Saturday, 29 September 2018

Master Blaster - ZX Spectrum 48K - A Cover Tape

Back in the day, when a ZX Spectrum magazine come with a Cover Tape sellotaped to the front, I always got a bit excited. Staring at it as a kid in the newsagent, the mag was just screaming out, Buy Me! My mind just raced. What greatness was inside? How good was the free game on it?

Well... more often than not, it was a bit rubbish. There was a lot of disappointment back then. That's why the game was often on a Cover Tape in the first place and not a commercial release. There were exceptions though. Thankfully this can be said for Master Blaster given away with Crash Magazine in 1990. Click on my video review below hosted on YouTube.


Master Blaster is a cracking little vertical shooter. Very hard at first, but practice is rewarded as you slowly learn the enemies wave patterns. Those aliens do tend to come at you kamikaze very fast. It's just a question of being in the right place at the tight time. Once you've learnt that, you could probably make you way without having to shoot hardly any of them.

Many Shoot 'um ups on the speccy of this era and before had very monochrome graphics, but not so with Master Blaster. The game is awash with colour and some of the background is even animated giving the game so amazing style. The attention to detail in all the graphics is outstanding.

You control a ship that looks very much like the USS Enterprise from Star Trek and you can tell that movie franchise has had a healthy influence over the games creation. The first end of level boss you come to will look very much a Klingon Warbird. Bosses after this tend to go their own way and all are impressively animated.

If it is so good, why was this not released as a commercial game then?

I'm not sure of the answer to that one. Maybe by 1990, the author Cybadyne, thought the game would do better through a popular magazine than sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting for people to buy. 1990 was quite late in the Spectrum's run.

As far as cover tape games go, this is one of the best ones I've come across and well worth tracking down. An awesome shooter !!!

Nick :o)






Please share and spread the word on all social media platforms!  :)   #njenkin

No comments:

Post a Comment