Obscure Game Review: Blasto

Warning-this review contains spoilers for a long forgotten video game from 18 years ago. Enjoy!

The Sony Playstation. What games do you think of when it comes to mind? Final Fantasy VII. Crash Bandicoot. Resident Evil. Metal Gear Solid. Spyro The Dragon. And Blasto, right? 

Most likely, your answer would be “wrong” for that question. And if you have heard of the game, a bit of bile rises in the back of your throat at the very mention of it. But I’m not here to trash Blasto; I know many people dislike this game, but in the nearly 20 years since it was released, I have grown to like it quite a bit. I suppose I’d describe it as one of those guilty pleasure-type games for me. Released in 1998 for the Playstation, Blasto hopped right onto the 3D platformer bandwagon that was all the rage at the time, yet never quite took off and faded into video game obscurity over time. Though I understand why someone who’d never played it before might pick it up and think it’s awful, it’s just one of those games I had as a kid that I really enjoyed and still do to this day. It’s far from perfect, but I think it’s enjoyable in its own right and if you can get past some of those flaws, you may just think so too. So let’s check it out. 

First things first, if you picked up this game in a store in 1998 and looked at the cover, what images would you be conjuring up in your head? Space Ghost meets Johnny Bravo? What madness is this? Well honestly, I think that’s exactly what they were getting at because the character actually acts like a mixture of those two. He’s voiced by the late, great Phil Hartman, who just does a fantastic job with that 1950s-esque B-movie space commando-type dialogue. You’re going to be hearing a lot of it, sometimes the same lines over and over ad nauseum, but I think Hartman’s voice work is just always funny and some lines never fail to crack me up. Eerily, the voice work for this game was one of Hartman’s final projects before his untimely death only two months after it was released.

Captain Blasto- a fusion of Johnny Bravo and Space Ghost? Quite possibly so.

The plot involves an evil alien tyrant named Bosc who seeks revenge against our galaxy after being banished to the 5th dimension. With his alien army, Bosc plans to escape the 5th dimension and take over the universe, and now it’s up to the intergalactic defender of the galaxy, Captain Blasto, to stop him. The evil race of aliens are all the typical “little green men” you might have seen in a Looney Tunes cartoon- as a matter of fact, much of what you’ll see in this game is very reminiscent of 1950s-60s cartoons and comics. As I mentioned before, the game is a 3D platformer in which you’ll take control of Blasto and traverse large, non-linear 3D environments while solving puzzles, collecting power ups, and shooting nonstop barrages of aliens and robots and the like. The overall design of the game is a very cartoony one, with lots of bright primary colors for the backgrounds, enemies and items. In fact, I think a lot of the level design was directly inspired by the Looney Tunes cartoons when Bugs Bunny met up with Marvin Martian in space. The graphics are the typical jagged polygons reminiscent of the early days of 3D rendering, and whether they’ve aged well or not is a matter of personal opinion I guess. I think for a game like this, it’s not so bad because the overall design is done in such a cartoonish manner. The animated FMV sequences in the intro and ending of the game are done pretty nicely, I think.

 From the 1958 Looney Tunes short "Hare-Way To The Stars"...

...and from Blasto's 2nd level. See the similarities?

The gameplay is fairly straightforward- with a 3rd person POV, you’ll navigate through different levels in search of an exit hub which warps you to the next level. Along the way you’ll have to deactivate laser barriers in order to access certain parts of the levels by finding switches that are scattered throughout the levels. You’ll also have to fight your way through a seemingly endless barrage of various types of aliens, from the aforementioned little green guys to laser-shooting floating eye-robots to dual pistol-wielding giant ants. None of them are that particularly difficult to deal with, at least not until the later levels when they start getting much tougher. However, they can also present quite a bit of aggravation right from the beginning. There’s an overabundance of annoying flying enemies that appear from nowhere and surround you- this is especially true of the star-shaped mines that look like unrendered polygons from a tech demo. Also, enemies are never really all onscreen at once- they just sort of materialize out of thin air, so sometimes they can get a quick jump on you which leads to some cheap deaths. The framerate also starts to suffer heavily when a lot of enemies appear onscreen. Usually this isn’t a problem, but every once and a while when you become surrounded there will be a considerable slowdown. Lastly, there’s not much leeway with respawning after being killed, and sometimes you’re placed right back into enemy fire with little chance to recover.

The overabundance of flying enemies that encircle and attack you from every 

direction gets pretty annoying. Case and point: these star-shaped bomb things.

