NES box art for Power Blade, the cover of NEStalgia episode 451

451 · Power Blade

▶ Game info

GenreAction

ReleasedMarch 1991

SeasonSeason 7

DevelopersTaito Natsume

PublisherTaito

October 23, 2026 · 48 min · transcript available

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About the game

Power Blade, known in Japan as Power Blazer , is an action platform video game published by Taito for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in Japan on April 20, 1990, North America in March 1991, and in Europe on January 23, 1992 . The game spawned a sequel, Power Blade 2, released in 1992.

From Wikipedia: Power Blade (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Natsume built this for Taito, and it is the same studio that later made Harvest Moon. In Japan it was Power Blazer, a year earlier, and it looks like a Mega Man clone. The American version is a full graphical redo, so it plays more like a Konami action game. You are Nova, a muscle guy in a tank top throwing a boomerang at robots in the year 2191. After a run of games that fought us, it was a relief to pick one up and just play.

What works

Pick up and play. The controls are tight, the jump responds, and you can aim in eight directions. We never had to dig through the manual mid-level.
The power meter. Spam the boomerang and each throw goes a shorter distance, so you are nudged to be deliberate without being locked out. In Power Blazer you had to wait for the meter to refill, and the enemies could still crowd you. We are glad the American version dropped that.
The suit is a health bar. Collect enough and Nova puts on the Power Blade armor. It absorbs three hits, and the blade then fires a beam that goes through walls and reaches far past the boomerang. It melts quickly, and sometimes we couldn't tell when we got hit.
Stages that signal their branches. Each level makes you find a contact for an ID card before the exit door will open. The ladders and forks tell you where you could go next, which is a big improvement over last week's game.

What doesn't

The contacts are a letdown. The intro walks through who each one is and what they do, and in the stage each is a person flailing their arms who hands over a card. We expected one of them to be the bad guy. Reaching a door with no card is still a bad way to learn the rule.
Nova looks silly. He has the run cycle of a man with a wedgie, and the armor, which covers everything, makes him less cool than the tank top.
The bosses. The bee boss gets easier as you break the hives, and the final boss is MODOK with a robot body.
Death by ladder. It is easy to die by jumping next to one.

Odds and ends

The box art got Mike Winterbauer a legal complaint over looking too much like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he answered with a photo of himself in the same pose. Kinuyo Yamashita, who composed the first Castlevania, wrote the score. The game made the cover of Nintendo Power, ran on PlayChoice-10 cabinets, and landed at number 82 on IGN's top NES games. You can skip four of the seven bosses by detonating a grenade as the boss door closes. A sequel, Power Blade 2, comes later.

The bottom line

Play it. The vote split: Sean voted it onto the Essential Games List and the other two votes were no. It is a competent, fun game that works, but it borrows its best ideas from games we already love and never reaches their highs.

Written from our conversation in this episode.

Opening hook
22nd Century Warrior

I. Setup & Premise

The pitch: 22nd century muscle guy with a boomerang
- The year is 2191. New Earth runs on a Master Computer. Aliens get into it and the whole society goes sideways.
- You are Arnold Schwarzenegger Nova. You go into six sectors, find a contact, take his ID card, unlock the security room, kill the guard, take the tape.
- Six tapes gets you into the Control Center for the finale.
Developed by Natsume, published by Taito
- Natsume is the same studio behind Shadow of the Ninja and, later, Harvest Moon.
The identity problem, and it is a big one
- In Japan this came out on April 20, 1990 as Power Blazer, and it was a much different game.
- America did not get a translation. America got a rebuild. New levels, new objectives, new hero, tightened controls.
The simplest way to frame it for listeners
- Structurally it is Mega Man: pick your stage off a grid, beat seven bosses, fight the final one.
- Texturally it is a 1980s action movie. The hero is a buzz-cut slab in sunglasses who throws a boomerang.

II. What Makes It Stand Out

Eight-directional attack
- The boomerang goes in any of eight directions, including diagonals and straight up.
The levels are not corridors
- You climb, drop, backtrack, and route through ladders. Sectors go up and down as much as left to right.
- Most stages hide branching paths and side rooms, and most of those rooms hold power-ups.
The contact hunt is the real objective
- Reaching the boss door is not enough. If you have not found the agent and taken his ID card, the door will not open.
- This is the single design idea that separates Power Blade from every Mega Man clone of the era, and it is also the one that will make a first-time player wander in circles.
The Power Blade suit
- The helmet pickup wraps Nova in armor, upgrades his attack to energy waves that pass through walls, and gives him three extra hits before it breaks.
- It is a power-up that is also a health bar
High Score Board
- The six contacts you are hunting through alien-infested sectors of a rogue supercomputer are named John Gordon, Robert Williams, David Strader, Lynda Baker, Martin Douglas, and Daniel Leeds.
- No codenames. No ranks. Six guys from a homeowners association, apparently the last line of defense for the human race in the year 2191.

III. Gameplay Structure

Seven stages, six of them in any order
- Six sectors on a select screen, then the Control Center. The stage select even marks which sectors you have already disarmed. (HG101)
- Each sector: find the contact, take the ID card, find the security door, beat the guard, take the tape.
Basic controls
- B: throw the boomerang. Hold the D-pad to aim it in eight directions.
- A: jump.
- Select: use the currently equipped item.
- Start: pause, check sector progress, and swap between grenade and health item. (GameFAQs)
The item set is small and readable
- Boomerangs change color as they get stronger, and a separate pickup lets you have several in the air at once.
- A star extends throw range. Grenades hit everything on screen. The health item refills the meter.
- The Power Blade helmet is the one you actually go out of your way for.
There is a time limit, and it rarely matters
- On normal difficulty you will not run into it. On Expert it can bite.

