Blast Corps

Developer: Rare Ltd. Publisher: Nintendo

Released: February 28, 1997 Rated: E 8/10

Nothing like starting as you intend to go on, Rare! As a company handed the reins to some of Nintendo’s most important titles in the mid-‘90s, Rare was certainly shaping up to be a crucial development partner heading into the release of the N64. Though Killer Instinct Gold was their first game with an N64 release, Blast Corps is really their debut as the former is just a port of the KI2 arcade release. And while it’s quite a ways down the list for most in terms of Rare’s output, that really only shows what an incredible run they had, kicked off with one of the most original titles you’ll ever see from this era.

A truly genre-bending experience, Blast Corps takes elements of driving, puzzle, and action games to produce an addicting and surprisingly varied gameplay experience. The concept, detailed in a verbose set of slides available from the pause menu, involves a runaway truck carrying a nuclear warhead and a demolitions team tasked with clearing a path for it to avoid its premature detonation. Through various locations you’ll commandeer the eclectic fleet of the Blast Corps to raze literally everything you can to the ground so the truck can carry along its merry way.

Mid-level changes between vehicles feature one of the goofiest walk cycles in gaming for your engineer

That’s really the whole game, each level has the same base concept: clear the path, and as much as possible, do it fast, efficiently, and thoroughly to earn medals for your performance in each mission. It sounds repetitive, but the genius of it is in the array of vehicles with which you’ll incur your destruction. They’re all quite cleverly designed, and have their own controls and feel. The eight vehicles include a low-riding tricycle that shoots missiles, a dump truck that drifts to back that ass up into its target, and a few mechs, like the one that somersaults its way through buildings and other obstacles.

Each vehicle controls a bit differently, so there’s essentially an introductory level or two to get you accustomed to using it before further design sees you executing more intricately scripted sequences with each one. You might be moving one vehicle into place, completing a bridge to get your next one across a gap and finish out the level before your timer runs out and ravages the surrounding landscape, or moving boxes of explosives around to the desired destruction point before they go off prematurely. It’s a very tense and addicting gameplay loop, even if it’s the only one on offer here.

Additional mission goals to achieve higher ranks include destroying additional buildings and freeing straggling citizens from across the map, I assume for extraction to an area that wasn’t just completely leveled.

It’s understandable to think that Blast Corps is a bit simple, really. It only has one concept, albeit with a handful of ways to execute it. That’s true of most puzzle games, though, which Blast Corps certainly has in its DNA. And like a lot of puzzle games, there isn’t much to look at or stick around for if the concept doesn’t grab you early on. The visuals are something like an even less interesting array of landscape viewed through an isometric viewpoint, sort of like you’d eventually see in Army Men: Air Attack minus the shrunken down gimmick. Most of the sound design, meanwhile, is notable just for its quirkiness. Like the foreman (or whatever his title would be) that berates you for falling behind in his one grumbling soundbite. The music, though, is pretty solid, made up mostly of upbeat but industrial-flavored fare made consistent by the excellent Graeme Norgate.

Made by a small team within Rare based off of a concept suggested by company co-founder Tim Stamper involving building demolition, Blast Corps leads the way for Rare perhaps not in scope, but in creativity. It’s a game everyone should at least try, if only because it’s so hard to convey exactly what it is or what it’s trying to do by any other means. It’s a game that gives off massive vibes of being made during a game jam, if it were made today, and I hope that’s enough of a specific vibe to convince you to try it, if the Rare logo wasn’t doing the talking for me already.

Continuing Legacy

Unusually for a title developed by Rare, Blast Corps never really comes up again, but I would chalk that up to being simply overshadowed by the hit parade the company would embark on starting with Goldeneye over the summer. Included on Rare Replay and Nintendo Switch Online, it’s certainly not forgotten as it’s at least included alongside other great titles from Rare, but typically as something to be discovered rather than a selling point.