Blazing Chrome wants to hurt you. JoyMasher’s run-and-gun shooter, published by The Arcade Crew, arrived on July 11, 2019 for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, and it does not pretend to be anything other than a Contra tribute with a grudge. Set in 21XX, after a war has nearly wiped out the human race and a robot army has taken the planet, it hands you a machine gun and a two-player couch slot and asks you to earn every inch of ground.
Trailer, via The Arcade Crew.
Mavra and Doyle Take the Field
You pick between two resistance fighters. Mavra is a human soldier. Doyle is a combat robot reprogrammed to fight against its own kind for the human cause. That is the whole cast, and it is enough. Blazing Chrome has no interest in cutscenes or character arcs. It has interest in the next turret.
The pair storm enemy strongholds, hoverbike chases and towering mechanical bosses. The resistance is a scattered remnant, hunted by the machines that run the world. The game treats that premise as set dressing and gets on with the shooting, which is the correct call.
Six Levels, Four Unlocked
Blazing Chrome runs six levels. Four are open from the start. Two have to be unlocked. That structure is worth noting because it shapes how the campaign feels: you are not walked down a corridor. You are given a map with holes in it and told to fill them.
The game is a side-scrolling run and gun in the tradition of Contra and Metal Slug. You run, jump and dodge. Players can only take one hit — a bullet or a touch costs a life. The number of lives you get depends on the difficulty you choose at the start.
That single-hit rule is the spine of the whole thing. It is also where Blazing Chrome splits its audience cleanly.
The Arsenal and the Assist Bots
Four weapons carry the fight. Players start every level with the machine gun and pick up the rest as they go.
- Machine gun — the default, equipped at the start of each level
- Grenade launcher — picked up during a run
- Energy whip — picked up during a run
- Particle cannon — picked up during a run
Melee attacks trigger when you try to shoot an enemy at close range. That is a small mercy and a good one. When something is on top of you, the game lets you swing instead of dying mid-animation.
Three assist robots can be collected in each level, and only one can be equipped at a time. Attack bots fire when you fire, raising your damage output. Defense bots shield you and let you absorb two extra hits before breaking. Speed bots raise movement speed and fire rate, and they grant a double jump that opens up hard-to-reach areas.
Here is the catch. When you die, you drop your equipped bot and every weapon except the machine gun. Blazing Chrome does not just punish the death. It punishes the recovery.
A Machine Gun and Nothing Else
That drop rule is the most interesting design decision in Blazing Chrome, and it is the one that will decide whether you finish it.
Losing your loadout on death means every respawn starts you at the bottom of the power curve. A speed bot and a particle cannon can turn a level into a rout. Lose them and you are back to plinking at armored enemies with the starter gun while the same turret that killed you waits exactly where it was.
Some players will read that as tension. Others will read it as a treadmill. Both readings are fair, and which one you land on depends entirely on how much you enjoy re-clearing ground you already cleared.
Two Players, One Couch
Blazing Chrome supports single player and two-player local co-op. This is a couch game, and it is built like one.
Co-op changes the math. Two players split enemy attention, cover each other’s reload windows and share the burden of a level that was clearly tuned to be survivable rather than comfortable. It also means two people can lose their loadouts at the same time, which produces the kind of collapse that makes local co-op memorable.
The arcade feel JoyMasher is chasing lives here. This is a game designed to be played next to someone, with the screen scrolling right and both of you shouting at the same boss.
Where the Tribute Shows Its Seams
Blazing Chrome wears its references openly. Contra and Metal Slug are not influences to be inferred. They are the blueprint, and the game follows it closely enough that the comparison became the standard line in reviews.
That is not automatically a weakness. A run and gun lives or dies on feel — on whether the jump arc is honest, whether hitboxes are readable, whether the pace keeps you leaning forward. JoyMasher built a game that understands the assignment, and the four-weapon loadout plus the bot system gives it a hook of its own rather than a straight copy.
But the seams show in the structure. Six levels with two locked is a thin campaign by the standards of the genre’s best, and a game that resets your arsenal on every death is asking for a lot of patience from players who are not already devoted to the format.
The Verdict on Blazing Chrome
Blazing Chrome is a focused, well-built run and gun that knows exactly what it is and refuses to pad the runtime with anything else. The two characters are functional rather than memorable. The story is a frame for the action. The action is the point, and the action is good.
The bot system is the best idea in it. Three distinct roles, one slot, and a real cost for dying, all of which force decisions mid-level instead of letting you hoard power. The single-hit rule keeps every encounter sharp. The local co-op is the way the game is meant to be played.
Where it falls short is longevity and forgiveness. Six levels is a short tour, and the loadout drop will alienate players who want to make progress rather than repeat it. Blazing Chrome is a love letter to a specific era of arcade shooting, and like those arcade games, it is happy to take your quarters.
Critics agreed on the fundamentals. The game holds a published score of 7.7/10 from the IGDB critic aggregate, drawn from eight outlets, and the Contra comparisons were the standard line across them. That number is a consensus, not this paper’s own verdict, and the consensus looks right: the shooting is sharp, the hook is real, and the campaign is short.
Blazing Chrome is a sharp, honest tribute with a real hook and a short fuse.
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