Interview with the Creator of Blaster Master
For anyone willing to openly award themselves the status of “gamer” during the NES era, Blaster Master is a game that requires no introduction. Boasting some of the most progressive game design for its time, together with a brilliant audio score and visuals that tested the limits of the 8-bit hardware, it has become a “must play” title for later generations of gamers as well in order to be properly educated and cultured in classic gaming.
Though a number of somewhat lackluster entries in the series have appeared over the years for the Sega Genesis, Game Boy and original PlayStation, none of these quite managed to live up to the expectations of fans who could sense that these games lacked the original inspiration that made the original so revolutionary.
That is until the recent release of Blaster Master: Overdrive on WiiWare, the first game since the series’ NES debut to be handled under the scrutinous eyes of the original game’s creator.
Yoshiaki Iwata, creator of the original Blaster Master for the NES and producer ofBlaster Master: Overdrive sat down with Lv42 to discuss both games, commenting on design, old memories, struggles, the disappearance and reemergence of Sunsoft, his personal view on Blaster Master, the next direction for Sunsoft, and why “retro” games matter.
LevelFortyTwo: Before we get in to discussing Blaster Master: Overdrive, could you begin by telling me a bit about your memories and experience working on the development of the original Blaster Master? Could you tell me about your role in particular?
Yoshiaki Iwata: For the original Blaster Master I came up with the title, designed the opening, handled the map design and layout, did the boss design . . . aside from the game’s character design I was pretty much involved in all areas of the game’s production. The overall creation of the project as a whole however incorporated the entire staff at the time.
The development team basically consisted of 1 main programmer, 1 sub-programmer, 1 lead designer, 1 character designer, and a sound programmer, so the game was more or less made with a team of 5 people.
Lv42: How would you describe the game that you set out to create with Blaster Master?
Iwata: While it may sound like a bit of a stereotypical response, basically we were trying to make the best action game to date, with all that entails. With Sofia (the game’s vehicle), we wanted to bring to life a sense of action that incorporated all 360°of the environment in a way that players hadn’t really experienced up to that point. Along with that, we wanted large, expansive maps so that we could support that vision.
Graphically we tried to push the limits of what the NES was capable of, and one way we tried to express that was with the game’s bosses. We wanted to really emphasize a sense of scale, bring out the difference between the Jason, the small character that the player was controlling, and these massive boss characters that players wouldn’t expect to appear on the hardware at that time . . . having these giant imposing bosses that would feel overwhelming on the screen, and then evoking in the player that great feeling of success from overcoming what felt like an insurmountable battle.
For the game’s sound, basically we just wanted cool songs.
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Lv42: Blaster Master was, from a design perspective, very progressive for its time. The non-linear level design and the exploration elements are still considered to be excellent game design by today’s standards, with a number of modern games now going back an revisiting that relationship between level design and game progression. Also, regularly switching to the “top-view” gameplay mode made it feel like you had two totally different games that meshed together very naturally. How did you come up with this sort of level design? Were you playing other games at the time or prior to working on Blaster Master that influenced you?
Iwata: I was responsible for the game’s original design, which I feel like was basically transported from the original state that I had conceived it directly into the visuals allowed via game graphics. Again, the goal was really to try to pull off the best graphics on the NES to date. Simple graphics were more or less the standard on the NES at the time but I had this firm belief that it was possible to do something better, something prettier. I feel like we pulled it off and were able to show people what could be done [on the NES]. It left an impression around the office, and from what I’ve heard [the visuals] influenced the work of other games which were later made by other NES developers as well.
The transitioning between the side and top-views in the game was a combination of what the members of the development team wanted to create. With the team generally being fans of action games, at the beginning of the project when we were all first sitting down to start with the game’s planning, there was a actually a time when the core idea was to have Sofia be able to drive freely everywhere on the map, including the walls and ceiling.
We also didn’t want to make a game where the player just proceeds forward. We wanted the player to experience the feeling of excitement that comes from discovering something after endeavoring through a difficult search, which is why we composed a map that allowed the player to move freely between different areas. We really put a great deal of thought into that element of the game design and, I mean this in the best possible way, but we wanted the player to have to struggle.
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There were two main reasons for creating the top-down view point, one of which was to allow for 360°shooting. The other was because it allowed us to express large bosses that really had an impact.
As far as influence from games developed by other companies goes, there was a time when we looked at Nintendo’s Metroid as sort of a direct competitor, but aside from that there wasn’t really any other title that we were consciously drawing inspiration from during the development of Blaster Master.