IV. Unique Gameplay Elements

The difficulty problem, said honestly
- HG101's verdict is that the redesign from Power Blazer fixed everything and in doing so made the game too easy. Nova is fast, the boomerang cuts through enemies, and the bosses are pushovers.
- Expert mode was added to compensate and barely moves the needle.
You can skip four of the seven bosses with a bug
- On stages 1, 2, 4, and 5, hitting Select to detonate a grenade as the boss door closes behind you kills the boss before the fight screen even loads.
- It does not work on 3, 6, or 7, which suggests those bosses load differently rather than that anyone caught it.
Missing the ID costs you real time
- Get to the door without the ID and you have to walk the whole sector back. In the bigger sectors that is a genuine punishment for exploring wrong.
The plot argues with itself
- The manual framing says restore the Master Computer. The in-game intro tells you to destroy it. The ending has humanity vowing never to hand that much power to a machine again.
- Nobody appears to have reconciled these, and the ending is the more interesting reading.

V. The Redesign: Power Blazer to Power Blade

What Power Blazer actually was
- A stumpy Mega Man-style robot with a boomerang, on a stage select screen, in seven straightforward left-to-right levels.
- The boomerang ran off a power meter that drained with every throw and took a second or two to refill, so you could not spam it. Good idea, except the enemies crowd you and take multiple hits.
- Slow walk, weak jump, pixel-perfect platforming deaths.
- Famitsu gave it 23 out of 40.
What changed for America
- Every level redesigned from scratch, now with branching paths and the contact objective.
- Faster movement, longer jumps, faster meter refill, boomerangs that cut through enemies by default, multi-boomerang pickups, eight-directional throwing, the power suit.
- New intro cinema, new music for intro and ending, an enemy health bar on bosses, less cartoony cutscenes. Most enemies, most bosses, and nearly all the music carried over unchanged.
Who did it, with the caveat attached
- Per Twentieth Century Gamer, the push came from Randy Studdard, a former Nintendo of America staffer then working at Taito's US branch.
- Studdard is independently documented as the author of the Captain Nintendo short story that ran in Nintendo Power in 1988 and 1989 and became the seed for Captain N: The Game Master.
It nearly did not happen
- HG101 reports that the Japanese side was annoyed enough at Americans rebuilding their game that it came close to being cancelled.
- It shipped anyway, got a Nintendo Power cover, and sold.
The working title was Power Mission
- It was shown under that name at the Summer 1990 CES in Chicago with different character sprites, and Nintendo Power previewed it as Mega Man II style action.

VI. Music

Kinuyo Yamashita wrote it, and she is not a small name
- Her debut was the original Castlevania in 1986, where Konami credited her and Satoe Terashima jointly under the fake name James Banana, a pun on James Bernard, who scored Hammer's 1958 Dracula.
- She left Konami in 1989 and went freelance. Power Blazer and Power Blade are early freelance work. She later scored Mega Man X3.
The soundtrack survived the rebuild intact
- Almost all of it came straight over from Power Blazer. HG101 rates it as rivaling Konami's better NES scores, which given who wrote it is not a coincidence.
- If you want one track to play on the episode, Sector 5 and Sector 6 are the fan picks.

VII. Pop Culture

The Schwarzenegger problem
- The title screen portrait of Nova is a near-copy of Terminator-era promotional images of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- Box artist Mike Winterbauer says he was contacted by a certain movie star's lawyers over the cover painting.
- His defense was that the reference photo was of himself, standing under fluorescent lights holding a T-square, which became the boomerang in the painting. He sent them the photo and never heard back.
- Worth sitting with: the most Schwarzenegger-looking man on any NES box is a graphic designer holding a drafting tool.
1991 and the Americanized cover hero
- This is the same era that turned Dragon Ball into Dragon Power and Gegege no Kitaro into Ninja Kid. Anime-styled art was considered unsellable in American toy aisles.
- Power Blade is the extreme version of that instinct. Most publishers changed the art. Taito USA changed the game.

VIII. Sequels, Spinoffs, and Comparison Games

Power Blade 2, 1992
- Known in Japan as Captain Saver. Nova returns in 2200 against a cyborg army from the Delta Foundation.
- Adds swappable suits that let him walk on ceilings, swim, and fly, plus a slide move. The structure drifts from Mega Man toward Metroid.
- Kinuyo Yamashita scored that one too.
Where the game lives now
- It also ran on the PlayChoice-10 arcade cabinet, which is an odd place for it to turn up.
- The 2009 IGN Top 100 NES Games list put it at number 82, which is roughly where its reputation still sits: respected, not canonized.

IX. Essential Games List Vote

Case for Essential
- It is the best evidence on the console that localization could be authorship, not damage, and it happens to also be a very good game.
- Supporting: the eight-directional boomerang
Case against Essential
- If the point of an essentials list is the games that defined what the NES felt like, Mega Man 2 already occupies this exact chair.

Click a timestamp to play from there. Landing a little off?

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

Power Blade, 22nd Century Warrior.

And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. I really wasn't ready to say 22nd there. Like, I was caught off guard. I was like, oh, I'm not prepared to live in the next century. Yeah, because usually these future games only go ahead by like three weeks.

Yeah, or they go ahead by 30 centuries. Right. Well, you remember, you know, back in 2000 on your, like when you had to like do some math homework and you put your, the date that you did it in the top right corner. And you almost wrote like 90,000 is like the year that you wrote it in. It's like that. Yeah. That's probably what they did when they were making this game. I was never prepared to write the date. I was, I was, it was like, didn't even matter about the year thing, like getting the year wrong. I would never know what day it was. That was like a, to me, that was a trick question at the start of an exam. Like even the day of the week?

No, day of the week's fine. But I don't recall ever having to write Monday at the top, in the top right corner. Well, I was just wondering maybe if, if it just, if it kind of bled over into days of the week as well. It's, it's bleeding over this week. Cause we're recording this one, um, the day after labor day. And I swear to God it's Monday, but I know it's actually Tuesday.

