malvasia bianca

I had a lot of fun playing Rare games in the Nintendo 64 era, so I was really glad to have the Rare Replay anthology appear. Of course, a lot of Rare’s games are well-designed examples of genres that are now familiar to us; but there’s also Blast Corps.

I still haven’t seen anything like Blast Corps, it turns out. And I still like the core gameplay idea of smashing buildings to clear a path for an oncoming missile carrier, I still like smashing the rest of the buildings once the carrier has gone through, I still like exploring for secrets, I still like using a range of vehicles. Some vehicles I like more than others, and this time, with more games available to play than I had when I first played it, I stopped after going through the medium-difficulty levels, instead of continuing on in an attempt to master (or even get marginally competent at) Backlash. But even there, I’m glad Backlash is in the game, its presence makes the game richer.

So yeah, this game has aged just fine. I would be happy if I never had to hear the phrase “you’re just trying to impress me” again, and unfortunately the port freezes significantly more often than I’d like. (If you hold down the menu button for long enough then you’ll be able to get back to the Rare Replay menu, so at least you can quickly relaunch the game, but nonetheless, it can be infuriating.) But I’m very glad to have spent a few more evenings and weekends with it.