War, overpopulation and pollution have plagued Earth, so humanity decides to construct an artificial planet known as Altile and move there. Unfortunately, Altile gets invaded by the evil Xantho Empire, who deactivate the planet's Weather-Control Machine and turn it into a barren wasteland. The people of Altile seek help from Earth and call upon the Z-Type Earth Defense cyborg (ZED) in order to save their planet from destruction.
ZED starts out with two weapons to use against the Xantho Empire, a weak, standard ray gun and extremely powerful exploding bombs. He can get more power-ups as he destroys enemies and blocks, as well as finding hidden areas to obtain some of the rarer power-ups. Even with a large assortment of weapons, this game is still notorious for its hard difficulty.
A sequel, Bomber King: Scenario 2, was developed by Sunsoft for the Game Boy, but was released in Europe as Blaster Master Jr. and in North America as Blaster Master Boy.
This game exhibits the following tropes:
- Airborne Mook: The flying enemies in the game are a huge pain in the rear as they shoot aimed shots (that pass through walls!), and some travel in a waving pattern, making it easy for them to collide into you.
- Alien Invasion: The plot of the story.
- Blackout Basement: The dungeon areas, as well as some normal stages. You'll be able to see only the enemies, and in order to see around you, you have to use a candle (lights up a small area for a short time) or a lamp (lights up the whole screen indefinitely).
- Blob Monster: Globula, the first boss.
- Cephalothorax: Xur, the Big Bad is a giant floating cyborg head.
- Classical Elements Ensemble: The last four bosses before the Final Boss are based off Water (Aquarian, a piranha-spawning machine), Wind (Lian, a two-headed winged lion), Fire (Pyrodyne, a firebird-spawning machine) and Earth (Gholem, a golem) respectively.
- Critical Annoyance/Songs in the Key of Panic: When you're down to one battery of energy left, the background music changes into an ominous-sounding warning tone.
- Dolled-Up Installment: The sequel is titled Blaster Master Boy outside of Japan.
- Emergency Energy Tank: These refill you back to maximum health. The fact that you pick up lots of them shows you the game's difficulty...
- Explosive Stupidity: Getting caught in your own bomb blast is enough to drain two batteries of your energy.
- Gaia's Lament: In the first level, the destructible blocks are trees, and since the aim of the game is to destroy the blocks to find power-ups and ultimately the key to the exit, you'll find yourself laying waste to the majority of the forest with your bombs, leaving behind infinitely respawning robobaddies...
- Gaiden Game: To Bomberman. Made by the same company, and its Japanese name is actually called "Bomber King".
- Golem: Gholem, the second-to-last boss. He throws rocks at you.
- Gratuitous English: The Japanese version features an unlockable karaoke sing-along for the main level theme. The lyrics are written in Japanese, except for "Go for break out \ Go for break out".
- Guide Dang It!: Want to find out where all the hidden stone lion rooms or fountains are? Good luck without a guide! Heck, there are some sections of the game that seem like dead ends, and you have to bomb a certain block three times in order to get out!
- Hope Sprouts Eternal: The ending of the game shows the climate changing back to normal, and the barren land turns back to green in a matter of seconds.
- Multiple Head Case: The two headed chimera-dragon boss Lian is like this.
- One-Hit Polykill/Armor-Piercing Attack: Missiles destroy all enemies and blocks in a straight line.
- Recurring Boss Template: Three of the bosses have the exact same strategy- they float around the place, throw globs around, and those globs turn into Mooks should they hit the floor.
- And yes, the Final Boss is one of them.
- Regenerating Health: Inverted. Your character is a robot who needs to constantly fuel himself, and as such loses health constantly. As if the
Demonic Spiders and Goddamned Bats weren't enough... - Segmented Serpent: The second boss, Viripedes is a dragon that comes out from a well. Attack its head to defeat it.
- Smart Bomb: Two kinds. The flash destroys all weak enemies on the screen, while the much rarer Megaton Bomb does the same, except it does huge damage to bosses, as well as destroying all destructible blocks on the screen.
- Sprint Shoes: The shoes power-up, which lets you walk faster for a period of time if used.
- Super Drowning Skills: Stay in the water for two or more seconds, and you sink. Instant Game Over if it happens. To solve this, use a life ring before going onto the water. Oh, and enemies have no such problem on the water.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: One of your attacks, capable of destroying enemies easily.
- Weather-Control Machine: Deactivated by the evil aliens, causing Altile to plunge into chaos.
