Wii Virtual Console Review: Blazing Lazers

Developer: Hudson Soft/Compile
Publisher: NEC
Console: TurboGrafx 16
Release Date: 1989

The Japanese version of Blazing Lazers is based on a film called Gunhead, but the English version, the one I played, has absolutely no story. The intro shows your ship shooting at a gigantic spacecraft, and that’s it. It’s a shooter, so who cares about plot?

Your ship looks very crappy, maybe even worst than the one from the original Asteroids. It’s just not cool-looking. The enemies are even worst. Rotating round things, possessed tiles from the floor below, floating brains, metallic objects that barely resemble jets, and other shit. The environments are boring, because empty space is boring. After a few stages you finally get some variety, but it’s nothing too interesting or original. There’s not a lot of animation either, as most enemies are stiff blocks. You won’t have time to care, though, since you’ll be too busy avoiding all the crap they shoot at you.

This is your average upward-scrolling 2D shooter. Fire at anything that moves, avoid bright colored balls (bullets?) and collect anything with giant letters or Roman numbers on it. You can move in eight directions, but the way the screen scrolls as you move left or right is very awkward and makes avoiding certain enemy bullets harder than it should be. Power-ups include additional mini-ships that circle your ship and fire at enemies, shields, and the ability to shoot backwards. You have weapon upgrades that shoot curvy lasers, homing missiles, multi-directional wave beams, and a homing snake-like green energy laser thing. You are constantly upgrading your weapon, like every three seconds, and most of the time you end up with one you don’t like or downright hate. Thankfully you can hold the fire button to constantly shoot. I really, really hate having to tap the button every time I want to shoot in other shooters. There are also bombs that don’t cover much space but deal massive damage.



The first few stages are so easy you’ll think you’re the king of shooters, but then you’ll be twitching and swearing at the screen. In level 5 there are some Easter Island heads, ripped off from Gradius, that shoot so many green starfish at you there’s almost no way of avoiding them. I hate those fucking stone heads! If you live long enough to reach 8 you’ll be bombarded by gay-colored bubbles of death throughout the entire goddamn stage. It’s fucking impossible to avoid all the shit that’s out to kill you. Level 9 is the last stage and here you have to fight some of the previous bosses. For some reason it seems easier the second time around. When you finally reach the last boss it turns out to be a giant woman that shoots missiles from her armpits. What the hell where the developers smoking?

Don’t expect awesome music or sound effects like in R-Type here. The music is so boring I acquired immunity to it and can no longer hear it. The sound effects are what you’d expect from a random 80’s shooter. Nothing spectacular or horrible.

Although certainly not the best shooter out there it’s way better than Air Zonk. There’s enough challenge to keep you busy but not many rewards. A two player more would have really helped.

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