For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to Shiny's Blaster Master: Enemy Below (GBC) maps.
There's some secret lab somewhere where creatures are being cloned. They escape, and it's up to Jason, the hero of the original Blaster Master, to take his vehicle, Sophia the 3rd, back underground through eight areas and blast away the subterranean menace. (Not the best story...even chasing a pet frog underground and finding a tank was better than this!) But hey, time for some platforming action! It's sort of like Metroid in that you have to find items and "retraverse" areas with new abilities, but in the Blaster Master series, you have a tank that can jump...what could be better?
The original Blaster Master on the NES is an incredible game, but underrated. It managed to have even more obscure sequels and spin-offs on the Game Boy (Blaster Master Boy), Genesis (Blaster Master 2), PlayStation (Blaster Master: Blasting Again) and WiiWare (Blaster Master: Overdrive), but none seemed close to as good as the original adventure. The closest you can get is on the Game Boy Color, in the form of Blaster Master: Enemy Below.
The graphics are similar to the NES's, and in some places, perhaps more bold and bright. Considering that the graphics on the NES seemed beyond its capabilities, looking similar is not a bad thing. The incredible soundtrack is back, too. It has the same types of areas as in the original, but essentially remixed. And this is where you'll need Shiny's maps; it might be easy to get lost with the small screen on the GBC showing you little of your surroundings at any given moment. But hey, it's a good portable Blaster Master game, and worthy of more attention.
So to recognize the effort put into mapping this GBC gem, Shiny's Blaster Master: Enemy Below (GBC) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for July 2014.