Thankfully, Blasto can collect a large arsenal of weapon powerups that upgrade the wimpy little pea-shooter laser you start out with. By holding down the square button, you’ll be able to charge up a single shot, which does double the damage of a regular shot. You can also collect so called “tetra-watt” powerups, which allow you to fire regular shots with the stopping power of a charged shot. However, some aliens can also do this, and their charged shots will instantly kill you (and if you don’t see it coming in time, this can be really annoying). In addition to the tetra-watt powerups, you’ll also be able to collect different weapon upgrades that are readily available throughout levels. These upgrades allow you to fire a special weapon in addition to the standard blaster, though ammunition is limited for them. These special weapons range from homing missiles that automatically lock onto targets to a mini-nuclear warhead that eradicates all enemies in sight (which, by the way, has my favorite name of all: the Nuke-O-Matic Atomscatter 9000). And if all else fails, you can walk right up to an enemy and press the fire button, which causes Blasto to smack it a few times with his gun (which always gets a laugh out of me). In addition to all of the weapon powerups you can find, there are several items available that aid in your adventure- there’s partial invisibility (which causes enemies to misfire at you), invulnerability, and even a jetpack on certain levels. There’s a lot of secrets scattered throughout each level as well, some of them pretty funny in their own right- for example, in the second level there’s a part where you must creep behind an alien who unlocks a bathroom, and just as he sits down on a toilet you burst in and blow him away, revealing a bunch of extra lives. Lastly, there are a number of “babes” in each level, usually in a hidden area or on a hard to reach platform, who restore your health when rescued and drop off an extra life or two. 

Rescuing babes...did I mention this game reminds me of the cartoon Johnny Bravo?

The controls are moderately stiff. They don’t hinder the game too much, but they can lead to some cheap deaths every now and then. For one thing, they sometimes present a problem in certain situations like jumping from one floating platform to another, as “steering” Blasto mid-jump isn’t as responsive as it should be. Also, Blasto can grab onto the ledges of platforms and heft himself up onto them, but sometimes he doesn’t grab on properly and if there’s nothing else beneath you, you’ll end up hurtling to your doom. There’s kind of an auto-aim with the blaster, but it doesn’t work as well as it should. Sometimes you'll just fire right past an enemy and will have to aim more precisely to hit them with shots. Another problem presents itself when multiple enemies attack you from different directions. Actually, this happens a LOT. Blasto does not turn around very quickly, so it’s pretty difficult to focus on taking out enemies unless you have an overpowered blaster with a strong special weapon upgrade. Thankfully, there is one thing that helps- by pressing down on the D-pad and X, you’ll do a backward flip which quickly faces you in the opposite direction. Learning to master this is a must, as is strafing. By holding L2 or R2, Basto will strafe to the left or right quickly, which helps greatly in dodging enemy fire. 

No matter how good you are, you’re going to be dying a lot- as such, the best strategy is to stock up on as many lives as you can in the earlier levels when the game is still relatively easy. Extra lives are still pretty plentiful in the later levels, but you’ll be dying a lot more later on. Thankfully, there are also plenty of save points scattered about each level. Yeah, for you younger readers out there it might be hard to imagine, but older games didn’t have that fancy autosave feature built in that nearly all modern games have; back in the 90’s, save spots were sort of a staple of early 3D games.

As I mentioned, the first three levels probably won’t cause you many problems, but things start going off the rails once you reach level 4. It's very different from the first three and almost feels like a different game entirely. Instead of fighting the aliens you've grown accustomed to, you'll be doing battle with weird-looking nomads, giant ants, and floating "jelly-bean" aliens that take the place of the eye robots (really, that's what they call them in the manual). This level has forever been burned into my mind since first playing the game as a frustrating, confusing mess that nearly drove me insane, solely because of one stupid switch- more on that in a moment. 

So for starters, the fourth level throws a wrench in the general schema established by the first three levels. In those first three, you search for a switch which unlocks another part of the level, and then you move on to that part until you find the exit, and then it's on to the next level. In level 4, you'll need to activate 4 different switches in order to unblock a path with leads to the level boss and subsequently, the level exit. However, there are two sort of "sub-levels" within level 4 where you'll find two of these switches, and these are called levels 5 & 6. So, you'll need to go through level 4, then 5 & 6, then BACK to 4 in order to move on to level 7. Still with me?

The next problem arises with one of the four switches. With two of them being at the end of levels 5 & 6, it stands to reason that the other two are in level 4. One of them is easy enough to find- it's actually right next to the path you'll need to clear by pushing the switches to reach the exit. However, the second switch is the one that drove me absolutely nuts as a kid, as it was the only one I couldn't find and left me stuck on the stupid level for hours and hours on end. In fact, I never actually legitimately beat the level until I played the game when I was much older; when I was kid, I used Gameshark cheats to bypass the blocked path instead of activating the switches and completed the level that way.