It's really screwing up my whole schedule, but I'm going to love it when all of a sudden it's Friday. It's going to be great news. This, um, this game power blade. I mean, Nintendo released a power glove. Why didn't they ever release a power blade accessory? Yeah. Power, you know, a boomerang that, that plugs into the NES. You have to throw it. I was thinking about like a two foot long knife. Yeah. I don't think, I think it's mostly just because you couldn't bring it on a plane.

But Joe, you're thinking of the boomerang because that is the weapon of choice, uh, for Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm sorry. I mean, Nova in, uh, in this game. Yeah. No, it's Duke Nukem.

It's, it's neither of those guys. It's Duke Nukem. I think it's clearly Arnold on the like front on like the main menu screen. But I will agree that, uh, he does look a little bit like Duke. Um, once you start to actually get into the game, once they can't just like devote all resources to recreating Arnold Schwarzenegger. It seems in each different mode of like promotion or gameplay, he looks different. Um, I, I was looking at some, like, uh, some magazine ads and he looks like, I don't know, more like a, like a street fighter character. And then in the game, he just kind of looks like a dude with big shoulders. And then in the cut scenes, he looks like Duke Nukem. It's, it's very strange, uh, design focus.

And even weirder addition to that is that, uh, the box art for the game features a, uh, character, uh, a version of the character who kind of looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but not quite. Almost as if like they did just enough to be like, we're not, it's not Arnold. We're not pretending it's Arnold. We changed him just enough. But then when, um, when like sued by, uh, I don't know if it was by Arnold Schwarzenegger foundation.

Yeah. I don't know if it was actually directly by Arnold Schwarzenegger or like the talent agency or whatever, when they were like going to press for, um, legal charges. Uh, he's the creator of the game, uh, or the creator of the art of the box, rather Mike Winterbauer, uh, showed a reference photo of him standing under, uh, the, the, the same lighting and everything. And it was almost identical to the box art. So he was like, no, I didn't, I didn't do Schwarzenegger. I did myself. And it's like, that's gotta be a flex. Yeah. I feel like now that's like, that's like him. He had, he had to embarrass himself by being like, yeah, no, that was just like me. I did it myself. Yeah.

Like, like, you don't want anyone to know that. Like he thought he looked the coolest. Of all the people you could be mistaken for, I'd say it's a pretty good day when people think you're Arnold Schwarzenegger. But I'm looking at this box art and it looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator one. Well, as in the game, you look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator two. Yes. Yeah. A little cooler. Yeah.

Less menacing. Yeah. I guess that's just who Mike Winterbauer was. A less menacing guy. No, no, more menacing. Cause he's the first, he's the, he's the box. He's the bad guy. Oh, okay. Whatever you say. Did you know that it wasn't, uh, like it, it wasn't a surprise to audiences that Terminator two Arnold was the good guy. Yeah. They didn't spoil it in a trailer. Yeah. It was like, and it was James Cameron's decision. He was like, yeah, people need to know this so that they show up.

Yeah. I think, I think it's a tough position to be in. Cause it's like, wait, can you, you're just going to show none of the movie. Like it's tough. Right. But it's the exciting thing. Or it's an exciting thing about the movie. You want people to show up. I get it. They should just recut the, they should just have filmed all those scenes in the movie again. But with Arnold as the bad guy.

Yeah. That's funny. Cause that means that like my, my girlfriend had a pure like movie watching experience than people that were around when it came out. Because I agree. She didn't know. When, and when my brother and I were younger and I guess my sister was also younger. I don't know why I phrased it like that, but my brother and I showed my sister star Wars

prequels first. And I think she was the only person in the world to watch it that way and not know that Anakin was going to become Darth Vader and was like shocked because she knew who Darth Vader was because like we were, my brother and I are big star Wars fans was shocked. And then when we watched the original trilogy, she was like, yeah, of course that's his father. Yeah. Back to power blade. Um, Joe, since it's a boomerang, that is his weapon. Is that it should have been called power rang?

Hmm. Power rang and it called for you. It doesn't, it doesn't have the ring to it. It doesn't have a good ring to it to me as power blade. Power rang. You kind of have to have. Yeah. It sounds like a drink.

He should have just had, he should have just had like a samurai sword or something like power blade. And here we are throwing this boomerang thing. You know, I have a question about this boomerang too, because especially when you see like the little more high fidelity, like images of him holding this boomerang, whether I don't remember if it's on the box art, there's a times where you see him. Oh yeah. On the box art. Is he holding? I mean, where does the blade begin and end? Well, okay. He catches the blade. The power blade is not the boomerang. The power blade is the weapon when you become Iron Man. But isn't that still a boomerang?

I mean, it feels, I feel like it's sort of like a, it's a different thing cause it doesn't boomerang. It's just, it kind of just like fires forward. Okay. Well, then, so what, what's he holding on the cover? It's a boomerang and presumably it's bladed, right?

So, so I mean, if it's not the power blade, fine. But my question is how is he holding this boomerang? If the whole thing is a blade, he's just got really tough, like, calluses all over. Yeah, he's got calluses like any real dude. How is that so hard to understand? He studied the blade, Joe. Right? Oh, I see. Yeah. You just gotta study it. The year is 2191. I mean, pick a more random year out of a hat. I don't think you can. Uh, New Earth runs on a master computer and aliens have infiltrated that master computer and now society is, uh, basically collapsing. Didn't we just do this? I was gonna ask you. I was literally just about to ask that.

What is going on with aliens getting into computers, taking over society? Was this a real threat? The Y2K hasn't really like started to enter the public sphere yet. I mean, it's, you know, I think it's still pretty prescient. I think this is one of the ways that things can go down in real life. So, like, once we hand over, uh, the keys to the castle to the machine, it's gonna be super easy for little green men to infiltrate, you know?

