Leger vs. Blaster Master: Overdrive (Wii)

Some twentytwo years since the launch of the series and a decade since the previous entries (Enemy Below and Blasting Again), Overdrive arrived out of nowhere in 2010.

Sunsoft had been somewhat dormant, just like Blaster Master, so had it not been for the indie boom and the era of digital stores making room for smaller projects not seldom looking to initiate activity in the nostalgia nerves Overdrive might not have been.

Though, no matter how many digital licenses sold Overdrive went on to be mostly forgotten aswell as considered a black sheep in an already uneven series, making fans having to wait another seven years until Zero hit the market.

I do want to go to the territory of discussing unfair critique, however, arguing that Blaster Master Overdrive did most of the things the old NES game did wrong right.

While Blaster Master did play an important part in the shaping of the audiovisual mastery Sunsoft went on to pride themselves with, it never got the gameplay quite right.

Upgrades making the game harder to play, the level design not taking the off center shooting into consideration in the overhead sections, pathetic bosses taking forever to beat and a huge Metroidvania attitude combined with lack of a save function or password (with the western release even going as far as making the continues limited).

Blaster Master on the NES may look the part, but it is a chore to play and has always been.

Overdrive is not a chore to play.

In some ways it almost feels like a remake of the very first Blaster Master with similar upgrades (a block crushing boost attack, the ability to hoover with the vehicle, a hookshot to grapple roofs and walls aswell as a wall climbing feature amongst others) and 1:1 gameplay.

With some side scrolling section to tackle by foot or in the vehicle and some overhead ones playing out like a labyrinthian shooter.

A save function makes progress up to that point permanent, a simple map function makes navigating the caves easier and the bosses are no longer uninspired but rather huge, intense as hell (even mildy touching upon the bullethell mentality of shmups aswell as going more aggressive the more hurt they are, just like bosses in later Ys games do).

I do love the bosses found in Overdrive.

But, yes.

The loss of firepower when being hit in the overhead section is still a thing, making room for some not always funny trips through caves to collect weapon upgrades.

But for every thing Overdrive does right, not having mentioned the SNES sounding soundtrack which is not afraid to deliver new versions of old classics, it seems like it could have been doing things more right in other areas.

Compared to the colourful NES original Overdrive is a very gray and brown experience. Most locations looks like monotonous caves in different colours, with the cold and icy one aswell as the one dealing with lava not doing all that much to make a difference.

While never ugly, the lack of aesthetical OOOMPH makes traversing the caves back and forth to explore whatever parts not yet having been explored in the hopes of finding something new quite... meh.

And the enemies, they are really not that varied. Or, actually... they are, but not visually. To make things even more retro some are even working with the palette swapping of old.

Killing something but bosses seldom results in big and visually pleasing explosions, rather small... POOFS.

Though, had Overdrive gone the same aesthetical route as the NES game like Zero did many years later I do believe it would have been more fondly remembered.

Ending up on Wii Ware, a service which besides holding some of the most unfairly hidden gems of the era hostage (Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth, for example) also having shut down since a couple of years leaving no commerical availability of many of the games it hosted, is a thing certainly not helping.

Neither is the lack of Classic Controller support (because while the finger bending control scheme of the wiimote when switching weapons or activating the side stepping in the overhead sections is manageable it could have been that much smoother).

Quite sad, actually.

Especially since Overdrive is a quite good Blaster Master, certainly a good game overall, with some flaws making it a bit hard to get into.

But if you do you will find a well designed, nice sounding and at times quite intense Metroidvania that is well worth sticking with until the very end.