’s a Mad Max style chase scene entirely on bicycles, and it’s just as bad, and good as you think it to be.
It goes to great lengths to evoke a solid 80′s era film experience, complete with really, really bad jokes and antagonists that are straight out of B-films of that time; the actors are also pretty phenomenal for such a silly movie. They adhere to a good amount of camp, and you can tell they’re taking it as a silly, lighthearted jab towards the source material. Also, Michael Ironside is in it which is pretty astounding on it’s own - he voices Sam Fisher from the Splinter Cell series until they rebooted the games. I mean, he’s not a big budget actor, but the fact that they pulled someone with such notoriety is pretty interesting.
Fun fact, this came out half a year before Mad Max: Fury Road did, and I kind of wish I’d known about it before hand. 2015 was the year of post-apocalypse it seems considering _Fallout 4 _came out in November of the same year.
Blaster Master Zero
- Developer - Inti Creates Co., LTD.
- Publisher - Inti Creates Co., LTD.
- Platforms - Nintendo Switch/Nintendo 3DS
- Rating: E
Blaster Master Zero is my game recommendation for a number of reasons: you should buy it on the Switch if you have one, it’s a faithful recreation of the original, and it’s just good, solid fun. I have a history with the Blaster Master series, notably because my dad used to fish out Genesis games from the dump because he was a garbage man prior to his retirement, the original Blaster Master was one of my first games as a child besides the Sonix series.
I haven’t played any of Inti Creates recent creations save for this, and for $9.99 on the eShop it’s a steal. It’s also available on the 3DS, but you get local co-op on the Switch which makes it really great for pulling out and having someone help you out; the second player gets to act as a sort of light-gun esque turret that provides support fire.
Inti Creates did a solid job recreating the difficulty and the dungeon crawling from the original while giving the game a much needed face lift in terms of color. The palette is exquisite, and while Breath of the Wild is the arguable figurehead of “pretty games that release on launch,” Blaster Master Zero boasts s wide range of colors and crisp pixel art that really makes the 720p display on the Switch shine.
Yes, the story is still dumb and absurd; chasing a frog is still the main drive for the story. Though you’re not playing Blaster Master for the story, you’re probably playing it because you want a solid Metroidvania experience. Arguably, it’s not a traditional one considering it has artificial backtracking - you’re explicitly told on your map where you’re supposed to go. It still makes for a solid gaming experience though.