I think I was, I was terrified of the idea of Y2K cause I was young and didn't understand it. So I believed that it like something like that could happen because it just involved like something on earth that we already had in our homes. If they would have told me that aliens were involved, I wouldn't have been worried at all. It would have been like, oh, that's not gonna happen.

Yeah. I was getting like handouts from ladies on the street that were talking about like biblical end times. It was some weird shit. And the game was developed by Natsume, uh, published by Taito. Natsume is the same studio behind Shadow of the Ninja, which we've already played and liked. Uh, but also Natsume is the, uh, developers that are gonna go up and create the Harvest Moon series. So. You see it. You can see it. Yeah. I was gonna say, are you disappointed that you didn't do any like farming in Powerblaze? No, no, no. It's just so obvious. Milk a cow in this game.

And it came out first in Japan and, uh, a year earlier in 1990 as Powerblazer. Did he like wear a really cool blazer? Is he like a boss man in that one? Do you think that's a better name? Powerblazer? Isn't the, it didn't, wasn't the last game we played also a blazer?

No. It didn't have a different name. You think he had blazing saddles? No, no, no, no. The other, the last, last week's game had a different name too, but I thought it was also a blazer. I'm just. Metal Mech Man and Machine. It was Metal Blazer. Yeah, it was Metal Blazer and he wore a, he wore a metal blazer. So it's Powerblazer. How did he hold the mech if the whole mech was a blade? He didn't, he didn't hold it. He wore it. Oh, that explains it. God damn it. It works this time, Sean, because it's a blazer. He did wear it.

But here's the funny thing about that. Uh, I didn't mention the Japanese game this early for nothing. I wasn't just throwing out release dates and different names. It's actually like a different game. It's, it's so weird because I, I didn't have enough time to like play test and mix and match between the two of them, but it looks so different. I am talking complete graphical overhaul where like Power Blazer looks a little bit like a Mega Man clone.

Um, and this game obviously does not. This game looks more like your, uh, typical Konami action game that it's such a facelift that I was like, are we sure they're the same game? Like what did they reuse the, the AI of the enemies or something? Cause otherwise they're really not even close and they're definitely not close on a difficulty scale. The Japanese game is, uh, is notoriously difficult Power Blazer, but you know, I, I don't

want to say this game is easy, but I did think it is a lot easier when compared to the shit that we've had to play through recently. This game is functional and somewhat player friendly. If you're willing to, uh, use its systems. Well, I, I had to look it up. I mean, this is actually just Mega Man with a tank top. Right? Yeah. A blazer. I'm teasing.

Um, yeah, I mean, I, I do appreciate the redesign then because I, you know, Mega Man gives me the creeps, but some of the bosses at least looked, I mean, I'm just looking at screenshots right now, but you know, the beehive boss is still there. Um, I mean, it looks like the levels themselves are still like that, you know, they look a little different. Don't you think? Yeah, probably. Am I out of line on saying that? I just feel like they look a little. You're always out of line, but yeah, I get it. Oh, thank you. Okay.

So that's the game. Uh, just kidding. We haven't even talked about it, but I wanted to touch on that. I wanted to touch on that easy part because I'm not saying that the game is easy. I just think it's like, it's refreshing to have a game, uh, after so much, um, crap to

be nice that, uh, that actually just controls fine and, and you can play the game and you don't have to like worry about like, ah, do I gotta look this thing up in the manual? Like, what am I supposed to do here? This is just one of those, you know, pick up and play games. And, uh, you know, at this point in the run of 1991, I'm just happy to see something like that. Yeah, I agree. Sometimes I do want like a game that you can just into it as you're, as you're playing it. And it's not to say that there's not some systems that you interact with, but yeah, I didn't need to double check. How do I do this thing at all?

Really during the game, I know I grant that I did double check, make sure I wasn't missing something, but, um, but yeah, I mean, for the most part, yeah, you can just, you pick this up, play, you learn it as you go. And I, I, that's, it kind of gives me like some of the earlier games we played. I feel like, I feel like Rygar had something like that where it just felt like, okay, I get what I'm doing and I'm just going to play it. It's not going to take me super long to beat this game. Um, and I, I appreciate it once in a while. Yeah. I think a lot of that really just sort of boils down to between like kind of simple concepts, but also just really tight controls.

And the, like the one little trick that they do is your power meter and how that kind of shifts throughout the course of the game and just managing that it's pretty simple. And as you said, intuitive. So the fact that you could just shoot wherever you want and you know, your jump is responsive to like, you know, after touch, if you want to call it that, but like, it's just a tight,

simple game. And I appreciated it. Yeah. Sean, I think you just mentioned that eight directional attack. And that is another thing that just makes a game feel good is not when you're just like some all powerful killing machine, but where you don't have to like, Oh, just get in just the right spot to hit this enemy. It's like, it is nice that you, you know, especially in these action platformers where, you know, there is some platforming to be had, but for the most part, you know, you also just want to do a lot of good killing.

That eight directional attack will, you know, will help you take care of a lot of the enemies on the stage and also decide to just skip over certain enemies because these stages are once again, you know, pretty large. And I say once again, because I was thinking about metal mech man and machine last week, which also had very large stages granted in those who were a mech, but also in common with metal mech man and machine is a phenomenon that we really haven't seen before. But now we've had two games back to back, bring it to us of you can get to the end of the level.

And it's not like a natural, like progress left and right. Like there are like some somewhat of paths and you can get to the end of these levels just to find out that like you didn't actually do the thing that you need to complete the level. And that is that you, you know, you climb, you, you, you go through ladders, you go up platforms, you backtrack a little bit because you have to find these ID cards or else the door will not open.

And I think at first I was like, once again, mad about that. Like I was in metal mech because I was like, well, that's not, it wasn't communicated to me. I obviously, if you read the manual, it is, but like, I wouldn't have thought to go hunting for it. And even if you do miss it, how would you know you missed it until you get to the door that doesn't open.

