Blastar (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
76Blastar is a 360 degree shooter from Core Design, which came out in 1993. I never had this game back in the day, and only heard about it recently thanks to finding in-game music. This is only my second go at this game, so let's see if this shoots its way into the history books.
1. 🎖️🎖️*Johnny Smoesau* 🎖️🎖️
2. 🥇 Bloxyman22 🥇
3. 🥇 Sepp 🥇
4. 🥇Kim Lemon 🥇
5. 🥈 Predseda 🥈
6. 🥈Paul Henderson (Loki) 🥈
7. 🥉David Saphier🥉
8. 🔥 Eric Johnson 🔥
9. 🔥Bernhard Lukas 🔥
10. 🔥Ramon Schmitt 🔥
Production Notes:
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Captured: 30th April 2021
Narrated: 3rd May 2021
Edited: 3rd May - 14th September 2021
The whole mechanic of 360 degree shooters became interesting for me, and this lead me on a trail to the Jeff Minter game - Photon Storm - in 2019, and in 2020 it was Amnios by Psygnosis. There airn't too many of these types of games floating about, but you can trace the heritage of this game all the way back from Blasteroids and Sinistar, through to Asteroids.
I gave this a test run when I installed the WHDLoad version onto my computer. But I failed on level 2 because I just didnt have the firepower. Taking a break from the computer, it occurred to me that there is no time limit per level, and unlimited respawning enemies and bonuses. So all I needed to do was hang around to get the most cash, and eventually complete the main mission. I started the recorder as I was about to test this theory. It worked, but I was blind to the rest of the levels after the second one, and ended up not knowing about the tunnels later in the game, leading to some endless flying around. I was surprised to get that far to be honest. I think I died one or two levels from the end of the game, but no luck finding the extra lives or energy to continue.
I said the game gets easier as it goes on, but maybe the levels themselves are fairly simple in the first place, and I wasnt collecting so much money to get the better firepower. In the horizontal shooter level, you can see my devastator is having zero effect on most enemies, so the game must expect a certain level of performance by that stage. But then the final surface levels could be done faster if you knew the layouts from the HOL maps.
I thought about doing a comparison zone, but having 360 degree shooters whizzing around in boxes was giving me a headache just thinking about it.
Danscore
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Blastar has most of the hallmarks of a smooth and classic game from Core Design. The graphics, the thumping music, the smoothly scrolling playfield - what's not to love? Each mission simply requires destruction of three of four big blocks on the floor, with later missions needing the extra step of killing alien lairs in caves. The game lets you get a long way if you are prepared to grind to the best weapons, and you can collect as many extra lives and cash on any level. The expensive shop items seems to be the main let-down. But the lack of side quests, sub-bosses and general variety of enemies means the experience can soon get boring. Compare this to the colourful mayhem of Amneos - where enemies and collectables all serve different purposes, its not hard to notice the mostly grey and brown colour scheme, and basic plot of destroying a few basic items, makes Blastar feel polished but also not very 'Wow!' Ignoring graphics, presentation and music, I'd give this a 6 out of 10.