BLAST WIND





Blast Wind, like Hyper Duel, is a hard to find and VERY pricey son of a gun. It is a vertical shmup. This game is an oddity in the sense that back in 2002 or so, it used to run for about 30 dollars. These days it's not uncommon to see copies topping out at around 95 bucks. I guess the scarity of this game finally caught up.

I read a lot of critism on Blast Wind in the past. But there was always a minority who really enjoyed this game. Even though I knew it was going to cost me some odd 70, 80 dollars, I wanted this game badly nonetheless.

The game opens with a very distinctive intro, you can tell TechnoSoft was going for a different atmosphere. It almost felt like Gun Frontier's odd-ball atmosphere. Pictures of barren wastelands and a couple nude back body shots... very distinct in style.

You have 2 guns and a bomb. One gun fires ahead and the other fires forward and backward homing style. You also have a helper.

Stage 1 - Iron Skyscraper
Boss - Strat Guard

Stage 2 - City of Night
Boss - Gamma Ray

Stage 3 - Atlantiss
Boss - Sodom

Stage 4 - Earth Breaker
Boss - Ostragle

Stage 5 - Dimension Cave
Boss - Drad

Final - Gorn LastBattle
Boss - Gorn himself

The stages are nice, especially Dimension Cave with its wicked flowing lava and sharp red hues all over your TV screen. Last stage is impressive too as you fly over a countryscape as horses scurry beneath you. Plenty of towers to blow up and collect goodies from.

Blast Wind employs a unique system where you can decide which path to take. In each stage, you can go left or right by deciding to press a switch, or not. The result -- different enemy patterns and a different end boss. Pretty good stuff. You definitely want to see (and conquer) all the cool bosses in this game.

The last boss starts out as a huge ship, but then goes into a 2nd animalistic form. I won't spoil it for you but let's just say it's pretty damn cool.

Overall I enjoyed Blast Wind. Worth the 80 bucks it goes for? I dunno, but hey if you got the means and are a fan of the genre -- why not. It's a fun, mindless shooter. It comes with TechnoSoft's traditional ace presentational style and possesses some decent tunes.

IMO not as good as Hyper Duel, but still good.