Of course I love Blaster Master, I played it to completion back in the day.

Okay, so it turns out there's a Game Genie code to activate the debuggers' stage select mode. That will make practice less tedious. I made it to level 4 and after spending a couple credits trying to get through it, I finally made it to the boss. And I immediately walked right off the left ledge. On my last life. I was a little fatigued at that point so I turned it off and later used the stage select mode to restart level 4. Made it to the boss on the second credit, beat him without problem and now I'm learning stage 5. About three credits later, made it to the 5th boss once, touched it and it murdered me. Fatigued, I put it down and I don't have time to play it until Monday.

This game is called RAF World in Japan, and I think the prototype was called "Rough", so RAF = ra fu, romanji for "rough", so "Rough World" is a rather appropriate title. But I'm slowly closing in on it...