But then it was like, oh, okay, well, now that I know for that, I can try to like, as I'm going through these levels, look for the much more obvious cues of branching paths that metal mech man and machine did not have where it was just like everything looked kind of samey and you had to find the one destructible in the environment. This one has much more communicated branching paths within its levels. Yeah. I feel like in metal mech machine man and machine, uh, there wasn't really a lot of, uh, like the level design didn't really fit with itself. It was weird with scale. And that was kind of illegible when it came to like things you could climb and things that I don't know. Half, half the game is elevators.

Um, whereas this, it's a lot more clear where you can and cannot go and where, uh, you know, signaling like, oh, here's a ladder that you might not be able to access right now, but that implies that you can loop back around or something like that.

Um, and then I don't know, they're not that big. Like I, I kind of just happened upon the first guy and I was like, oh, I guess I need to talk to these guys before getting to the door. And that then going further, I just decided I made sure that I wouldn't touch the door until I saw the guy. Right. Like that's not too hard. Yeah. I mean, there were definitely some times where I would see kind of the branching path and take the wrong one and get to the door and be like, shit, I didn't find the guy. I got to find, I thought I was going towards where the guy would be.

Um, so I, I don't know if there was like a more of a, an easier recognizable pattern of like, oh, this is the direction where your contact will be. And that's the direction where the door will be. Or if that's kind of the point is like you're searching, you know, but, um, should it have turned into an escort mission? Once you find the guy, should you have had to then guide him through the stage to get to the door?

I will say, I thought based on the intro to this game, which is like 40 minutes of them explaining the personalities and of, of each of these contacts. I thought these contacts were going to have a lot more like story implications when you met them. I thought that one of them was going to turn out to be the bad guy. I thought they were all going to have different things because that the opening really is this guy explained to you like each person and like what they do and what they're good at. And, and it's just really, they're just like, it's just a person standing in a stage that says, oh, here's your key. After he waves very excitedly. What? They, they waving their arms, flailing their arms like a wacky waving inflatable.

Well, think about it. If aliens took over computers, wouldn't you be excited to see another human? True. Is it even aliens though? Like you think about these bosses, they all look pretty robotic. Well, one is aliens controlling the robots. One is clearly Charizard. So I mean, at least there's, there's a little bit of organicness in there, but yeah, maybe, maybe they're just Cylons, you know, Cylons are on a, we made the Cylons.

You know what? I'm not sure. Are there any just pure robot robot aliens in media? Just like they were always robots. Yeah. What about, what about the, the Transformers? Are they, did they start? Oh yeah. Transformers. Yeah. Perfect. That rests my case. What's the deal with the Reapers?

Uh, well, you exist because we allow it and you'll end because we demand it. Which is, you know, greatest line in the history of video games. Sure. But I meant like, are they like synthetic? Are they like a mixture of man and machine? Are they the metal mechs? I think they are mixtures of man and machine, uh, over, you know, millennia. Yeah. Right. Infinite times scale. And then there's that one DLC that's like, actually they were spawned from the, from like the Krakens under the, under the sea. Wait, no, what? The Leviathan stuff. Remember that? Uh, I, I, this is in Mass Effect 3. No, I remember Leviathan. I still remember it being like a retcon.

Oh, I, I thought it was, I don't know if it's even a retcon. I'm saying like, you could only find out via the DLC that like somebody else came before the Reapers and they were the Leviathans. Oh yeah. You know, it's been a while. Yeah. Silly. Never played it. Of course, all this stuff leads to Power Blade.

You know, I don't, I don't remember if Mass Effect takes place before or after the year. I think this is concurrent actually. Yeah. Same, same time. Got it. So really the, you know, at the end of the game, we just need to see a relay and it's all but confirmed. The conduit.

Uh, okay. Let's see. What else do we want to talk about here? The Power Blade suit. Uh, Sean, you mentioned that this is really when he has the Power Blade. Uh, the rest of the time he's just throwing around a boomerang. So do you want to talk to a little bit about what it, uh, what it feels like to get the full upgrade to become, uh, what are we going to, are we going to call this whole thing, the Power Blade or is he wielding the Power Blade?

Is he? Yeah. I think he's like a power ranger. Yeah. He's, he's kind of got a, a power, some power armor on, um, and doesn't really change the way you move around. Uh, but it does give you three free hits before you take damage, which is nice. Um, and it turns your weapon into what, what I thought originally was just like, now he's got an energy beam, but I guess that's the Power Blade.

Um, and that's, that's kind of it. I mean, you feel good. You feel pretty powerful while you're doing it. And it is unfortunate that sometimes it just, I don't even know when I get hit sometimes. So it feels like the armor kind of melts pretty quickly, but otherwise, yeah, it's, it's, it's nice. The other thing that I think is makes you feel more powerful there is that your Power Blade goes through anything.

Yes. Goes through all walls. It goes pretty far too, compared to the boomerang. So you can really just like, just go mowing enemies down, even if there's obstacles in your way. And, uh, it allows three hits before it, uh, before it, uh, breaks and now you don't have the suit anymore, but it, so in that regard, it also is one of those cool, like, power ups. That's also an additional health bar for the player. So that's nice. I do think Nova, that is the name of the character, not Arnold Schwarzenegger. Uh, Nova looks a little cooler without the suit.

Yeah. Muscle guy with, with the wife beater on. It's great. Yeah. But I feel like a suit should be like a no brainer to make him even cooler. Right. But instead it seems like he's, he, I don't know, he's like kind of blocky. If it could have been like a metal wife beater, that'd be pretty cool. Right. Yeah. Why is, why is he covering up his entire body? Yeah. Let's see some abs. Let's see some, uh, let's see some biceps.

