1st March 2006, 1:29 AM
BlaZeon
Developed and published by Atlus
Released 1992 on the SNES
Review written March 1, 2006
Gameplay: BlaZeon is a shmup. That is, a shoot 'em up game, where you take a flying vehicle of some kind and kill things to presumably save your people. BlaZeon is a forgotten classic in its genre. Perhaps one reason for that is its very slow pace. The game is admittedly very, very slow, and sometimes you might spend as much as 45 seconds just watching the background scroll by with nothing to do. Also typical within the genre, the game is short -- it just has five levels -- but brutally hard. There are three difficulty levels and when you beat one the game loops to the next one. A simple system, but it works. This genre did not become great by being overly complex.
BlaZeon does have some interesting game mechanics, however. Your ship, the Garland, is very weak and has no power-ups as they are normally understood. It is slow, dies in one hit, and, for armaments, has only one single machine gun and its special weapon: the Tranquilander gun. It is more of a missile really, because you can only fire one at a time, but this cannon will disable certain enemy ships (that is, Bio-Cyborgs), allowing you to take them over (that is, your ship vanishes and the Bio-Cyborg replaces it; you can only have one of these at a time, and if it is destroyed you go back to just your basic ship.). These are the game's powerups, and this system is interesting. Equally interesting is the fact that as many ships get hit they take damage and lose weapons. This damage is visual; parts of the ship get shot off, leaving those guns unusable. This goes equally for the enemies and the Bio-Cyborgs you can control. So, if you want that awesome wave gun guy at full power, you'll have to disable it without accidentally hitting it with your machine gun (for that hurts Bio-Cyborgs, until you have disabled them and can take them over) and then do your best to avoid hitting the walls, enemies, or bullets. The first part is usually easy, but that second part can be quite tricky... The paths sometimes get very narrow, making that task extremely difficult. The last level, in particular, is full of paths pretty much the same width as your Bio-Cyborg, making navigation very tricky. It is possible, though, and as a shooter, difficult is expected, so its presence here is far from problematic. An easy shooter doesn't get played for long...
In graphics and style, the game seems most influenced by R-Type at first. The first level could have been in an R-Type game, actually. It gets more unique and interesting as it goes along however, and the game mechanics differentiate it sharply from R-Type. The levels also get longer, which is welcome because the first level is too short. Also, Atlus has a different concept of cruelty than Irem does. That is, they are more subtle. Instead of beating you down with a constant series of massively difficult challenges, they have long, slow levels with many pauses where you do very little except watch the background, and the average encounter is only of moderate difficulty. But since when you get a game over (lose three lives; getting an extra life requires so many points you have to beat three levels without getting a game over just in order to meet that number...) you restart the level from the beginning, the difficulty level's true level of cruelty slowly presents itsself. And the game, of course, has no form of saving, passwords, or cheat codes to skip to the later levels. It is a very difficult game. Oddly, I can't tell a huge difference between the difficultly levels (more bullets, I guess), but at least your ship changes color... :)
As is typical in this genre, BlaZeon has a minimal story. In fact, it is 100% contained in the manual. The game itsself is minimalist to the extreme: there is NO story shown or presented in any form within the game. No introduction, no in-mission story segments, and no ending. When you finish level five, you simply restart the game on the next difficulty level. Story is so irrelevant to games in this genre though that I truly do not miss it... As far as it goes from the manual though, the story goes like this: the earth created a fleet called the Imperial Earth Army to protect it from interstellar threats. The fleet got corrupted though, and instituted a dictatorship over the planet. You fight for the resistance using their special protype fighter, the Garland. The ship isn't in great shape, and this shows in the game with its slowness and weakness, but its Tranquilander gun makes up for that and then some... the game has seven Bio-Cyborg enemy types you can control, and they vary greatly from a small, fast ship to slow, larger ones that have very powerful guns that just fire forward, one with adjustable small guns, and one which fires bombs below it.
Single Player: Five levels, but the difficulty level ensures that it'll take a while, particularly on the higher difficulty settings. The first level is short and too easy, but it picks up after that. Level two is interesting, with the first part in an asteroid field and the second half passing a large fleet. Level three passes over some space platform and is fun too, but the midboss is very frusterating; watch out when it dies, it's easy to get taken out with it! Level four is my favorite in the game. Great music, an interesting junkyard setting with a unique junkbot Bio-Cyborg to control, and cool bosses. Level five, a giant space station, is the last one, and it's appropriately difficult with perfect music for a final level. You'll want to replay this one over and over like any good shooter, so the length isn't a problem. The pacing may be slow, and the pauses between action points frequent and often long (fifteen-second crawls across a screen, only to face three enemies and then wait another ten seconds for anything else to happen? Not uncommon.), but have a little patience and there is plenty of fun to be had.
Multiplayer: BlaZeon is single player only.
