Fighting all our future wars. Go get ’em, boys!
PLAYERS: 1
PUBLISHER: Jaleco
DEVELOPER: Jaleco
GENRE: Action/Puzzle
RELEASE DATE: December 1988
Welcome to Robo Warrior, a little known Bomberman spin-off that tries to inject more action into the destroy-everything formula. ZED is your robo warrior, a laser-spitting, bomb-dropping, chaw-chewing humanoid. If you’ve played Bomberman, you know what to expect: explode any barriers in your way, including various cute (but evil) creatures, and collect weapon upgrades. Any Bomberman veteran will tell you that the main series slowly eases you into each game, but Robo Warrior makes no concessions. Fend off hordes of flying enemies from the right side of the screen, while bombing through layers of trees and rocks. Your health meter is constantly depleting. Get hit by an enemy and it decreases a little more. Get hit by one of your own bombs and half your life is gone. Two bombs and you’re dead (sometimes you get trapped by your bombs too – thanks Hudson Soft!). There are energy tanks you can use to replenish your health, along with unlimited continues (I think they’re unlimited – they didn’t run out during my playthrough). Unfortunately, you only have one life to get through each incredibly difficult stage. The environments in each stage will continue to repeat until you find the chalice. Also, you won’t be able to exit the stage until you find the key. In the meantime, you’re bombing every nook and cranny in search of those two valuable pieces of progression, while nasty enemies continue to bombard you and your life steadily lowers. Compared to the relaxed pace of Bomberman, Robo Warrior is tense and frustrating.
C-
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3 replies on “#529 – Robo Warrior”
I was really curious what your thoughts on this was going to be. This one has always stood out in my memories – not because I was overly fond of it, but because it was one of my first purchased NES games. I got a lot of my games for Christmas or my birthday, and I got to rent a new game almost every weekend from the video stores nearby.
This one had gotten a small preview in a magazine before it released (I want to say Nintendo Power?) where they talked it up quite a bit, so when it came out I bought it. Tough game, very frustrating for the reasons you mentioned above (not to mention when you go underground and run out of light before finding an exit – a frustration experience as well!). Bosses were ridiculously hard at times. I did beat it, but I was the only one of my friends who did – but most of my friends didn’t care for the game much at all.
Yeah, I really wanted to like it because I love Bomberman. It was hard to put into words why Robo Warrior doesn’t succeed. I think because it strives to be more of an action game, but in reality, it’s the same basic gameplay as Bomberman. As an experiment, Robo Warrior is interesting – that’s about all the praise I can give it.
The GB sequel (titled Blaster Master Jr. here for some reason), was a lot better with more open ended stages and large, challenging bosses. You still needed to know when to use lanterns though so you could screw yourself over later on if you ran out.