Think about it. The skimpy armor. How many. The girls usually get. Right, right. Exactly. That's what I was gonna say is how many female superheroes are in those fighting games? Do they just wear armor that makes absolutely no sense? Just weak points galore. Yeah. And yet the men are always like, you know, Hey, I've thought this out and I should protect everything. Not just my balls. What's the matter? Nova got no scrote.

We were talking about that off, off recording. No, no, no. That's fine. We said that at the top of the episode. Who knows the reference? I'm confident they'll get the reference. And if you haven't just, just Google and I trust me, this is fine. Just don't do it at work. Yeah, put this in your Google.

Google's got no scrote. Yeah. This is a family podcast. I didn't say scrote. I think part of the reason that he, he doesn't look cool, cooler in the, um, suit, and maybe this doesn't hold up cause it's the same problem when he's not wearing the suit is the run cycle. Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. He looks like he's like his, his, his tighty whiteys are riding up and he's trying to run and like kind of keep his legs wide while he's running. It kind of, you know, he's getting a wedgie, I guess is the easier way to say that. Um, and it looks even sillier when he's in like, yeah, steel power armor.

It kind of just makes me think that they, they were going for a different tone in the game when they were animating him. Like the rest of the game is pretty serious. There's not like, it's not like a silly design. It's taking itself relatively seriously, but then yeah, he runs like, like if you were going to animate the three stooges or something, you know, you know what I, I, um, Sean, you'll, you'll maybe appreciate this.

Um, and everybody in the discord will then bring up, uh, some arguments that I'll want to fight about. But in final fantasy eight, my favorite fantasy games, he reminds me of ward. Oh, ward. Yes. When he's wearing the gal baddian armor and that's kind of the way he runs. Yes. Sorry. I think Zell has a similar run cycle. Zell does have a similar, right? You're right. Yeah.

No, perfect. Perfect. I didn't really think about that. Yeah. To bring it to another video game for a second, maybe one that listeners enjoy more, Super Mario Brothers 2, the Doki Doki Panic one, the one that we played. Do you guys remember, and I know Sean, you won't, but it's fine. Just try and humor me for a second. At the end of the levels where you beat Birdo by grabbing the eggs and throwing the eggs at Birdo, there's this bird that opens its mouth and then you walk through it. There's an enemy like that in this game.

It's so weird, You know what, Mike? I do remember that. Okay, good. So you didn't even have to humor me for once. I remember that from my childhood, not this podcast. You did nothing. Damn, right in the childhood. But this guy, he's also like just a giant face hanging on the sides of walls. You can't hurt him. Early on in the game. And you can't hurt him. I wasn't able to hurt him. You can't hurt him. Correct. Great. I misheard you. Whatever. Glad we solved that mystery.

And the bosses in this game, are they anything to write home about? Besides the Charizard one, which, by the way, that's not just Charizard. That's Metal Charizard. Sure. Metal Charizard. No, think about it, though. There's Godzilla, and then there's Metal Godzilla, right? It's fucking awesome. I think it's Mecha Godzilla, isn't it? Well, there's, fine. There's Sonic, and then there's Metal Sonic. Much worse example. Less awesome. Yeah. I don't know. They kind of hit or miss. The one where, I talked about earlier, where you're just fighting a bunch of bees. Somehow gets easier as the fight goes on.

And it's never really that hard either. And there's never, like, a twist. Like, it's just, you have to, you just have to kill all the bees, and that's it. Well, but, no, you don't have to just kill all the bees, right? Because I was trying to kill all the bees for, like, 20 minutes. Oh. And then I realized, and you might have just done this by accident, but I think when each of the bee-releasing containers opens, you need to hit those until they break. Oh. And then no more bees will come out of that container, which is why it's getting easier. Okay, yeah. I guess I was just doing it fast enough that I was also hitting the thing behind the bees.

And I appreciate that as a different design, but I do think it does do the weird thing of making the battle easier as it goes rather than harder. And also, like, it's just not, like, a particularly fun gameplay loop, speaking for that boss battle. And, you know, because you just keep taking out the bees. It's not that hard to take out these bees as they're, like, slowly coming towards you.

So, like, yeah, I appreciate that they tried something a little different than just attack the boss, but, yeah, it didn't really do much. And the final boss is just MODOK

from the X-Men. It's just, like, a giant head inside a robot, floating robot body. I prefer George Lopez from Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Is that what happens? Wow, I really got to watch that movie. You know what's funny? I never saw Sharkboy and Lavagirl, but I always thought that that George Lopez thing was from Spy Kids.

And then very recently, I saw the clip from Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and I'm like, oh, I don't even know why this is in my brain. I never saw this movie. I thought that Sharkboy and Lavagirl was just me misremembering Spy Kids. And I thought that for sure that was just, like, a spinoff of the Spy Kids. I think it is, right? I don't know. Is it? It's not? It's its own thing? I don't think that the Spy Kids ever interact with them. Like, I'm not saying that the same studios don't own them. Oh, it's the same director. Yeah, it's Robert Rodriguez. Right, yeah, same director.

But, Spy Kids, you know, has way more going on in it. There's a lot of philosophical stuff going on in Spy Kids. Is there? There actually is. I can't remember, nobody wants to see me Google the quote, but there is a really heavy quote from the villain in the first Spy Kids that is like, they said that in a kids movie? What was it like, you don't do the spy if you can't do the... They were like, seize the means of production. Oh. No, definitely not that. No, it was like way more deep than that. I'll find it by the end of the episode. Right now, I just want to talk more about the game because I think that's important.