The stupid switch is actually almost hidden in plain sight, tucked away behind a small enclave near a wall in an area that you'll pass through many times as you trek through the level. However, it's hidden in such a way that you might never find it unless you were scaling just about every pixelated inch of the walls and happened to stumble across it, which is actually the only way I managed to find it. And therein lies another major problem- nearly every area of this level looks exactly the same, so it’s quite disorienting to remember where you’ve already been compared to areas you haven’t been to yet. Also, the whole level is huge, probably the largest in the whole game, so there are many other potential spots you could search for hours only to come up completely empty-handed.

 You'll walk past this area many times as you search through level 4, but it's VERY easy to overlook this tiny enclave, as notified by the arrow. It also doesn't help that a bunch of enemies spawn in this area and attack you, distracting you from exploring a little further.

And therein lies that evil switch.

The biggest problem is that there isn't a natural progression to the levels here. You can find the switches in just about any order, but you'll most likely find the first one initially, followed by switches 3 & 4 in levels 5 & 6, respectively. However, you can freely enter levels 5 and 6 even if you haven’t found switch #2, though switch #1 is required. Moreover, if you've skipped over switch #2, you'll be utterly baffled when you see the mission objective for level 6, which states: “throw the switch for the final step!” Once you hit switch #4 and return to the blocked path, it dawns on you that you've still missed one somewhere, and will have to backtrack through levels 5 & 6, as well as all the areas you've already been to in level 4 in search of the damn thing with absolutely no indication or clues as to where it is.

If you haven't found any of the other switches and you enter level 6, this message will only further mystify you.

As I mentioned, this drove me totally bonkers as a kid. I actually thought there was a glitch in the game that was preventing me from progressing, simply because that damn 2nd switch was nowhere to be found. Even as an adult playing it, I had the same exact problem until I finally found it and felt like a complete idiot for missing it after all those years. This is probably a good time to mention another problem, this time with the general gameplay- Blasto is slower than a sloth crawling through molasses. You might not necessarily notice it during the first three levels because you'll have to do a lot more jumping on platforms and strafing around tight corners in small corridors. However, once you reach the wide open areas of level 4, you'll really start to take note of just how slow he is, and this presents a huge problem if you've missed switch #2 and have to travel from end to end of levels 4, 5, & 6 in search of it.

However, things thankfully go back to normal once you reach level 7, which happens to be my favorite level. It feels much more like the first three, which can be quite a sight for sore eyes after enduring the nightmare of level 4. It’s much more straightforward, having you complete certain objectives in one part of the level in order to move on to the next. The aliens are back with a vengeance, along with some new friends- flying saucers, hoverboarding assholes, and the Giant Snarf, a massive unkillable enemy that you’ll need to do some puzzle solving to get past (more on that later). The level music is just awesome too. The music in general is one thing I totally love about this game. It’s like a 90's techno space alien-a-go-go. I love it, as a big fan of electronica. One very cool aspect is the way the music dynamically changes depending on the situation you are in. As more aliens gang up on you, the tempo increases. Once you’ve cleared them all away, it shifts down to a more cautious “searching about” tone, and each level theme has its own variation of this.

Level 8 is a bit more like level 4, though way less cryptic and complicated in the means of finishing it. It’s sort of a maze of seemingly endless rock platforms surrounded by lava that you must jump through and navigate while avoiding more aliens and trying not fall to a fiery death. This is a pretty good time to bring up the map system. It’s kind of nonsensical and for the most part, you’ll find yourself ignoring it. Scattered around each level are flashing white squares on the ground, which fill in an overhead view of the area when you step on them. However, it only partially fills in that area, and for anything beyond that you’ll need to find and activate another square. By pressing triangle, you’ll be able to pull up the map and look at it again, but only at the areas you’ve filled in. It sort of helps, especially in level 8, but it’s so far zoomed out and there’s not many establishing landmarks present on it (or even any sort of legend, for that matter) that’s it’s almost useless in every other level.

So this is the map, which can be accessed at any time by pressing triangle. However, it only becomes filled in when you find all of the white squares, and even then it's hard to tell where you even are. See that tiny little white arrow in the top-right corner? That's your location.

Once you make it to level 9, you’re in the final stretch of the game. Unfortunately, many of the same problems presented in level 4 rear their ugly head again. For one thing, once more you’ll have to travel through three other levels (10, 11 and 12), then back through level 9 to reach the final boss of the game. And yet again, there’s more cryptic bullshit that might be even worse than the lost switch I could never find in level 4. Immediately upon entering level 9, you hit a sort of dead end. There’s a large main hall area with a few blocked rooms, and one room with a switch in it. However, the switch is inaccessible due to a pit of lava that’s too wide to jump across. There’s no indication anywhere as to how to get across, and nothing immediately jumps out at you as to how to advance. You’ll sit there utterly stumped as to what to do next. So what do you do? How do you progress? When I was a kid I couldn’t give you the answer- I just used Gameshark once again, since I’d already used it to even get that far. And as an adult? Nope, still couldn’t figure it out.