Graphics: BlaZeon's graphics are strictly average for the Super Nintendo. It's an arcade port and they do a decent job, but this isn't one of the system's graphical showcases, that's for sure. Multiple levels of parallax scroling is about all you can look for in nice special effects. Also, as mentioned earlier a lot of the art styles look very, very similar to R-Type's... the way that some kinds of ships take visual damage as they get hit is pretty cool, though, and definitely isn't the norm for this genre (particularly in how that damage actually removes some of their armaments -- shoot the top side of that gunship to knock out its top laser, or the bottom side to knock out the bottom one... adds strategy.). Slowdown is kept to a minimum because of the pacing and relative simplicity of the game, but occasionally when the screen is crowded there is some, as with all SNES shooters. For the most part, though, the game is remarkably slowdown-free compared to many SNES shooters (Super R-Type or E.D.F. or Gradius III, for instance). Some may say that that is because of how bland the graphics are and because the game's pacing is far too slow, but those are inaccurate depictions of this game. The pacing is intentional and works, and the graphics, while not the greatest on the SNES, are varied and interesting. Each level has a very distinct graphical style and many enemies are unique to each one. The backgrounds are also often very detailed and expansive.
Sound/music: The sound is fine. Nothing spectacular, but it does its job well. The music, however, is often great. The tracks for level 2 part 2, level 3 part 1, and level 4 are particularly great, I think. The level four music is the kind of music track that you don't mind listening to loop over and over and over and over and over as you play the level... the music in this game is great! Addictive and it loops fantastically, which is as much as you could possibly hope for from a game in this genre on the SNES.
Overall: BlaZeon is a pretty good shooter. It's slow paced and deliberate, for a nice contrast from fast, "hold the button down the whole time or you die" titles that seem to dominate this genre. It's also unique, because it has no conventional powerups and instead substitutes an interesting system of being able to take over certain types of enemy ships and control them as your own. This is a very well made game and it's too bad that it never got a sequel. Also, the fact that the story is truly nonexistent within the game cartridge is actually a good thing; the plot is utterly unoriginal and a clone of the plots of every other shooter ever made, so it really wouldn't add anything to have it. Just leave it out and focus on the important part for games like this: the gameplay! And that gameplay is pretty fun, and is backed up with acceptable visuals and good music. This game is recommended, if you can find it!
Gameplay: 9/10
Single Player: 9/10
Multiplayer: N/A
Graphics: 8/10
Sound and music: 10/10
Overall: 92% (not an average).
Developed and published by Atlus
Released 1992 on the SNES
Review written March 1, 2006
Gameplay: BlaZeon is a shmup. That is, a shoot 'em up game, where you take a flying vehicle of some kind and kill things to presumably save your people. BlaZeon is a forgotten classic in its genre. Perhaps one reason for that is its very slow pace. The game is admittedly very, very slow, and sometimes you might spend as much as 45 seconds just watching the background scroll by with nothing to do. Also typical within the genre, the game is short -- it just has five levels -- but brutally hard. There are three difficulty levels and when you beat one the game loops to the next one. A simple system, but it works. This genre did not become great by being overly complex.
BlaZeon does have some interesting game mechanics, however. Your ship, the Garland, is very weak and has no power-ups as they are normally understood. It is slow, dies in one hit, and, for armaments, has only one single machine gun and its special weapon: the Tranquilander gun. It is more of a missile really, because you can only fire one at a time, but this cannon will disable certain enemy ships (that is, Bio-Cyborgs), allowing you to take them over (that is, your ship vanishes and the Bio-Cyborg replaces it; you can only have one of these at a time, and if it is destroyed you go back to just your basic ship.). These are the game's powerups, and this system is interesting. Equally interesting is the fact that as many ships get hit they take damage and lose weapons. This damage is visual; parts of the ship get shot off, leaving those guns unusable. This goes equally for the enemies and the Bio-Cyborgs you can control. So, if you want that awesome wave gun guy at full power, you'll have to disable it without accidentally hitting it with your machine gun (for that hurts Bio-Cyborgs, until you have disabled them and can take them over) and then do your best to avoid hitting the walls, enemies, or bullets. The first part is usually easy, but that second part can be quite tricky... The paths sometimes get very narrow, making that task extremely difficult. The last level, in particular, is full of paths pretty much the same width as your Bio-Cyborg, making navigation very tricky. It is possible, though, and as a shooter, difficult is expected, so its presence here is far from problematic. An easy shooter doesn't get played for long...
