Power Blade (1991)

I'm here to throw boomerangs and chew bubble gum, and I'm all outta gum.

Beat while only running on slow motion for 2 bosses. I instantly liked this game due to the precise tight controls and ability to shoot diagonal, something Mega Man can't do without a special weapon. This game was clearly inspired by the Mega Man series with the core gameplay and stage selection. There were no special weapons or boss weaknesses though. The stages were somewhat non linear with alternate routes and optional power ups, like energy tanks, armor + wave beam attack, and screen clearing bombs. You had to find a contact to get a key, then unlock the boss room. The wave attack made the bosses much easier but it was lost after taking 3 hits. The wasp nest and giant terminator bosses stood out as very easy while the 2nd and final bosses were the ones I used slow. I did the 6 stages in numerical order. Most of the time I barely beat the time limit with stages 1 and 2 being at less than 30 seconds. Stage 5 I beat with only 4 seconds left, and stage 6 I restarted because I found my way to the boss without finding the contact. Should not have skipped those ladders going underground. Solid fun well made game with cool aesthetic and music. Boomerangs are a lame weapon though.

8.0/10

Power Blade is a platform shooter. It seems people have a tendency to compare this to Mega Man 2, and while there are similarities in some design aspects and style (one particular enemy does resemble the large jumping enemy in the Hard Man stage from Mega Man 3) plenty of bits resemble other games of your pick (There is a sewer level that looks like TNMT, and overall the whole style seems pseudo-industrial and reminds me of Bionic Commando).

Some might make comparisons to Duke Nukem.

There are six stages that you can tackle in any order, each stage has a boss room (with a boss in it, duh) that you can unlock if you find someone who gives you a key in that level. The trick to playing this game is to find the contact with the keycard first thing, then your progress will be saved. It doesn't really matter what order you pick the rooms and honestly the game is actually very easy and this is a great example of a game you can actually complete in a single evening and do so without cheating (i managed to, wow!) So, for that alone you should probably play it. To make things even easier though, the game has a lot of tricks that are pretty easy to figure out while playing it. For instance i mentioned the bit about saving your progress (once you have the key you can continue as much as you like and no matter how many game overs you have you will still have the key) most levels have plenty of places you can farm enemies for powerups such as life replenishing burgers and boss shredding-grenades. There is even an exploit where you can kill over half the bosses instantly on entering the room, hilarious!

Power Blade is a very average game with overall fairly average art, music and easy enemies. but one thing it does do right is control well. This is not some slippy jumping game where you will fall in holes in constant frustration like so many others. For the most part it has a lot of control, and i found myself getting the hang of it really quickly, nimbly jumping gaps and hitting my enemies with uncanny sense of distance and timing.

The maps are pretty good and just big enough to be interesting as you explore them looking for your contact with the keycard and then the boss room, they aren't that dynamic but they are open enough to not be completely linear and most have various one way routes that once you pass you cant go back unless you take another route (which is usually the long way back, and means you dun goofed.)

Never played this back in the day but it leans towards the higher end of scrolling platforming shooting stuff of this type due to having responsive controls and not being a frustrating time and because of that its worthwhile if you want something not NES-hard. Maybe next time I'll try Expert mode.

[3.5/5.0]