It was only until I got so frustrated that I decided to look up a guide online that I found the answer, and I was totally floored by the absurdity of it. Okay, so remember the weapon upgrades I mentioned earlier? There’s one you’ll periodically find that’s pretty much useless- the “Xenomatic Instant Alien Generator” gun. All it does is spawn an alien directly in front of you, so for the most part you’ll just ignore it. However, this gun is necessary for two parts of the game. The first part is for the aforementioned Giant Snarf enemy that appears in level 7. In order to get past the behemoth, you’ll have to distract it by picking up the Xenomatic gun and spawning a few aliens off to his side which he’ll subsequently chase down and devour, allowing you to sneak by unharmed. The second use of the gun is to spawn an alien on the other side of the lava pit in the only accessible room of level 9. The alien will then activate the switch on the other side, which brings up a few platforms that allow you to cross the lava safely. Seems simple enough, so what’s the problem here?

The problem is that the lava pit is too large to simply shoot aliens across it. If you try, the aliens will just fall right into it and die. The Xenomatic gun repeatedly appears in the room, giving you a clue on what needs to be done, but actually implementing the plan is a whole other ballgame. You need to hold the fire button for a few seconds, which charges up the ray, allowing the alien to be spawned farther away and safely on the other side. The big issue here is that absolutely nowhere in the game is it explained that the gun can be charged up in this way. It’s not even in the damn manual! You would never have any indication to do so unless you knew beforehand, or by some pure dumb luck you discovered for yourself that the gun can be charged. 

The freakin' manual doesn't even give you any indication that the gun can be charged. If the game 
doesn't explicitly tell you so, at the very least the manual should. That's just unacceptable.

After that nonsense, the rest of the remaining levels are pretty straightforward. The enemies are very tough in these last areas, often only being damaged by fully charged shots or special weapons. There are also a few more puzzles to be solved, though none nearly as cryptic as the alien spawning. I have to say though, once you push deeper and deeper into the fortress, the foreboding setting is very cool. Maybe it’s just because by this point you thought you’d never even make it this far, but something about the atmosphere in the latter portions of level 9 is very ominous. There’s also a pair of very well hidden secrets here that you probably wouldn’t find your first time playing through. One is accessed only by rescuing every babe in the game (no small feat, I might add), and it only unlocks a minor alteration to the ending of the game. The other is a lot cooler- by finding your way into a hidden room, you’ll have to face off with a clone of Blasto who uses the same weapons and moves against you and is pretty tough to defeat. However, upon doing so you can save your game and instantly access any other level of the game, which is pretty awesome for future playthroughs if you want to skip over a certain level (looking at you, level 4). Other than those secrets, the only other thing to do is make your way to the top floor and do battle with the final boss. He’s got two forms, the first of which isn’t too hard, but the second can be quite a pain. The first is a giant robot suit that stomps around firing lasers at you, but it’s pretty easy to avoid. After defeating that, the head detaches and whizzes around in the air, assaulting you with a constant barrage of laser blasts. To make matters worse, the floor starts to break apart and you’ll have to dodge lava pits as well. It’s pretty annoying, but after many deaths you should be able to overcome it.

And that’s Blasto in a nutshell. I know I’ve probably dumped on it more than I’ve praised it here, but I want to say that despite its many flaws, I do have a soft spot for this game deep down. It’s far from perfect, yes, but it’s got just enough fun, humor and techno music to keep me coming back to it from time to time. After the credits, you’re greeted with a message teasing a potential sequel, but it unfortunately never came to light. Whether this was due to Hartman’s death or the game releasing to mediocre reviews I’m not sure, but I can’t help but feel a bit of sadness every time I see that message. If the flaws were addressed and ironed out a bit and if Hartman hadn’t passed away shortly after, maybe it would’ve seen a proper sequel and Captain Blasto wouldn’t be the mere artifact of the late 90’s that he is today. While we’ll probably never see a reincarnation of the game in any form, I hope to keep the memory alive by talking about it to this day. It’s kind of hard for me to recommend this game because I feel like if anyone were to play it today having never played it before, it wouldn’t be perceived very favorably. However, if you’re willing to give it a shot with an open mind, I say go for it. Just know in advance you’re going to be frustrated at some parts, but hopefully the overall experience will be a good one.

 It's too bad this will never come true.

So until next time, so long, farewell, and long live the memory of Phil Hartman and Captain Blasto!