Shadow Blasters (Genesis) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
284A playthrough of Sage's Creation's 1990 action game for the Sega Genesis, Shadow Blasters.
Played on the hard difficulty level.
Shadow Blasters is an early Genesis platformer that, while simple, has its charm and its quirkiness to get by on.
Horatio, Tiffany, Marco, and Leo have all been brought together by Hyprion, an otherworldly being who seeks to enlist the help of the world's strongest to fight Ashura's army and restore peace to Earth.
Horatio and Tiffany were both raised learning ninjutsu, exactly as you might expect from people named Horatio and Tiffany. They are the fast but weak characters. Leo is a kendo master, and Marco is a Buddhist priest who lives to fight evil with his hands instead of his beliefs.
The localization team had some imaginative ideas there, didn't they?
The game features seven stages, and you can play the initial six in any order you choose (as in Mega Man) with any character you choose (as in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), and you can swap characters at any time.
The action is simple. Closely resembling games like Wrath of the Black Manta or Ninja Crusaders on the NES, Horatio and company run around flinging all manner of fireballs and shuriken at the army of bad guys.
What makes Shadow Blasters' gameplay unique is the upgrade system. Each character can be individually upgraded by picking up colored icons that provide boosts to damage output, jump strength, and speed. It's not particularly complex, but the little depth the system provides is a nice addition to what would otherwise be a generic action-platformer.
It was developed by Cyclone System, a little known Japanese development house that typically did quality work on "unique" titles. Their best known games are probably WURM on NES (https://youtu.be/JiO0rghWNjs ) and the Genesis ports of Cadash and Saint Sword, and Shadow Blasters fits on the shelf alongside those titles nicely.
I'm not surprised the game isn't better remembered, really. The music is excellent and the controls are good, but the so-so graphics (though there is some nice parallax scrolling!) and the near complete lack of challenge hold it back. Still, it is a lot of fun. It wouldn't have been worth purchasing for $50, but I certainly would've been satisfied had I rented it for a weekend back in the early 90s.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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