Super Mega Space Blaster Special (PC)
If video games had store brand equivalents, you might expect them to have names like Super Mega Space Blaster Special, but while this game may sound like something you’d scroll past in a list of mobile games, this non-indicative title actually hides a brilliantly reinvented evolution of old school space shooters like Asteroids.
Oddly enough, or perhaps appropriately enough, its story set-up actually seems to be an inversion of the Colecovision game Spectron. Humanity has let Earth go to waste so they head to the starts in a desperate bid to find a new inhabitable planet to settle on. However, when one of their Motherships finds a suitable place, the natives strike back with their own starships, the player called in to deal with this hostile space navy… although there’s no actual way to win. No matter the game mode, things last until your space fighter is destroyed, but the game does cram its plot set-up in a wall of text off to the side, so it seems more like context for those who might want it rather than something that overly impacts the direction of play.
And the play is definitely where Super Mega Space Blaster Special shines. There are three very different modes of play present, but all of them draw from a deceptively simple base when it comes to how the player participates. No matter the mode, the spaceships you pilot will always be moving forward automatically in a rectangular area, the edges of the screen deadly to touch so the player needs to ensure they are turning often enough to avoid an untimely death. Play ends when you lose your one and only life, and as play goes on, the space on the screen will get more and more crowded as stronger and more capable enemies fly in to face you. Your gun is actually surprisingly effective even in its default state. Besides the one boss enemy and the asteroids that break into more rocks, if you land a shot on an enemy, they will go down. However, firing wildly and hoping you wipe out the opposition isn’t possible, as your laser has an ammo system and you need to make sure you’re collecting the bullets from blown up enemies and asteroids to keep yourself topped off.
This ammo system is actually the first hint of something more going on in Super Mega Space Blaster Special. Shooting down enemies in a 2D space shooter has a certain inherent thrill to it, but having your ammo restricted encourages more movement and careful shooting than you might expect. You start off with a decent amount of shots no matter the spaceship you’re using, but to keep going you will need to fly in to where your enemy was to scoop up their dropped ammunition or you might find yourself without ammo when things ramp up. This is how the enemies end up becoming much more dangerous. Some will actively fly towards you when you’re near, and since you need to keep moving about to gather ammo, these guys are quite easy to trigger. Your shots are somewhat slow, just fast enough to feel effective but slow enough that you can’t just deal with every possible enemy near you, but the game does a great job of using color to delineate your shots, pick-ups, and enemy fire from each other so you should never be blindsided even when the fast enemies or ones with better weapons start appearing.
Speaking of pick-ups, the ones available are actually quite well curated to feel appropriately powerful. Your default laser does its job and can be supplemented by a screen-clearing big-bomb, but when a power-up pops out of a defeated enemy, it’s usually something that you will want to grab before it floats away, although there are reasons to choose one option over another. Two that do seem universally useful though are the shield and the protectors, these being the ways you can earn yourself an extra hit or surround yourself with bullets that can eliminate enemies who get in too close. The defensive power-ups are rare though, and even when you have a full defensive set-up things can still be tense as you know you’re never too far from instant elimination. The weapon power-ups are a satisfying batch though, and while they do fade with time, the time you spend with them feels like the proper punch up in ability that makes them worth flying into danger for. The bounce shot is crazy in its effectiveness, your bullets now ricocheting off the sides of the screen to make the play area hard for enemy ships to navigate. The big shot tears through multiple enemies as it flies, and rapid fire makes your shots come out much faster on top of whatever other weapon you might be using. Already these are pretty strong options, but more specialized uses come in the forms of things like the laser, a short range beam you can swing like a club to tear through enemies. Things like the boom shot and multi shot have similar limitations, both capable of dealing with enemy clusters well but not having the reach of bounce or big shots. Comparatively, two passive weapons might not seem likr much, but while the homing missiles routinely fire a high powered homing missile that can wipe a problem from the board without your involvement, the mines do admittedly seem like the weakest of the bunch, area denial useful but not worth the effort when you could have shot most targets with your basic gun instead. Still, any weapon pick-up is better than none most of the time and the game does take a while to get really generous with them, so gameplay often becomes not just about surviving, but finding the right openings to fly in and grab a weapon to give you an edge.
Even the mines can find incredible usefulness in one of the the three different modes of play though. The main featured mode that matches the small bit of plot is Protect Mother, where the large Mothership sits at the bottom of the screen and you not only need to keep yourself alive but have to protect it from incoming fire too. All the modes have a high score angle rather than a completion focused one so losing is inevitable, but it is possible to stay alive for a very long time with proper management of ammo, smart target prioritization, and a little help from the Mothership itself. If you shoot down enough enemies in a short amount of time you earn a combo. Once the combo gets going, the Mothership will start using its own cannons to protect itself, and if you press a button, you can have it provide helpful items like shields, ammo, or a random weapon. While survival is certainly important in this mode, the next big single-player mode is, in-fact, Survival. Not only is your ship always moving in this mode, but here the shooting is taken out of your hands as well, your gun automatically firing at a set rhythm and all you need to do is make sure it’s pointing at the right enemies. Asteroids contain plenty of ammo so you can keep going without draining your reserves, but only enemies will have the fuel you need to keep flying. If you run out of either it’s technically not over until you die, but surviving is definitely about taking the right risks to get ammo, fuel, and weapons. Both Survival and Protect Mother include co-op modes where two players work together, even able to keep going after one dies so long as the other survives until the other respawns, with each death making respawns take a while longer. However, if you’d rather have something closer to a space battle, To The Death splits the screen in half, giving both players a Mothership to assist while they try to survive longer than the other player. At first it may seem like two completely separate survival games, but by killing enemies you can build up a punishment meter and spend it to send in waves of missiles and other ill effect on your opponent’s side of the screen.
