Blaster Master Zero, a great PC port by Inti Creates, developers of the Azure Striker Gunvolt franchise

[AnotherGills 25]

Blaster Master Zero, initially a title released exclusively for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS in 2017, has finally launched on Steam, with a promotional launch price of $8.99 USD. After June 21^st, this will go up to $9.99 USD.

Inti Creates developed this self-published re-imagining of the Sunsoft NES classic, Blaster Master.

On release day, Blaster Master Zero's PC version is leaps and bounds ahead of their first foray into PC development, Azure Striker Gunvolt, featuring 60 FPS gameplay and fully remappable controller support.

When Azure Striker Gunvolt launched on Steam in 2015, it was marred with a frame rate cap of 30 FPS, random peformance drops unrelated to hardware, and minimal controller support. However, the game was slowly patched over the years, removing the performance drops and adding more robust controller support and mapping.

In 2017, Azure Striker Gunvolt was re-released on the Nintendo Switch, with a locked frame rate of 60 FPS. While this angered many PC gamers who had purchased the title, Inti Creates did not provide any comment on the matter.

Eventually, in May 2018, Inti Creates released a patch for the Steam version that increased the frame rate to 60 FPS, giving it parity with the Switch version. 60 FPS support was clamored for before the Steam version even launched, and after nearly three years, the developers finally implemented it.

In the present, Inti Creates announced that their upcoming project, "Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX", formerly announced to be releasing exclusively for the Nintendo Switch, would also be receiving a simultaneous Steam release on September 26, 2019. Along with their recent releases of "Gal*Gun 2" and "Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon", Inti Creates is clearly making a stronger push with their IPs to the PC platform.

PC players are being properly respected by Inti Creates, and this fully-functioning release shows it.

[Andytizer 269]

Good on Inti Games for making a proper PC port of their Switch/3DS game. It's a breath of fresh air to see Japanese developers make proper PC ports of their games where in the past we received so many poor ports (e.g. Dark Souls 2012).

Blaster Master Zero looks like quite a blast from the past. Not quite my cup of tea but gameplay/graphics look modernised whilst retaining the feel of the original gameplay. This is the NES Blaster Master from 1988:

This is the trailer for Blaster Master Zero:

 

[Luigi master89 12]

I can't help but feel like Japanese developers/publishers are exempt from the same scrutiny that western companies are consistently under.  Japanese game is shipped (almost always many years after the console version) with a 30FPS lock, people just thumbs up and say "it's not important for this game ayway", Western game doesn't feature an FoV slider and the steam page becomes Charlottesville.  The console versions already did 60FPS, it's telling when people are excited that it will also feature 60FPS on PC.  Properly respected my foot, miss me with that happy fecal matter of releasing this game two years later.  This is just a cash grab, like most Japanese ports.

[AnotherGills 25]

29 minutes ago, Luigi master89 said:

I can't help but feel like Japanese developers/publishers are exempt from the same scrutiny that western companies are consistently under.  Japanese game is shipped (almost always many years after the console version) with a 30FPS lock, people just thumbs up and say "it's not important for this game ayway", Western game doesn't feature an FoV slider and the steam page becomes Charlottesville.  The console versions already did 60FPS, it's telling when people are excited that it will also feature 60FPS on PC.  Properly respected my foot, miss me with that happy fecal matter of releasing this game two years later.  This is just a cash grab, like most Japanese ports.

In this case, the original Azure Striker Gunvolt was released on the 3DS with a 30FPS cap, and the PC version that launched a year later was capped at 30FPS accordingly. While I do find that to be lazy, the console versions (at the time of launch) didn't "already do 60FPS".

[Luigi master89 12]

When I was talking about 60FPS, I was talking about Blaster Master.  And just like how ASG was capped at 30FPS on 3DS and then PC, BMZ is capped at 60FPS on console as well as PC.  Japanese PC ports are only as good as the console versions in many cases, but the staggered release is enough of a penalty to theoretically consider the PC release inferior.