Dan Geeks Out: Video Game Review #362: Blazing Lazers

Blazing Lazers

TurboGrafx-16

Nostalgia Factor:

I first heard of Blazing Lazers about a year ago. Everything I read about the game was positive. Everyone seemed to really like it. Kanye even mentions it in a song of his. It's a game I've wanted to check out ever since, but I kept putting it off and putting it off due to my general disdain of shoot 'em ups.

Now that I'm going through year by year and picking out games to play that I've never played before, it only made sense to finally bite the bullet and play this game. It came out in 1989. I was looking for a 1989 game to play. It all came together perfectly here. Would I enjoy this game or would the curse of the shoot 'em up strike again? Let's find out!

Story:

I'm sure that Blazing Lazers has some kind of storyline to it. The problem is, you have to either own the original instruction manual for the game or look up a recap on Wikipedia if you want to have any idea what that story is. Literally nothing is explained in-game. You fly your little space ship through a series of stages, blowing up everything in sight as you go. At the end of the game you fight the final boss and the credits start to roll. Not really much to go on here if you're looking for some kind of deep story.

Gameplay:

One of the main reasons I generally don't like shoot 'em ups is because of how unforgiving they are. One hit kills you. There's dozens of projectiles on screen at a time. You're constantly on your toes, and one tiny little mistake will kill you. I often feel these games can be cheap, as well. Enemies tend to have predictable patterns but then break those patterns when it is least convenient for the player. You could be playing a perfect game and then get completely screwed by luck of the draw.

Blazing Lazers isn't like that. This may be the most forgiving and accessible shoot 'em up I've ever played. I think I made it through the first three or four levels while only dying once. I started to wonder if the game was just incredibly easy or if I had broken it somehow. Turns out, the game is just incredibly easy... for the first few stages at least. When you get deeper into the game, it starts to get more difficult. But by the time that happens, you've already been afforded the opportunity to "figure out" the game and its controls - making it a tough challenge but not an impossible or frustrating one.

The thing that stood out to me early on was the weapon upgrade system. Power ups are plentiful in this game, so you never have to worry about being stuck with your base "pea shooter" cannon for long. These weapon upgrades are very powerful, almost making you feel like you are overpowered at times. For example, there's this electrical attack that nearly fills the entire screen with its attack radius - and it is super powerful too! All I had to do was avoid getting hit and spam this attack over and over again - and it worked. None of the enemies on the screen could avoid this attack. Like I said, the first few levels of this game were extremely easy to me.

I wish the upgrade system was explained a little bit better, however. I guess that is one of the downsides to not having this game's manual. There are these purple orbs I'd collect - and I to this day have NO idea what those orbs did. But gosh darn it I still went out of my way to collect them. Also, the weapon upgrade power ups simply appear as colored balls with numbers on them. Due to the hectic nature of this game, I could never remember which number represented which upgrade - and I'd often end up accidentally downgrading or picking a weapon I didn't want. A little picture representing the gun, or even a letter (like you'd see in Contra) certainly would have helped here.

Even though Blazing Lazers isn't too horribly difficult, it does have some annoyances. When you die, you have to return to a checkpoint rather than just respawning where you died. You don't have unlimited lives or continues - so if you make it deep into the game and then run out, you have to go back to the beginning of the entire game again. The most annoying thing to me was the "life limit". In one of the later stages, I noticed that while I had accumulated over ten extra lives, the game would send me back to the beginning of the stage after dying three times. I was struggling a bit with a boss, but I thought I'd be able to get in plenty of practice against it due to all the lives in my inventory. But no, it sent me back to the beginning of the entire stage after dying against the boss three times in a row. WTF is that?

Speaking of bosses, I did enjoy the boss battles in this game. The stages themselves are a bit easy, especially with all the screen-filling weapons you can pick up. To me, the bosses represented the real challenge of the game. In a way they reminded me of Star Fox bosses with their hit boxes and the strategy you'd have to deploy to beat them.

Graphics:

This game looks pretty darn good for its time. This could easily be a late stage Super Nintendo game with its bright colors and detailed enemies. Way to go, TurboGrafx-16! The game may not look too exciting when you first start playing it, but just wait for all the enemies, power ups, colorful projectiles, and background graphics to start filling up your screen. This game gets very crazy and colorful very fast.

Sound:

This game has an excellent soundtrack. I love the upbeat tunes, and how they really get you pumped when you're in the heat of battle. The music really fits the action perfectly, and I can't say enough about it. The sound effects are great too. Everything you'd want aurally from a space shoot 'em up, Blazing Lazers provides.

Overall:

I had a surprisingly good time with this game. It may now be my favorite shoot 'em up of all time, not that it had much competition (sorry Thunder Force II and Gradius!). It's accessible, it's fun, it's got great graphics, it's got great music, and at no point does it feel frustrating or impossible - a common complaint I have about this genre of game. I love the weapon power ups, and how they can make you feel like the ultimate badass when things are clicking for you. I can easily see myself coming back to this game in the future. I'm very glad I finally pushed aside my hatred for shoot 'em ups long enough for me to check this game out.

That said... it's still a shoot 'em up. It has no story. There's not much variety to the gameplay. You move around the screen and you shoot stuff and collect power ups while trying to not get hit so you can stay alive. That's all there is to this game. I also feel like the game started to wear out its welcome after a while. Nine stages is a lot, especially when you're doing the same thing over and over again.

I feel like a B is the highest I can possibly go here. I'm sure there are shoot 'em ups out there that I will like more than this one, so I have to leave some room for improvement as far as the grading scale goes.

THE GRADE:

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1982 reviews:

1983:

1984:

Frogger II: Threedeep!