Blaster Master (What the &#%& am I looking at?)

Lanx · May 11, 2021

Janx said:
Had this thing back when I first started building PCs ~1994. Was an amazing soundcard.
View attachment 353544

fucking soundblaster shit took up the isa slot for 20years, youre an old man if you remember to provision irq7 for soundblaster

i'm pretty sure when they came out w/ the soundblaster pci edition it fucking failed to work, probably has "noise" and shit too, heh

i remember this abit board was like the last board to release a mb with isa

thats a pentium3 mb and ppl still wouldn't let go of their isa soundblasters

took over 20years for isa to die, while AGP didn't even last 10years

Slyminxy · May 11, 2021

I re-mapped my Soundblaster IRQ to 5, because I needed 7 for something else.

Porkchop · May 11, 2021

Vanessa said:
Look at this thing. Just look at it.

It's the penultimate boss in Blaster Master.

I've recently been on a Let's play all the old classic NES games that I loved as a kid kick that were nearly impossible to beat (about 40% of the titles) and beat them with the magic of save states... woop woop. Honestly, as a kid, it's a testament to childhood free time and a relentless resilience that allowed me to beat the throw-the-controller-at-the-TV games I DID beat back then like Castlevania, Ghouls and Ghosts, Mega Man, Ultima: Exodus, Karnov, Rygar, and more popular but easier titles. But Blaster Master was one title I never bested... was only able to get to the final stage and it was too difficult.

So here I am, able to get to the penultimate boss... and I'm looking at it, remembering a screenshot of this back in Nintendo Power or something and I saw this beast as having 2 tiny eyes then. But then when I'm actually playing it in more high-def, it started to look like a cyclops, actually. Is that nose an eye? Or wait... is that just another eye? Then why did the artist not use black (that's obviously in the 8-bit palette) to highlight eyes if they're eyes at all? Maybe they're just bumps and the thing is an eyeless monster.

Facial pareidolia tells us it's LIKELY 2 eyes with a nose and yet... my adult self is looking at this and literally can't tell anymore, and the more I look at it, the more I get unsure LoL. What we can be SURE of with these limited graphics is that it has a mouth with teeth and two mandible horns. It's eyes though? Wtf~

So... how many eyes does this thing have?

Looks like a chestburster fighting hello kitty to me.

Bruuce · May 11, 2021

Rajaah said:
Nope, but I heard about it from other kids. Maybe I'll add that to my NES list. Also Low G Man, whatever that is. 'Cause when I was in 5th grade we did this pen pal thing for a couple months with another school, and I basically just talked about video games and nothing else with the guy I was matched with. Surprisingly only NES games even though it was 1993 by then. He told me his top, like, 7 NES games and the only one I wasn't familiar with at all was Low G Man. So I gotta play it for that guy. I hope he's doin' alright.

I havent thought about low g man in forever. Some kid that lived near my grandma had it, so I didnt get to play it much, but I remember it being really fun

Hateyou · May 11, 2021

What was the NES platformer game where your character had like a bionic boomerang? I remember that being good but can’t remember the name.

Jackie Treehorn · May 11, 2021

I remember renting this game and being frustrated with it. It was always a bummer being a kid and your mom lets you rent one game for the weekend or whatever and it either sucked or was just too hard to bother with.

Gavinmad · May 11, 2021

Cynical said:
I still swear early gamedevs were just trolling players sometimes.

There was basically zero quality control during the NES era, any shmuck could make an NES game and Nintendo didn't care. Then they realized there were drawbacks to having a giant library of garbage associated with your console and starting with the SNES there was a submission process before you could release a game for their system.

Bruuce · May 11, 2021

Hateyou said:
What was the NES platformer game where your character had like a bionic boomerang? I remember that being good but can’t remember the name.

describe it more

Rajaah · May 11, 2021

Hateyou said:
What was the NES platformer game where your character had like a bionic boomerang? I remember that being good but can’t remember the name.

Power Blade. Awesome game. It has the distinction of being the first game I was ever obsessed with. Read about it in Nintendo Power and basically memorized all of the level maps. My first actual owned video game was Kirby's Dream Land and I didn't get an NES or Power Blade until 1999, which is funny because of how much time I spent studying it in 1990 or so.

Hateyou · May 11, 2021

Rajaah said:
Power Blade. Awesome game. It has the distinction of being the first game I was ever obsessed with. Read about it in Nintendo Power and basically memorized all of the level maps. My first actual owned video game was Kirby's Dream Land and I didn't get an NES or Power Blade until 1999, which is funny because of how much time I spent studying it in 1990 or so.

