Rare shipped its first Nintendo 64 game in March 1997, and it had nothing to do with plumbers or apes. Blast Corps puts the player behind the wheel of demolition vehicles and hands over a single, absurd job: flatten everything in the path of a runaway nuclear missile carrier before the carrier reaches it.
A Runaway Carrier and Eight Vehicles
The premise drives every level. A truck hauling defective nuclear missiles cannot stop, and any structure it strikes ends the run. The player clears farms and other buildings out of its way.
Eight demolition vehicles do the work, and no two clear a structure the same way. The bulldozer rams. The dump truck drifts. The lightweight buggy crashes down from higher ground. The motorcycle fires missiles. Another truck presses outward from its sides. Three robot mechs tumble and stomp from the land and the air.
Transferring Between Vehicles to Solve Puzzles
Blast Corps is a puzzle game wearing an action game’s body. The player transfers between vehicles and other machinery to move objects and bridge gaps, and the objectives widen to include transporting timed explosive crates.
The 57 levels grow harder as the player moves through them. The world is shown from a three-quarters overhead view, with zoom and horizontal panning to adjust what the player can see.
Pop-up hints guide the early stages. Other characters call out encouragement as a level wears on, and the cheery soundtrack speeds up as the timer runs low.
A Score for Every Wreck
Blast Corps rarely forces a single route. After finishing a level, the player can return and explore without a time limit.
Destroying leftover structures, finding secrets and activating lights across the level all raise the score and the final medal ranking. Hidden communication points unlock secret levels, where the clock returns and the goals change — completing laps on a circuit, or smashing specific objects.
The player can race a ghost copy of their own previous path through a level. Clearing every stage unlocks a time attack mode with medals on the line.
| Vehicle | How it clears a structure |
|---|---|
| Bulldozer | Rams |
| Dump truck | Drifts |
| Lightweight buggy | Crashes from higher ground |
| Motorcycle | Shoots missiles |
| Pressing truck | Presses outward from its sides |
| Three robot mechs | Tumble and stomp from land and air |
Four to Seven People, One Million Copies
Rare built Blast Corps with a team of four to seven members, many of them recent graduates. They were chasing gameplay to fit co-founder Chris Stamper’s idea for a building destruction game, and they took the puzzle mechanics from Donkey Kong (1994).
The game drew critical acclaim and Metacritic’s second highest Nintendo 64 rating of 1997. It sold one million copies, fewer than the team expected, and collected several editor’s choice awards. Reviewers praised the originality, variety and graphics; some found the controls and the repetition wanting.
What the Repetition Actually Costs
The complaints about repetition are fair and also beside the point. Blast Corps repeats a premise, not a task. Swapping from a drifting dump truck to a stomping mech changes how a level reads, and the ghost races and time attack give the wreckage a second life after the missiles are safe.
What holds up is the discipline. Fifty-seven levels, eight vehicles, one moving hazard — and Rare still found room for secrets, medals and a soundtrack that panics on cue.
The controls drew criticism in 1997, and that remains the honest knock. Nothing else here is disposable. When Rare Replay collected the studio’s back catalogue in 2015, reviewers singled out Blast Corps as a standout, which is the correct read. It is the rare demolition game that asks the player to think before swinging.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
