Bazooka Blitzkrieg FI

SNES A Day 135: Bazooka Blitzkrieg

bazooka_blitzkrieg_us_box_art

Approximate Release Date: December 31, 1992
Genre: Rail shooter
Developer: Bandai
Publisher: Bandai

It’s rare that a new Super Scope game comes around, but Bazooka Blitzkrieg feels totally unnecessary.

There’s almost nothing this game does better than Battle Clash or X-Zone. And I’m saying “almost nothing” to be generous. Bazooka Blitzkrieg lacks a reason to play it. The bland graphics aren’t anything special, and having some visual pizzazz might have done something to help distinguish it from the competition.

In other Super Scope games, you are able to mitigate most damage. Either you blow up enemies before they have a chance to fire at you or you can shoot down their projectiles before they hit you. I really like that aspect of those other games because it rewards skillful play and not memorization of where and when enemies will pop out. Most enemies in Bazooka Blitzkrieg will damage you if you don’t shoot them immediately. I only bring it up because the game is deviating from my favorite aspect of the peripheral’s games and makes it feel like just another light gun game. It doesn’t help that the enemies are mostly humanoid robots and helicopters, enemy types you’ve seen in many games before and after.

Bazooka Blitzkrieg‘s one deviation from the normal and expected is the multiplayer mode. Boot Camp is a mix of a training and a score attack mode where up to four people pass around the Super Scope and attempt to earn the highest score in the levels from the main campaign. It’s not bad, and the hot-seat gameplay is the only way to do a multiplayer Super Scope game, but it would have been nice to have the levels changed from the single player.

The worst games to write about are the ones that don’t try. I would be a lot more positive about Bazooka Blitzkrieg if I could point to any aspect about the game as being above-average. As it is, the words I used earlier in the review – unnecessary, bland – are the most apt words to describe the experience.

Tomorrow: Egad, Gods!

Leave a Reply