Inti Creates has spent the better part of a decade proving it understands a very specific kind of game: the NES-era action platformer that expects you to get lost. Blaster Master Zero, first released in March 2017, is the studio’s clearest statement of that idea. It is a reboot of Sunsoft’s Blaster Master, but the word “reboot” undersells the work. This is a reconstruction, pulling apart the original game, its Japanese version Chō Wakusei Senki: Metafight, and even the Worlds of Power novelization, then rebuilding them into something that plays cleanly on modern hardware.
The game began life on the Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch. It has since moved to PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Wherever you play it, the shape is the same: you drive a tank, you get out of the tank, and you spend a lot of time figuring out which of those two things the room in front of you actually wants.
Trailer, via INTI CREATES.
Driving the tank called SOPHIA III
Jason Frudnick is a young man described as a genius in robotics. He finds a frog-like creature, names it Fred, and loses it almost immediately when Fred escapes into a wormhole that seemed to appear from nowhere. Jason follows. He ends up underground, where he finds an armored tank called SOPHIA III and a world full of mutants.
That is the setup, and it is deliberately thin. Blaster Master Zero does not spend much time on exposition before handing you the controls. The side-scrolling sections put you behind the wheel of SOPHIA III. You explore large environments, fight mutant enemies, and use the tank’s various weapons. The tank can be upgraded. Those upgrades open routes that were closed before, which is the oldest trick in this genre and still one of the best.
The tank is heavy in the way it should be. It does not handle like a character. It handles like a vehicle, which means momentum matters and precision is earned rather than given.
Jason leaves the vehicle behind
The overhead sections are where Blaster Master Zero separates itself from a straightforward run-and-gun. Jason can leave SOPHIA III and enter passages and doors the tank cannot reach. When he does, the camera switches to an overhead perspective. Jason on foot is smaller, more fragile, and forced to navigate tighter spaces.
This split is the whole design. A game that only had the tank would be a decent action platformer. A game that only had the overhead sections would be a decent top-down shooter. Blaster Master Zero is both, and the switching keeps either half from wearing out its welcome.
The game also includes a multiplayer mode. A second player takes control of an aiming reticle and shoots at enemies. It is a small addition, but it is the kind of small addition that makes a hard game easier to hand to someone else.
Bosses, upgrades, and the map you draw yourself
Progress in Blaster Master Zero runs through boss characters. You defeat them to reach later levels. You find upgrades that let you reach areas that were previously inaccessible. The loop is familiar, and the game does not apologize for it.
What matters is that the environments are large and the game trusts you to remember them. There is no hand-holding here. If you cannot get somewhere, the answer is usually an upgrade you have not found yet, and the game expects you to work that out.
The redone graphics and sound do a lot of quiet work. This is not a pixel-for-pixel reissue. Inti Creates added tweaks and features that were not in the NES game, and the result feels like a game built by people who played the original until the cartridge wore out.
Eve, Fred, and the plot underneath the shooting
Blaster Master Zero serves as a sequel to Metafight and a reboot of the American plot at the same time, combining character names and plot elements from all three sources.
In this version, Earth falls into an ice age after countless wars and environmental disasters. Humanity moves underground. When the ice age ends, people use what they learned below ground to restore the planet. A large, mysterious comet falls to Earth, but the restoration continues and humans return to the surface. Several hundred years later, Jason finds Fred.
During his quest, Jason finds an unconscious girl named Eve, who has a strange connection to SOPHIA III. Together they rescue Fred. Then the game reveals what Fred and Eve actually are. Fred is a probe sent by the inhabitants of Eve’s planet to locate the Mutants, alien invaders who once tried to conquer that planet. Eve is an android built to pilot and support SOPHIA III. The two of them, with Jason, defeat the Underworld Lord, the leader of the Mutants.
That is the full shape of the story, and it gives the back half of Blaster Master Zero something to push toward.
Release schedule and platforms
| Release | Platform | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Initial launch | Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch | March 2017 |
| PC port | Windows | June 2019 |
| PlayStation port | PlayStation 4 | June 2020 |
| Xbox ports | Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S | July 2021 |
| Sequel | Blaster Master Zero 2 | 2019 |
| Third entry | Blaster Master Zero 3 | 2021 |
The numbers behind the game
- Title: Blaster Master Zero
- Release year: 2017
- Developer and publisher: Inti Creates
- Original platform holder: SUNSOFT (Blaster Master)
- Platforms: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Nintendo 3DS, PC (Microsoft Windows), Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
- Genres: Shooter, platform, adventure, indie
- Modes: Single player, multiplayer, co-operative
- Perspective: Side view and bird view / isometric
- Critic aggregate: 8.2/10 from 6 outlets (IGDB)
What the 8.2 actually reflects
Blaster Master Zero is not a difficult recommendation. It is a well-made game in a genre that rewards patience, and it does the two things that matter most in a reboot: it respects the original and it fixes what needed fixing.
The overhead sections are the part that holds up best. They break the rhythm of the tank sections at the right moments, and they make the world feel like it has depth rather than just length. The tank sections carry the weight of the game, but the on-foot sections carry the variety.
The plot is the weakest layer. The ice age backstory, the comet, the centuries of rebuilding — the game states them and moves on. The reveal that Fred is a probe and Eve is an android is a good twist, and it recontextualizes the entire quest. But it is a twist the game states rather than one it builds toward, and the campaign never returns to it with any weight.
That is a minor complaint against a game that otherwise knows exactly what it is. The multiplayer mode is thin. The boss fights are the standard gate-and-key structure. Neither of those is a flaw so much as a limit.
What matters is that Blaster Master Zero understands the difference between a reboot and a remake. It takes the pieces of Blaster Master, Metafight, and the Worlds of Power novelization and assembles them into something coherent. It adds upgrades and tweaks without sanding off the edges that made the original worth remembering. And it does all of this without asking you to care about a franchise you may never have played.
The game is available on six platforms. It has two sequels. The 8.2/10 is an IGDB critic aggregate across six outlets, not this paper’s own score — treat it as a rough consensus, not a verdict.
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