In graphics and style, the game seems most influenced by R-Type at first. The first level could have been in an R-Type game, actually. It gets more unique and interesting as it goes along however, and the game mechanics differentiate it sharply from R-Type. The levels also get longer, which is welcome because the first level is too short. Also, Atlus has a different concept of cruelty than Irem does. That is, they are more subtle. Instead of beating you down with a constant series of massively difficult challenges, they have long, slow levels with many pauses where you do very little except watch the background, and the average encounter is only of moderate difficulty. But since when you get a game over (lose three lives; getting an extra life requires so many points you have to beat three levels without getting a game over just in order to meet that number...) you restart the level from the beginning, the difficulty level's true level of cruelty slowly presents itsself. And the game, of course, has no form of saving, passwords, or cheat codes to skip to the later levels. It is a very difficult game. Oddly, I can't tell a huge difference between the difficultly levels (more bullets, I guess), but at least your ship changes color... :)
As is typical in this genre, BlaZeon has a minimal story. In fact, it is 100% contained in the manual. The game itsself is minimalist to the extreme: there is NO story shown or presented in any form within the game. No introduction, no in-mission story segments, and no ending. When you finish level five, you simply restart the game on the next difficulty level. Story is so irrelevant to games in this genre though that I truly do not miss it... As far as it goes from the manual though, the story goes like this: the earth created a fleet called the Imperial Earth Army to protect it from interstellar threats. The fleet got corrupted though, and instituted a dictatorship over the planet. You fight for the resistance using their special protype fighter, the Garland. The ship isn't in great shape, and this shows in the game with its slowness and weakness, but its Tranquilander gun makes up for that and then some... the game has seven Bio-Cyborg enemy types you can control, and they vary greatly from a small, fast ship to slow, larger ones that have very powerful guns that just fire forward, one with adjustable small guns, and one which fires bombs below it.
Single Player: Five levels, but the difficulty level ensures that it'll take a while, particularly on the higher difficulty settings. The first level is short and too easy, but it picks up after that. Level two is interesting, with the first part in an asteroid field and the second half passing a large fleet. Level three passes over some space platform and is fun too, but the midboss is very frusterating; watch out when it dies, it's easy to get taken out with it! Level four is my favorite in the game. Great music, an interesting junkyard setting with a unique junkbot Bio-Cyborg to control, and cool bosses. Level five, a giant space station, is the last one, and it's appropriately difficult with perfect music for a final level. You'll want to replay this one over and over like any good shooter, so the length isn't a problem. The pacing may be slow, and the pauses between action points frequent and often long (fifteen-second crawls across a screen, only to face three enemies and then wait another ten seconds for anything else to happen? Not uncommon.), but have a little patience and there is plenty of fun to be had.
Multiplayer: BlaZeon is single player only.
Graphics: BlaZeon's graphics are strictly average for the Super Nintendo. It's an arcade port and they do a decent job, but this isn't one of the system's graphical showcases, that's for sure. Multiple levels of parallax scroling is about all you can look for in nice special effects. Also, as mentioned earlier a lot of the art styles look very, very similar to R-Type's... the way that some kinds of ships take visual damage as they get hit is pretty cool, though, and definitely isn't the norm for this genre (particularly in how that damage actually removes some of their armaments -- shoot the top side of that gunship to knock out its top laser, or the bottom side to knock out the bottom one... adds strategy.). Slowdown is kept to a minimum because of the pacing and relative simplicity of the game, but occasionally when the screen is crowded there is some, as with all SNES shooters. For the most part, though, the game is remarkably slowdown-free compared to many SNES shooters (Super R-Type or E.D.F. or Gradius III, for instance). Some may say that that is because of how bland the graphics are and because the game's pacing is far too slow, but those are inaccurate depictions of this game. The pacing is intentional and works, and the graphics, while not the greatest on the SNES, are varied and interesting. Each level has a very distinct graphical style and many enemies are unique to each one. The backgrounds are also often very detailed and expansive.
Sound/music: The sound is fine. Nothing spectacular, but it does its job well. The music, however, is often great. The tracks for level 2 part 2, level 3 part 1, and level 4 are particularly great, I think. The level four music is the kind of music track that you don't mind listening to loop over and over and over and over and over as you play the level... the music in this game is great! Addictive and it loops fantastically, which is as much as you could possibly hope for from a game in this genre on the SNES.
Overall: BlaZeon is a pretty good shooter. It's slow paced and deliberate, for a nice contrast from fast, "hold the button down the whole time or you die" titles that seem to dominate this genre. It's also unique, because it has no conventional powerups and instead substitutes an interesting system of being able to take over certain types of enemy ships and control them as your own. This is a very well made game and it's too bad that it never got a sequel. Also, the fact that the story is truly nonexistent within the game cartridge is actually a good thing; the plot is utterly unoriginal and a clone of the plots of every other shooter ever made, so it really wouldn't add anything to have it. Just leave it out and focus on the important part for games like this: the gameplay! And that gameplay is pretty fun, and is backed up with acceptable visuals and good music. This game is recommended, if you can find it!
Gameplay: 9/10
Single Player: 9/10
Multiplayer: N/A
Graphics: 8/10
Sound and music: 10/10
Overall: 92% (not an average).