-a rom hack of "Blaster Master" for the NES-
review by: Dr. Boogie

One of my favorite games from the eighties is Blaster Master. Where else can a child eagerly leap into a tank and jet off to pursue a lost, radioactive frog? While I was searching for the next big thing in rom
hacks, "Basterd Master", spelled with an "e", was brought to my attention. Hey, cool, I thought, maybe the kid will be more bastardly, maybe his tank will have some weapons that will let him cheat like a bastard, maybe his spiffy suit will make him more bastardish-looking, and so forth. At the very least, I thought, someone decided to add some cool new stuff to this fantabulous game! Admittedly, the changes were "new", but they were far from cool.

The famed tank has been cut down and replaced with some sort of pink and white flying phallus. That alone is not that special, but the kicker is that instead of shooting the traditional, mom-and-pop fireballs, your miscolored member shoots flaming unhappy faces, just like a real penis.

Ah, but what's this? It seems that the enlightened innovator who hacked this rom has replaced traditional rockets with SPGs (Swastika Propelled Grenades). Good lord, if Hitler had discovered these weird little symbols have the power to launch missiles, he might have won WWII! Anyway, the  author decided to leave the tank's thunderbolt untouched. I can't imagine what sort of neo-nazi, penile imagery it would have lead to.

The former health powerups have been replaced with unhappy faces. This makes for the second unhappy face occurrence in the game; the third if you count my own disappointed expression. I thought that bad feelings were bad for you.

Instead of "Pow", the power bar only says, "hoe." I guess your state of well-being is determined by how well you till the soil. Plus, the life bar, when two units of health are empty, shows the number 69. To get rid of this naughty number, you'll need some more of the power pellets-turned unhappy faces.

Slightly above the hoe bar, you will find that the hover bar has been replaced with the "69" bar. Now this is just laziness. There are hundreds of sexual terms that could have been haphazardly thrown in, but the author just uses 69 yet again. Please, people, if you are going to be puerile and immature, don't do it halfway.

Our beloved driver, THE basterd in question, has received a goodly amount of manipulating as well. I don't know what happened to his body, but this little basterd is now nothing more than a helmet sitting atop a mesh of nerve endings. Now that is downright basterdly.

Even better than that is he shoots giant eyeballs at his enemies. No longer do you have to blast your enemies into oblivion, as now you can simply give them the evil eye until they are too freaked out to fight you. It's basterd-tastic™!

Just like in the original, the real action takes place inside the little caves scattered about each level. In these scenes, your little gun is now enchanted by the magic power of Hitler so that it too shoots those
irrepressible swastikas! Of course, if that doesn't work, you can still fall back on your never-ending supply of exploding mime penises. W00T!

Also, the "P" (for powerup) has been replaced with what I can only assume to be yet another penis. Those basterds. OH MY GOD!!! LOOK OUT FOR THE ELECTRIC FLASHING MAN-THING!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The more observant of you out there may have noticed by now that most of the images here are from the first level. I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, not as bad as this rom hack, but still: Once you reach the second level, the tank and everything it uses reverts back to being as it was in the unhacked original rom. Big loss. In the bird's eye view scenes, you still get to be a weird little mesh monster that shoots swastikas and vomits poorly rendered genitalia. So, if you like to see hacked roms, but would rather the hacked elements be boring, inconsequential ones that vanish quickly, then this Cleveland Steamer of a hack is for you.