Blasto (Arcade)

The 1978 arcade game Blasto is an interesting example of how simply adding a second player can greatly change even a pretty fundamental concept. On your own, Blasto is a game about wiping out every single dot on screen with a spaceship, a battle to make use of your limited time to get as close to perfection as possible. However, if another player hops on the cabinet at the same time, suddenly there’s more to the action than just dot elimination, the score that more tracked your progress before now more important to understand because you can earn points by attacking the other player or you can prevent them from scoring by snagging the dots they’re after. Finding a gameplay style that works in both forms while still feeling different was certainly an impressive feat for a game made in a time where many arcade games were either solely based around multiplayer or had alternating play if they were trying to provide a single player experience as well, but consistent quality is a different beast than being truly exceptional.

In a single player round of Blasto you play as a space ship that won’t be flying through the stars but instead shooting its way through a rather large mine field. Able to move up, down, left, and right, you move a single space at a time but much of the screen when the round starts will be filled with dots that block your path. A single shot will destroy these dots, the game referring to your attack as a Gremmaray in its flyers and arcade manual but that odd invented designation affords it no special abilities. You can only fire one at a time, the next shot available as soon as the last one hits a dot or the screen’s borders, so trying to be close to your targets will allow you to fire more rapidly. However, get too close and you risk getting caught in the radius of a mine. Mines are scattered around in place of certain dots when a round starts and their placement is mildly random. When shot a mine will damage every spot in a single space radius around it, this less about the danger it poses to the player and more about either clearing out more dots in a time efficient manner or setting off a chain reaction as nearby mines easily wipe out a chunk of the field.

 

During solo play the only goal is to clean up as much of the field as you can in 90 seconds or 60 if the cabinet owner tinkers with the settings, but there is a bit more direction to the play than just trying to clear away all the dots. In your first run on a new credit, you can earn a free game so long as you manage to shoot every mine in the field before time runs out. The second round will restore all the dots and jumble around mine placement but it won’t allow you to earn any more free games, but it is a nice way to help players who are getting gradually better at clearing more and more of the screen with practice. Interestingly enough, while all the action is set on a single screen, the mine field fills the entirety of it, meaning the time and score display are actually positioned below and between some of the dots you’ll need to shoot. While you can’t drive your spaceship through the timer or score counter, you can fire through it, and if you are playing two player that actually produces a second barrier since the other person’s score display is now an obstacle to movement as well.

The basic single player version of Blasto is a battle to get better at clearing the screen in a short amount of time with only minor alterations between attempts, the process entertaining for a short bit but mostly enticing because it is quite possible to clear away much of the screen and get lured into replaying the game by the idea you could have potentially got it all. It’s a simple appeal, but when a second player joins in for simultaneous play, the aim changes quite a bit. Points that used to just mark how close you got to clearing the screen that round now can be earned by shooting down the other player’s ship. If a player is blown up both players will be set back to their starting points and are able to continue the round, and if you’re strategic you can try and plan kill shots to deny players dot rich areas and send them back to an opening spot that was emptied of valuable targets earlier. You can still cover most of the screen fairly quickly once enough dots are gone, but having a player you’re competing against will necessitate new approaches like actually being careful around mines since your opponent might shoot one to mess you up. At the same time, merely clearing the screen is no longer the goal, and the fact that mines and regular dots are worth different amounts of points becomes more important. It’s a small injection of strategy but enough to alter the way the game is played, pure productivity no longer the main aim.

 

The music playing during a round of Blasto is a bit obnoxious unfortunately, probably something better drowned out by a bustling arcade than heard at full volume. The panicked rapid beeping is perhaps a suitable fit for a game where every second counts in both modes despite its earsplitting racket, the dots placed surprisingly well in regards to how long it would conceivably take a focused player to come close to clearing them all without it feeling unachievable. Once the mines are gone and the dot numbers are low it does lose some of its energy and the sabotage element in two player is more of an interesting wrinkle to a person’s plans than a tense competition thanks to the ships being maneuverable enough to often slip away from obvious incoming player aggression, but keeping success within reach in both play styles makes Blasto an arcade game you’re likely to at least play a few times before you’ve felt you’ve had your fill of its lean offerings.

THE VERDICT: When playing alone Blasto is a game about clearing the field as quickly as you can, planning movement well in relation to the mine placement to make the most use of your shots to hopefully near that goal of clearing away all the dots. When competing with someone else though, the score earned from each shot becomes more important and the clearing of the dot maze can serve new purposes like giving you routes to reach your opponent or deny them the chance to shoot a good cluster of high value mines. Directly fighting is a niche option but the simplicity of the action means any little addition still adds a nice new consideration, but the dot shooting does feel like a few more complications could have added more consistent excitement to the affair.

 

And so, I give Blasto for arcade machines…

An OKAY rating. Blasto feels a bit like it slinks around the definitions of certain genres that would fit it well. It’s not quite a maze game even though you need to work your way around a screen filled with things you are meant to interact with, and while you are moving space by space and firing limited shots it isn’t a tank game because you’re shown the two player ships are two varieties of spaceships. Why such distinction might matter is because its areas for improvement are ones easily tied to maze game concepts, and the variety added by having another player is essentially adding in the element that enemies might usually add to a game with such a focus on clearing the screen. In solo play you are unopposed and the explosions of the mines is barely a worry so it’s more a matter of seeing how fast you can complete a task rather than the task demanding reactive or evolving play. In two player though you have an antagonistic force that can upset your plans with active attacks that keep you moving instead of simply grabbing up dots you’d want before the other player can get to them. It tends to feel more like a race than a battle due to the limited effectiveness of combat but it still allows for more variation between rounds than a light shuffling of mine positions. Having the solo play be so focused on doing the best you can doesn’t hurt the experience necessarily, but Blasto likely could have had more legs if there were some truly impactful variables beyond the absence or presence of a second player.

 

Blasto would receive a port to the TI-99/4A home computer that would have more tolerable music, more features like settings for game speed and how dense the mine field is, and perhaps most notably it replaced the spaceships with tanks that could conceivably be driving through a minefield. However, the only true danger being another player’s presence still makes it feel like Blasto is a game that focuses more on the clear visual progress of wiping a screen clear of all targets rather than providing the exciting volatility more danger could have added to the experience. The idea behind Blasto’s action is still sound enough to make it work for a few rounds though, especially since you can refresh the concept a little by adding another player to the dot-blasting challenge.