Was there any point to the whole Mega Man choose your own adventure? Well, the game was a Mega Man clone. Yeah, but like, I feel like in Mega Man, there's a reason to go in a particular order. You know, trying to like rock, paper, scissors your way through the bosses. But in this game, there's, you just have the one thing

and you don't like unlock anything after anything. So. Yeah, it's not like if you suck at the level that you'll get better after doing the other levels. Like, you know, you still have to like, you still have to complete that level eventually. Right. I guess the only point to it for me then would be what, you know, what the effect that is inherent to this kind of gameplay, which is that if I'm stuck on something, I don't, I'm not stuck and I can't play any of the rest of the game. So I guess I, I appreciate that in some games where I'm like, it's not so linear that I can't go try something else. That's fine. It's just weird. Yeah. It's not really designed around it. Yeah.

You can skip four of the seven bosses in this game with a glitch. It's not like meant by design, but on certain stages, hitting select to detonate your grenades, which is one of your power-ups that you can collect. Just as the boss door closes behind you, kills the boss before the fight screen loads and it's just over. What's interesting is that that only happens to four of the seven. so like what... Are they trying to tell us something? Yeah, exactly. Like, does that mean something or is it like, did they just, does, do the other enemies like load differently than these and that's what's causing it? It's just a weird thing, but obviously very useful for speed runs. No, no, no. I think like it's, you know, four plus seven is 11. 11 commandments.

So 2,191 is the year the world ends. So that's what they're trying to tell us. Yeah, I thought that was pretty straightforward. Yeah. In the Power Blade manual, it tells us that we have to restore the master computer, right? That's how we're going to fix all this, you know, beat the aliens, restore the master computer. Right. But the in-game intro tells us to destroy the master computer and then the ending has humanity vowing never to hand that much power to a machine again.

So which is it? What were we supposed to do? Did we learn along the way? Well, I didn't finish the game, but my, you know, again, my interpretation, and I think I'm on a roll here, is that, you know, you kind of have to turn it back on just to, like, remember how to do the things that it does. Like, kind of just watch it do its thing for a bit, and then you can kind of wean yourself off of it. That's what I would do if I were a society that has completely infantilized itself.

So, are we saying that it, it, they destroyed it and they're not handing that kind of power to it again or to any technology again? Like, maybe they destroyed it and now they'll start building technology but not give it that kind of power. Yes, I think it's that. Full butlerian jihad. Like, typewriters are okay, but not computers anymore. Right. And everything has to be analog. Right. There has to be an off switch. And wood paneling. Oh, that's awesome. Shoot. That'd be pretty cool. They went, they went like that? Yeah. The place is sick.

In the Japanese version of the game, Power Blazer, the power meter thing, you have to wait, like, you have to wait for it to drain before you can take another shot and it takes a second or two to refill. So, you can't spam it as much as you can in this one. And I suppose that's a good idea and concept, like, to make sure that you can't spam your attack in a game that maybe you want to have, like, more deliberate shots for. Except the enemies can spam their attacks and they can crowd you and you'll take multiple hits. So, it was really just hurting the player. So, I guess I'm glad that they turned that off in this completely different American game.

And it still, like, uses the power meter, at least when you have the regular boomerangs, in that if you do spam it, your subsequent throws have much less range. So, it's still encouraging you not to spam. And Power Blade got a Nintendo Power cover. Do you have that one? A front cover? I don't. Thank you for asking.

I think this is an appropriate time to tell people that I have a pretty awesome Nintendo Power collection. But how awesome can it be if I don't have the Nintendo Power cover with Power Blade? Here's the interesting design decision, though. And if you are looking it up, go ahead, whether you're the listener or my two guests, guests, co-hosts. Yeah. You guys are just my guests for the week. My two fans. If you want to come back next week, that would be great. They just, they focus so much on just the blade itself,

which, again, just kind of looks like nothing. And then the rest of it is this, like, you know, vector 3D space thing, which doesn't, I don't think is representative of the game. Was Tron still big at this time? In 91? Yeah, we still, like, really into Tron. We never fully recovered from what Tron laid down. They have scat on the cover.

They do. Yeah. Weird. Monopoly and scat. Nintendo Power was raunchy. They were into all sorts of stuff. They were the source for news and strategy straight from the pros. I guess my point just being, like, they didn't think Nova was going to sell anything because he's in the Power Blade suit, but he's so far off in the distance and he looks like he's doing, like, that dance that you do when you listen to ska music. Right? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. He's doing, like, the skanky leg.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Where's the trumpets and trombones in this game? Soundtrack was all right in the game. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Did the job. I love plus Game Boy giant special section. You're talking about the Nintendo Power issue? Yes. Yeah, great. I was going to talk about the music if that was okay. Oh, okay, fine then. Forget I said anything. I was just going to say that it's only interesting because I don't know how to say this person's name. I think I can get the last name. Yamashita. Kanuyo Yamashita. Let's go with that. I'm an expert in Japanese names now.

She was the composer for this game. She was also the composer for the original Castlevania. So, I mean... Totally heard that. Music doesn't really get much better than that. It's pretty obvious between Castlevania and like the music in Castlevania and the gameplay mechanics that would then become Harvest Moon.

I was hoping you were taking it there. Yeah. She left Konami in 1989 when freelance did Power Blazer obviously the Japanese one so it just naturally ported over to Power Blade and apparently later scored Mega Man X3 according to her wiki. So it's like if that Mega Man X3 I'm sure it's I'm sure it's banging never never played it but I'm sure it's banging but if that's like your next best thing right? Like you would think that the person who came up with the Castlevania tunes would you know go on to be pretty prolific. Are you disappointed in her? Disappointed You sound disappointed. Yeah. I just thought there would be more of a discography there.

