{"id":4562,"date":"2026-01-30T15:00:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T22:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=4562"},"modified":"2025-12-05T13:21:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T20:21:30","slug":"video-game-blaster-master-zero-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/30\/video-game-blaster-master-zero-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO GAME: Blaster Master Zero (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/9\/9c\/Blaster_Master_Zero_cover_art.jpg\/250px-Blaster_Master_Zero_cover_art.jpg\" alt=\"Blaster Master Zero\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" \/>Blaster Master Zero<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2017<br \/>\nRating: E<br \/>\nTime Played: 6 hours<\/p>\n<p>While I grew up with retro video games, one game that escaped my notice at the time was <em>Blaster Master<\/em>. I first encountered this game when it kept popping up in the Nintendo eShop on my Switch. Even though there weren&#8217;t many games I had for that system at the time, I played the demo and it took me several years to decide it was worth my money. I&#8217;m glad I gave it a chance, because the rest of the game was quite fun.<\/p>\n<p>Since I never played the original game, I don&#8217;t know what improvements this remake gave to make the quality of life better for this version. It did have a lot of standard action platformer button allocations that helped me cycle through different abilities without having to go into the pause menu every few seconds. The wide-screen format also made the levels feel large and easy to navigate. The graphics retained that NES feel, which I can appreciate (even if a modern visual upgrade like how <a href=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/09\/video-game-wonder-boy-the-dragons-trap-2017\/\"><em>Wonder Boy<\/em><\/a> did it would have been neat).<\/p>\n<p>Of course, in porting a remake of an NES game from the late &#8217;80s, some weaknesses of the original do shine through. Once you get a hang of the controls (both in the platforming and in the top-down sections), it&#8217;s not a terribly challenging game. Sure, the Metroidvania-style upgrades make the backtracking somewhat bearable as you&#8217;re exploring slightly newer sections of places you&#8217;ve already been. It&#8217;s also fun to just blast through enemies with the more powerful weapons, which (again) doesn&#8217;t provide much of a challenge. Still, it&#8217;s usually cheap enough now that it&#8217;s worth it to pick up this game if it&#8217;s on sale.<\/p>\n<p>A retro remake with some improvements but retaining some weaknesses, I give <em>Blaster Master Zero<\/em> 3.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/> 1\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/bmw-the-critic\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"820\" height=\"312\" src=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4100\" srcset=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3.png 820w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3-300x114.png 300w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3-768x292.png 768w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3-640x244.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blaster Master Zero Year: 2017 Rating: E Time Played: 6 hours While I grew up with retro video games, one game that escaped my notice at the time was Blaster Master. I first encountered this game when it kept popping up in the Nintendo eShop on my Switch. Even though there weren&#8217;t many games I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,1900],"tags":[349,18,4371,4370,2186,1901,1903,1119,2246,8,906],"class_list":["post-4562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-video-game","tag-349","tag-action","tag-blaster-master","tag-blaster-master-zero","tag-nintendo","tag-nintendo-switch","tag-platformer","tag-remake","tag-retro","tag-review","tag-video-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4562"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4564,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions\/4564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}