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Paradise is Still 19 Million Miles Away - Blaster


On 05/10/2019 at 04:06 PM by Matt Snee

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Blaster is the coolest looking arcade game of all time. Period. While I've never seen it in the wild, I discovered it through the MAME emulator back in the late nineties, and have been in love with it ever since. It's sort of a sequel to Robotron 2084, and was designed by Eugene Jarvis. It's basically a forward scrolling space shooter which would eventually inspire games like Space Harrier in its style. 

It's full of color and geometric shapes that are both dazzling and disorienting. Honestly, there are few games that look quite like this, and maybe that''s why I like it so much. 

There are twenty levels, each standing for a million miles of distance between you and paradise. If you lose the game on level one, it would say, "Paradise is Still 19 Million Miles Away." Well, one day I found a cheat code for it because I wanted to see paradise. And I did. Apparently paradise is made up of low-bit topless girls. 

As a curiosity, there aren't a lot of games quite like Blaster. I would love to play an actual machine, but I'm sure they are very rare. 


 

Comments

Super Step Contributing Writer

05/10/2019 at 05:14 PM

It's like Star Fox if I could tell what each object was individually.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

05/12/2019 at 11:00 AM

ha ha, yeah it's a little hard on the eyes!

Super Step Contributing Writer

05/12/2019 at 03:10 PM

Star Fox is a lot harder on the eyes than this is what I was trying to say. I can actually make out the shapes in the video you posted thanks to the bold color palette. Star Fox, not so much. lol 

Matt Snee Staff Writer

05/12/2019 at 03:23 PM

I can’t remember. It’s been a long time since I played Star Fox. Seemed high tech at the time though, ha ha.

Cary Woodham

05/11/2019 at 07:20 PM

I had never heard of this game either, until I played it on one of the early Midway arcade collections.  This particular collection had an interview with Eugene Jarvis and that's where he said it was kind of a sequel/spinoff to Robotron.

Another interesting story he told was about the cabinet that Blaster came in.  It was a large cylinder plastic cabinet that you could interchange games with.  But since it was also plastic, it had a tendancy to warp.  And when they got a complaint from an arcade owner that a warped plastic cabinet caused a screen to shoot out of it and hit the DK Jr. machine, they decided not to make anymore.

I did see one of those plastic cabinets with Blaster inside when I visited a traveling arcade museum when I was in college.  After hearing that story, though, I was a little afraid to play it!  :)

Matt Snee Staff Writer

05/12/2019 at 11:01 AM

Damn, that's insane. I've never heard of that. Probably a little dangerous! Still, I would like to see it in real life. 

KnightDriver

05/13/2019 at 07:38 PM

Makes me think of Robotron and Zaxxon mashed together. 

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