Crazy Blaster (C64)

The Future Was 8 Bit (TFW8B) is pleased to announce the physical cartridge release of Crazy Blaster, the latest Commodore 64 title developed by Mika ‘Misfit’ Keranen.

Added to the TFW8B 9.99 range of cartridges, Crazy Blaster requires you to guide your spaceship across many planet levels to destroy all outer-space enemies and rescue stranded cosmonauts.

The game play on offer within Crazy Blaster is a mixture between arcade platforming and a shoot’em up game. Pushing up on the joystick will result in thrust being applied to your spacecraft allowing you to navigate from one platform to another. However, the ability to thrust is not infinite, meaning that you will need to apply multiple thrusts to be able to successfully pull off the longer jumps

Once you eliminate all the aliens and rescue all the cosmonauts, you need to return safely to your base before you can move on to the next level. You will want to do all this before the timer expires as once the clock ticks down to zero, faster and more dangerous enemies will appear and hone in directly on you.

To help you with your mission, the game features a number of bonuses such as an extra life for a time bonus or extra shooting speed as part of the fire bonus.

Crazy Blaster excels in a couple of things; the first being able to stretch your temperament to its most extreme level to the extent where you just want to scream in the agony of frustration and the second being that its so addictive in that you find yourself ‘having one more go’ over and over again.

The fourth level, Planet Galactuca, had me on my knees as time after time, I failed to pull off what looked to be an impossible jump. It wasn’t until I contacted Misfit about this that I realised that I was playing the game too much like a traditional platformer and needed to adopt a more subtle approach which required me to apply a series of short thrusts in order to get across very large gaps (best way to describe this approach is to imagine you are trying to guide across a feather with nothing but your breath).

While graphically, the game is somewhat rudimentary and some of the hit detection mechanism is a little dubious, the level designs are interesting and the game controls are responsive allowing you to guide your space craft around with a bit of fluidity once you understand how to best apply the thrust mechanic. This doesn’t stop the game from being quite challenging however, so if you are one to give up easily then you might want to look elsewhere. 

However, if a challenge is what you are looking for then you are sure to enjoy the sheer addictive nature of trying to overcome Crazy Blaster…just make sure no kids are around to hear the myriad of expletives that you will hurl at the game while playing.

To order a physical cartridge of Crazy Blaster, head on over to TFW8B and secure your copy for £19.99.