Yep, finally found it searching around. I remember it being good. Also remember it from Nintendo Power, had such a bright cover.

Power Blade (Game) - Giant Bomb

Use a deadly boomerang to fight through six sectors and recover the Master Computer in this NES action platformer.

www.giantbomb.com

Hateyou · May 11, 2021

Gavinmad said:
There was basically zero quality control during the NES era, any shmuck could make an NES game and Nintendo didn't care. Then they realized there were drawbacks to having a giant library of garbage associated with your console and starting with the SNES there was a submission process before you could release a game for their system.

Yeah, I remember some where we couldn’t even get them to work at all, couldn’t beat first level, etc. They had some epic pieces of trash that should’ve been illegal to sell.

Lanx · May 11, 2021

Rajaah said:
Power Blade. Awesome game. It has the distinction of being the first game I was ever obsessed with. Read about it in Nintendo Power and basically memorized all of the level maps. My first actual owned video game was Kirby's Dream Land and I didn't get an NES or Power Blade until 1999, which is funny because of how much time I spent studying it in 1990 or so.

only gameboy game i ever owned was tetris, cuz i got this

you were laughed at on the playground if you didn't have your gameboy cartridge stick out cuz they had to cram 82games in there.

Vanessa · May 15, 2021

When Mario 3 came out, I was ~~white privileged~~ lucky enough to get it day 1 from Toys R Us. Grab the ticket from the game wall, trade it in at the glassed-off side room where the actual games were kept, and bam... I held the best game ever made for the NES. I brought the game to school the next day (still remember! 6th grade, Miss Hall's class) and I felt like I was sharing the secret lexicon of my elder's tribe or something... everyone wanted to see it, read the instruction manual and pass it around. Mario 3 was a huge, huge release, and still to this day an amazing game.

Slyminxy · May 15, 2021

In all practicality, you all talking about these hand held gaming devices feels like you're sharing some elder secrets from your tribe, because I never got to play any. My first "computer" was a Commodore 64 with a tape player to load games, everyone was "let's hold still while game loads".

TheNozz · May 15, 2021

Hateyou said:
Yep, finally found it searching around. I remember it being good. Also remember it from Nintendo Power, had such a bright cover.

Power Blade (Game) - Giant Bomb

Use a deadly boomerang to fight through six sectors and recover the Master Computer in this NES action platformer.

www.giantbomb.com

View attachment 353592

I think the company that made that game made this one too:

Hatorade · May 20, 2021

Denamian said:
Maybe. I was 12 or 13 when I was playing that. My first game I played at home was:

Invisible tank pong was the shit.

Combat! We played that and a bunch of others for years, my brother traded a walkman for an atari with a garbage bag full of games.

Lanx · May 20, 2021

Hatorade said:
Combat! We played that and a bunch of others for years, my brother traded a walkman for an atari with a garbage bag full of games.

the sounds will bring you back to 5years old, futzzing with that rf toggle from channel 3 to game system.

Denamian · May 20, 2021

Hatorade said:
Combat! We played that and a bunch of others for years, my brother traded a walkman for an atari with a garbage bag full of games.

We got a 2600 handed down to us with a small B&W TV when one of my cousins got a NES. I was in heaven.

Lanx said:
the sounds will bring you back to 5years old, futzzing with that rf toggle from channel 3 to game system.

The bane of my fucking existence for a while.

Hatorade · May 20, 2021

Denamian said:
We got a 2600 handed down to us with a small B&W TV when one of my cousins got a NES. I was in heaven.

The bane of my fucking existence for a while.

Yeah same, those little U shaped pins would snap off sometimes so we ended up wire wrapping it and using larger screws. Made the image quality a little fuzzy.

Denamian · May 20, 2021

Hatorade said:
Yeah same, those little U shaped pins would snap off sometimes so we ended up wire wrapping it and using larger screws. Made the image quality a little fuzzy.

We had 3 or 4 of them sitting next to the tv and would swap them out when we had problems. One that wouldn't work one day would work again the following week. Fucking voodoo.

Blaster Master (What the &#%& am I looking at?)

How many eyes does this thing have?

3 eyes

2 eyes

1 eye

0 eyes

This isn't pr0n, who cares?

Lord Nagafen Raider

Mr. Poopybutthole

Attachments

Blackwing Lair Raider

Not Great, Not Terrible

Mr. Poopybutthole

Blackwing Lair Raider

Honorable Member

Not Great, Not Terrible

Not Great, Not Terrible

Uncle Tanya

Lord Nagafen Raider

Bronze Baron of the Realm

A nice asshole.

Night Janitor

A nice asshole.

Night Janitor