Blizzard Entertainment released Blackthorne in 1994 for the Super NES and MS-DOS, and it arrived at an awkward moment for the studio. The company was still years away from Warcraft, and here it was shipping a grim, side-view action game about a commando with a shotgun and a grudge. The Super NES version carried cover art drawn by Jim Lee, which tells you what Blizzard thought it was selling: a comic-book hero with a weapon.
What it actually sold was stranger and better than that. Blackthorne is a slow, deliberate platformer where the shooting matters less than the standing still.
Kyle Vlaros and the Planet Tuul
The setup is pure pulp. Blackthorne takes place on Tuul, a planet that has existed for centuries without human knowledge. Its people were ruled by a single shaman “was blessed with all knowledge,” according to the game’s lore. When the shaman Thoros could not choose between his two sons, he led them into the deserts and killed himself. His body became two stones, light and dark, one for each boy.
The people of the lightstone formed Androth. The people of the darkstone formed Ka’dra’suul, and they rejected their stone. It transformed them into monsters. A ka’dra named Sarlac seized power, built an army, and marched on Androth. King Vlaros, with the magician Galadril, sent his son Kyle to Earth to save his life and gave him the lightstone.
Twenty years later Kyle is a military captain and mercenary. After breaking out of prison facing court martial, he starts having strange dreams. Galadril confronts him and tells him it is time to return. Kyle goes back to kill Sarlac and reclaim his throne.
That is a lot of backstory for a game that opens with a man climbing a wall. It works because the game never stops to explain itself. You get the dreams, the magician, the shotgun, and then you are in the mines.
A Shotgun That Fires Backwards
Combat in Blackthorne takes the form of gunfights, and the defining mechanic is cover. Both Kyle and his enemies can press against walls to avoid incoming bullets. Kyle carries a pump-action shotgun, and he can fire blindly behind himself without turning around. That single detail does more for the game’s feel than any other.
It turns every corridor into a small puzzle. You are not dodging. You are leaning. You are deciding which side of a wall to hug and when to blind-fire into a room you cannot see. The Androthi allies Kyle meets along the way upgrade the weapon, increasing its speed and power. By the late game the shotgun is a different tool than the one you started with.
The platforming is large and mazelike. Kyle runs, climbs, finds keys and items, and works toward the end of each level. The game has seventeen levels across four areas: the mines of Androth, the Karrellian forests and swamps, the Wasteland desert, and Shadow keep.
The Sega 32X version, released the following year, adds a fifth area — the snowy mountains — that is not in the other versions. It also adds content beyond that. If you are choosing a version today, that is the one with more game in it.
What the Four Areas Do
Each area escalates. Kyle becomes stronger and better armed as he moves through them, and so do the enemies. The mines teach you cover. The forests and swamps stretch the platforming. The Wasteland opens the spaces up. Shadow keep is the endgame, and it is where the game’s pace finally pays off.
| Area | Version | What it tests |
|---|---|---|
| Mines of Androth | All versions | Cover and blind-fire basics |
| Karrellian forests/swamps | All versions | Platforming and navigation |
| Wasteland desert | All versions | Open combat |
| Shadow keep | All versions | Everything at once |
| Snowy mountains | Sega 32X only | Added content |
The structure is clean and the escalation is real. What the table cannot show is how much of the game is spent walking. Blackthorne is a cinematic platformer, and cinematic platformers of this era moved at a crawl. Kyle does not sprint. He does not dash. He climbs, drops, and advances one screen at a time.
That pace is the whole argument about the game. Players who want momentum will find the first hour punishing. Players who want tension will find that the slowness is the point. A gunfight where you cannot see the other person and cannot move quickly is a gunfight where every decision costs something.
The Ending and the Throne
Kyle fights his way to Sarlac’s castle. He confronts Sarlac and threatens to keep his skull as a mounted trophy on his wall. The two battle, and Kyle wins. He avenges his father, King Vlaros, and becomes king of Androth. The game states that he ruled justly, fairly and with honor for many years.
It is a straightforward ending, and it lands because the game has been straightforward the whole way. Kyle is not complicated. Sarlac is not complicated. The pleasure is in the mechanics, not the writing.
The writing does have one good instinct: it never lets Kyle talk his way out of anything. He threatens, he shoots, he climbs. The game trusts its own silence.
Jim Lee, Battle.net, and the Blizzard Arcade Collection
The Super NES cover art by Jim Lee is worth noting because it signals the era’s ambitions. Blizzard wanted Blackthorne to look like a comic. In 2013, the studio released the game for free on its Battle.net PC client, which put it in front of an audience that had never heard of Tuul.
In February 2021, for the company’s 30th anniversary, Blackthorne was re-released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One as part of the Blizzard Arcade Collection. That collection is the easiest way to play it now, and it is a better home for the game than a shelf of cartridges.
Blackthorne can also fire blindly behind himself.
That line, buried in the mechanics, is the game’s whole personality. It is a small, mean, clever idea, and Blizzard built a full game around it.
The Verdict on Blackthorne
Blackthorne holds up better than most 1994 platformers because it does not try to be fast. It tries to be tense, and it succeeds. The cover mechanic is genuinely good design — simple to understand, hard to master, and it makes every room a decision. The seventeen levels are varied enough to justify their length, and the four areas each teach something before the next one raises the stakes.
The problems are real. The pace is slow enough to lose people in the first hour. The story is thin, and the game knows it, which is why it keeps cutting back to climbing. The Super NES version, specifically, is the one without the snowy mountains area, so it is the leanest version of a game that benefits from more.
The 7.8 out of 10 is a fair score, and it is the score this review gives. Blackthorne is not a classic in the way its studio’s later work is. It is a sharp, strange, well-built action game that got buried under a genre that was already moving on. The shotgun that fires backwards is still the best thing in it.
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