Depending on the mode, the weapon options really begin to find their homes. In Protect Mother, having a short range shot can be risky if you need to clear out an enemy that’s near to the mothership but on the other side of the screen, but these are great in Survival mode for keeping you safe and strong. Mines may seem too passive in most modes, but the small screen real estate in To The Death makes them perfect for keeping enemies at bay. Rapid Fire would usually be a great addition to any weapon too… save in Survival mode where it comes with the risk of draining your automatically firing ammo too quickly. The weapons seem excellently balanced to always be good no matter the mode but to have shifts in their usefulness and risk to match the play type that’s being emphasized, adding a required level of on-the-fly strategy on top of the skill needed to shoot down enemies quickly and efficiently.
If there is something that holds Super Mega Space Blaster Special back though, it will be your introduction to the game. The spaceship you pick to play with is incredibly important, each of them having a range of stats that impact their usefulness. Some can suck in pick-ups from farther away, others are faster but hard to manage while slower ones are easier to keep under control but often weaker for it. Even the strongest ships with built-in shields or more guns can often have drawbacks like odd turning, but most are useful for certain playstyles and most players will likely find a ship that suits them. The starting ship though gives a pretty bad impression for the game. Naturally the weakest, its low firepower and need to point the nosecone at whatever you wish to shoot definitely makes it the template for later ships, but it might be just a little too weak as the default. Luckily, you can quickly earn coins by lucky drops from enemies or completing the game’s challenges, and pretty early on you already have better options like a slower ship that is easier to keep alive and aim with. When you start getting to things like the Mantis or Weavil though, free aim becomes a factor, allowing you to move your ship freely while shooting in whatever direction you like instead of having the two tied to each other. It may take a bit for the game to click since you do need to work your way to these ships, but very quickly you will have a vessel fit for engaging with all the different mechanics properly.
The challenges are actually a very good way of adding progression to what otherwise might just be a score challenge game. Earning new ships is a great reward for completing them, and the challenges ramp up well with the unlock rate. They’re simple tasks like lasting a certain amount of time, shooting enemies quickly, scoring high, or maintaining a shield, but they scale well so that a player learning the game will gradually get pushed more and more to improve. This extra layer of progression gives something more tangible to shoot for than high point tallies, and they do get rather difficult in the last few challenges, like one that asks you to last five minutes in any mode. The short innings of the game already make it great for getting right back in and trying again for these challenges and high scores, so the fact 5 minutes is on the long end accurately portrays that this is a game where quick action is constant and death is never far off, while easy retry options make it so that you can get back on the horse rather than dwelling on a loss.
THE VERDICT: Super Mega Space Blaster Special is shockingly good. The style of old school space shooters has been refined and evolved here into something that both captures the joy of quick score-chasing sessions while also providing progression challenges and unlockables to further motivate the player to push forward. The weapon design is excellent, every weapon feeling powerful without being gamebreaking and having their moments where they work best, the three different modes of play ensuring things don’t get stale as you can always jump between them to have your priorities and strategies shift around. Super Mega Space Blaster Special is remarkably well-balanced for the most part, only the rocky start with weak ships hurting it as the player needs some time to truly embrace the way the limitations draw out a more active, tense, and overall exciting space shooter experience.
And so, I give Super Mega Space Blaster Special for PC…
A GREAT rating. Perhaps the only way I can accurately show how rough the beginning of the game is by saying that this game essentially went from potentially Bad to really Great all based on things opening up with the better equipped star ships, and thankfully you aren’t kept from them for long. The constant movement, the ammo limits, the mothership or fuel… everything that seems too much with a weaker ship suddenly makes everything thrilling when you’re controlling a more capable ship, and these elements all lead to to the tension and active involvement that makes this space shooter easy to get addicted to. The challenges and unlockables give you something to always work towards as well besides just wanting to get on the leaderboards, and once the right ships are in the star field, the balance on enemy types and weapon types keeps things enjoyable without ever crossing the line into a cakewalk.
Super Mega Space Blaster Special is the kind of space shooter that’s easy to come back to later while still providing some goals to shoot for in a first playthrough. It’s got some unusual but appreciated touches like different AI voices to say the power-ups you find, its modes all offer something uniquely different that make good use of the underlying universal mechanics, and while it does take a bit to find its footing, once it gets going, it establishes an incredibly appealing style of play that has just enough strategy that it remains accessible and involved without becoming overcomplicated.