Blaster Master

Step out of the tank and go into a cave on foot — few eight-bit games gave the player such freedom of movement as Blaster Master. This is no ordinary platformer but an ambitious hybrid of two gaming worlds fused into a single interconnected adventure.

At its core is the SOPHIA tank, in which you roam sprawling levels from a side view — jumping, climbing walls, collecting upgrades that give the tank new abilities and open up previously inaccessible areas. But when you hit a door to the underground, you step out of the vehicle and continue on foot in a top-down view, in caves full of enemies and bosses. That switch between two distinct play styles was bold for its time and still works surprisingly smoothly today.

The world of Blaster Master is interconnected and explorable in a way that foreshadows the metroidvania genre — a new ability means a new route, a return to old places and the gradual uncovering of the map. The game is further driven by the craftsmanship of Sunsoft, one of the NES's technical elite: it looks great, moves smoothly and the soundtrack has swagger.

The story of a boy searching for his lost frog, which turns into a fight against mutants, is of course just a pretext — and in the West it got a different flavour than in Japan. But that hardly matters. What counts is the feel of playing: that moment when you first climb a vertical wall in your tank, or when you tensely head out on foot into an unknown cave.

Blaster Master earned a cult reputation and got a modern sequel, Blaster Master Zero, which dusted off the original concept for a new generation and confirmed that the tank/on-foot switching idea ages well.

Why play: A technically polished hybrid of action, exploration and metroidvania from the masters at Sunsoft — one of the most inventive games on the NES.