General Overview

Save the world from utter, total annihilation by destroying absolutely every goddamn thing in the path of a truck that’s gone out of control and whatever the hell else you’d like as well…wait a minute…

Available For: N64
Developer(s): Rare
Publisher(s): Nintendo
Release Date: 1997
Rating: K-A (Everyone)
Archetype: Action, Puzzle, Racing

Full Article

The story for Blast Corps is a brief and utterly contradicting, but still awesome one: an automated truck carrying nuclear missiles has apparently decided “fuck brakes actually” and is set on a permanent forward march. If it touches even one tiny, teeny little fucking thing, MOTHERFUCKING NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST. Your job? Fuck up every little (and gigantic) thing in its path.

In many ways, I look at this game as a precursor to Katamari Damacy (though a better precursor to KD would be Pacman, but that’s neither here not there). The objective is simple, but grows far more complex and taxing over time. There are a wide variety of vehicles available to you and you don’t exactly get to choose what you will be using half the time.

Vehicles range from trains to race cars to giant fucking robots to dump trucks to bulldozers to all kinds of crazy shit. Some of them have nitro, others have actual close or ranged attacks, and still others specialize in things like side-swiping via drifting. In some stages, you’ll not only have to clear paths, but MAKE them via cranes and whatever else.

The game gets unbelievably difficult after a while, but there are a few things that keep you going. For starters, the music is top notch. I can’t think of even one track you can’t rock out to within the game, but then again, that’s a testament to Rare and how fucking great they were back in the 90s, especially on the Nintendo 64. Seriously, have a quick look at their profile and you’ll see what I mean.

The graphics are…well, they’re dated by today’s standards, certainly, but especially for the time they were pretty damn good. Controls are nice and tight on all vehicles…except one. It’s this one vehicle that was the dread of any gamer out there that played this game and that was the fucking dump truck. Look, if you’ve never played the game, what would you expect a dump truck to be able to do?

I mean, this is a game about destruction, so a good guess would be loading shit up and dumping it on stuff or whatever, but you’d be wrong. No no, THIS was the side-swiping vehicle and let me tell you, it fucking SUCKED. Besides the first level that you played with this goddamn abomination, it seriously just wasn’t fun to play with. At all.

I know I’m really rambling on this, but you have to understand just how much ass this thing sucked. It nearly robbed me of the experience. This game could be ridiculously challenging at times, often not even allowing you to get close to the objects that needed destroyed and having to jerry rig shit to blow up remotely in very specific fashions (hmmm…kinda sounds like Angry Birds) so it could get through, and yet I STILL consider the dump truck to be the roughest experience in the game.

So what were the most awesome experiences? Well, I wasn’t a big fan of the racing, but then I’m not a racer. However, I did thoroughly enjoy messing stuff up with the robots and just climbing in the standard, tricked out bulldozer and blowing through buildings like they were paper mache. And again, the music. Again, I realize I’m mentioning this constantly, but just have a listen, seriously.

I suppose the two saddest aspects to this are that Rare no longer makes quality shit and therefore, there’s really no possibility of a sequel. If you don’t believe me when I say they can’t make good games anymore, well, just consider this. Rare was responsible for games like Battletoads, Donkey Kong Country, Solar Jetman, Snake Rattle ‘n’ Roll…then went on to make games like Blast Corps, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini…and what’s the first thing they do when they break off from Nintendo: Grabbed by the Ghoulies.

Oh, but don’t worry! They also made Perfect Dark Zero, a shoddy remake of Conker, Nuts & Bolts, Kameo, and Viva Pinata! I actually kinda like VP, but the others can go die in a fire. I honestly think that without the massive partnership they had with Nintendo, they became a lifeless shell of what they once were and that’s truly a sad thing.

Even still, going back we can see, as evidenced by Blast Corps alone, that at one time a strong company stood, ready as all get out to prove to the world that the Nintendo 64 was BOSS…and if any company could do it, it was Rare. Blast Corps is a perfect example of taking a wacky, nonsensical idea and attaching as many good elements as possible to it while retaining top notch game design.

Buy it here!