We went over the whole Arnold Schwarzenegger thing but I think even what's more interesting is if you look at both the Schwarzenegger thing and the original Japanese game being more Mega Man like together you know this is this is the same system that was like we can't do Dragon Ball right? Like we have to get rid of Dragon Ball that got turned into Dragon Power and even though the characters looked the same they changed all the names

there was another anime series that I don't remember the name of but that got turned into Ninja Kid so this stuff's been going on since very early in the console's life cycle but it's just so funny that like now obviously in 2026 but even as early as like the 2000s you know like anime stuff was like all the rage like you would be stupid to take the Dragon Ball out of your game you should make more Dragon Ball games nowadays is that what you said? Yes okay yeah because I liked it better when it was something that you should rip it out yeah okay got it yeah when we had less anime in America yes you know that's yes you're not an animation nation guy not an animaniac that's what I was gonna yeah an animaniac

but you like that show yeah it's fine fine hmm yeah maybe you are a guest there is going to be a Power Blade 2 we're gonna talk about it it's gonna be in the year 2200 wow so please be excited for the nine year time gap is he gonna get a different haircut uh I don't know I'm looking at it right now I gotta save stuff like that I gotta save stuff like that for that episode you know I can't go ahead talking about that now fine whatever I won't be on the podcast by then anyway

and this game along with I think Power Blade 2 ran on those weird Play Choice 10 arcade cabinets where it's like it's just 10 NES games hooked up like all in one cart so you can just pick which one you want to play from just it seems like an odd place for it to show up alongside like all those Nintendo games so Nintendo between having the Nintendo Power cover like clearly someone in Nintendo of America believed in this game a lot because they saw the lengths which they went to to like make it more for an American friendly audience put it on the cover put it in their Play Choice 10 cabinets and weirdly enough this kind of propaganda gets it all the way up to number 82 on IGN's top 100 NES games of all time you know hey we're we'll get into it right let's see if it shows up in our top 100 games of all time when we do the essential games list

Joe I think you nailed it earlier Mike when you said this is you know kind of the first game in a slew of kind of games that aren't doing this that feels good to play and everything works you know and it is fun I think this is at least a play it but when I'm trying to think if this is essential I did have to kind of take a step back and I'm like am I just excited to have a game that like works pretty well and I think part of me kind of is this is like one of those situations where like I don't have a ton to complain about about the game but it's also like not doing anything to really blow me away I'm not thinking about I got to go back to it again I don't know if it has a place

on my essential games list I think I just thought it was a pretty good game so I'm going to say I'm not going to vote it essential Sean yeah I was thinking about the same thing because it has been

it has been a year so far and I would just say that I I think that I'm that that my my standards shift a lot throughout the podcast there's high points and low points and maybe we are in a bit of a low point but I you know I think I did enjoy this game enough to put it on the essential game the games list because I did just kind of have fun with it and I didn't find the annoying things such as how easy it is to just die by jumping next to a ladder which you would think you wouldn't have to do I just want to mention that that that is a gripe but

yeah I think I had enough fun with this to put this up there I think there are worse games on the essential games list so I'm gonna put a vote in do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he's created by kids I was wondering if you were gonna say that one because I that's that does live in my brain wait finish finish the quote sorry you think do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he's created wow no that's Steve Steve Buscemi by kids too is he talking about a sandwich yeah he lives in fear of the sandwich he built at Subway yeah I'm afraid of anything at Subway

the tuna is not even real tuna can't be classified as tuna yeah they found quote no fish wait why do you have the quote I have it right here in front of me it's on my desktop at all times oh yeah you have this big Subway file that you just like keep on your desk you know it's a manila folder just stuffed with Subway facts oh all this is very important to the essential games list vote I assure you

I do imagine that in the power blade universe somebody says a line akin to what Steve Buscemi just said you know when the aliens entered the machine no no no but he said it in the movie oh just now right so do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he created Steve Buscemi Michael Esposito and and I do think that that's a line that could have been said you know I Sean I appreciate what you're throwing down I do think that the game is just like it's

totally competent it's totally playable I don't know about it being a great time though like I enjoyed playing the game for the for the time I played it sounds like a terrible time I don't know I just don't think I'm gonna like come back and and revisit it for any particular reason so it's it's a it's a it's a great game amongst what we've been playing but I don't think it's a standout entry and when I look at like the only game so far to be on the essential games list this year G.I.

Joe like G.I. Joe introduced some cool concepts that we hadn't seen on the NES yet this is kind of just doing a little bit of like greatest hits for like what works on the NES but never like reaching the highs of any of the games it's mimicking so for me it's also a no and don't worry Sean it will be marked on your report card that you marked it as an essential games list I'm putting it in there right now oh good yeah no I can't do that because then the listeners will know ahead of time remember you can always check the official list of every episode that's ever been released to the podcast by just looking at your podcast player no I'm

joking there's much more analysis information on the website yes you want this cast dot com yeah and there's there's all the whole episode list there's what the what day the episodes aired the developers of the games the publishers of the games the type of game our rating and then did I mention also a very detailed tab for developer breakdowns and genre breakdowns so you can see which developers and genres we tend to like the most would you guess which developer we are the most fond of that's a pivot table for that yes but would you take a guess no I wouldn't of course not how could you Nintendo

that's a good guess it's probably right Nintendo R&D 4 is basically 100% worth it it has four play it's sorry four essentials and one play it so of the five games that R&D 4 did that's pretty good Sean you guess Konami no Konami

Konami yeah oh I see Konanime oh never mind oh there you go right no it's actually Capcom yeah same Capcom coming in with seven essential seven play it's and only four skip it's not bad golden play it's yeah I'm sure though I actually got rid of those because I was like that's a stupid stat there are they live in my heart so I know once I get them once I get the AI up and running and listening to all of our episodes and then eventually making the episodes for us that's the long-term goal this podcast is to just abandon it and have the AI finish it for me once I get all that up and running I'm sure we can have a golden play it's tab

in fact we can just have AI also develop opinions for you guys you can just go to chat GPT or Claude right now and ask do I like nostalgia cast and you know have your opinion formed based on that or write me an angry email to nostalgia cast and I bet you it would write one like you're just asking for aliens to take over the podcast he's not aliens what are you saying about Sam Altman something like that or

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