Blaster Master FAQ for GameJ06 Viewers

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| FAQ for Blaster Master  |
| For GameJ06's Viewers   |
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This should help answer common questions, concerns, and topics.

Jon's PB, Compared to WR
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Category: Any% NTSC (US Version)

* Big Jon's PB: 36:12.12
* World Record: 32:24.22 (held by ShiningDragoon)

Route
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The game is not linear; once you clear an area, backtracking is required on several occasions to get to other areas.  Certain upgrades are also required to get to each area after the first (this is explained below), acquired by defeating each Area's boss.  Here's a basic layout that shows where levels are in respect to each other:

Area 4 <-> Area 1 <-> Area 2 <-> Area 3
  ^			^	    ^
  |			|	    |
  v			v	    v
Area 5 <-> Area 6     Area 7	 Area 8

Upgrades
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Each boss you kill will provide a necessary part for the game's tank, Sophia.  Casually, these are all absolutely mandatory to proceed in the game; the only skip you can really do to make a part unnecessary is to skip the Key; aside from that, the game actually does a pretty solid job of making sure that even if you know a bunch of glitches and tricks, you still cannot do without the other upgrades, meaning even a speedrunner must get them in the NTSC (US) version.  (The PAL version has a Jason-jump glitch the NTSC version doesn't have which allows you to skip a VERY large portion of the game, lending to the PAL 4 Bosses category.  Jon, however, runs the US version, so he still needs everything other than the Key.)

* Area 1: Hyper
Upgrades Sophia's shot to increase its power; this is specifically necessary to destroy the gate guardian blocking access to Area 2, as it will not take damage from Sophia's default, un-upgraded bullets.

* Area 2: Crusher
Upgrades Sophia's shot again so it can destroy the game's destructible blocks.  Mandatory for getting into Area 3, and is additionally necessary throughout the remainder of the game's Areas, as they also contain destructible blocks you otherwise couldn't get past.

* Area 3: Hover
Allows Sophia to hover in the air by releasing the (A) button when jumping to press and hold it again (continuing to hold (A) after the apex of a jump will not auto-hover).  This consumes Hover (HOV) power; the tank can't hover without any.  Since it gives Sophia upward propulsion, the tank can get up to significant heights using this upgrade.  It's absolutely mandatory for getting into Area 4, since its entrance is far above the game's starting point and cannot be reached without it.  Is also mandatory in several other places, as well as just coming in handy in a lot of cases.

* Area 4: Key
Allows Jason or Sophia to pass through the locked pair of gates that separate Area 4 from Area 5.  That is the one and only purpose it serves; it isn't used anywhere else.  Casually, this is necessary to get to Area 5.  However, Jon skips these gates in his run with some trickery, skipping the vast majority of Area 4 and going pretty much directly to Area 5 (as a result, most of Area 4 is never seen, and its boss is never fought).  Because of this, though, he must purposely Game Over once he's done with Areas 5 and 6 and returns to Area 4 in order to deathwarp back to its entrance (to bypass the gates on the return trip).  This is detailed below.

* Area 5: Dive
Gives Sophia propellers so it has increased mobility and speed underwater.  This is important, since by default, Sophia just sinks like a rock underwater and can't move fast at all; with the Dive parts, the player has full control over the tank's movement underwater, allowing them to go wherever they want.  This is mandatory to be able to maneuver high enough underwater to get to the entrance to Area 6.

* Area 6: Wall 1
Allows Sophia to drive up walls.  Move up against a wall and keep holding the same direction, and Sophia will simply keep going and drive straight up the wall.  You can stop and turn around if you want.  If you hit a ceiling, however, Sophia will detach and fall.  Mandatory for use in Area 2 to get to the entrance to Area 7.

* Area 7: Wall 2
Used in conjunction with Wall 1, this enables Sophia to also drive on ceilings.  Keep driving up a wall by holding the same direction, and Sophia will just drive around on the ceiling like it's no big deal.  You can just drive over the tops of rooms and/or around the entire perimeters of rooms at this point if you want (in fact, that's the intended way to do most of Area 8, although several shortcuts at the cost of taking damage make speedrunning Area 8 more trivial).  This is very useful in many places, and is mandatory to use in Area 3 to access the entrance to Area 8.  However, it comes with some problems; if you try to drive off of a platform, instead of falling off as you'd expect, having both Wall upgrades will take precedence, and you will instead drive down the side of the platform; thus, it becomes important to jump way ahead of time to make certain you actually jump off instead of driving down the wall.

Pause Trick
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If you fire a Grenade at the bosses of Areas 2, 4, 6, or 7, and pause the game while it is taking damage, the boss will continue to take damage while the game is paused.  The damage sound changes when the boss is out of health (helpful for determining when to un-pause the game).  However, one should be careful, as this applies to Jason as well - if you're taking damage when you pause, you will ALSO continuously take damage, so you'll need to set up your position carefully.  Jon uses this in Areas 2, 6, and 7; he has no need to use it in Area 4, as he skips it entirely, totaling 3 uses of this trick in his run.

Boss Wrong-Load
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When you enter a boss lair, the klaxons will sound, and the screen will flash, then turn black as the boss loads.  However, in Area 5, it's possible to manage to leave the room on the same frame that it transitions (this is frame-perfect at 60 FPS, mind you); if you succeed at this, you can get the boss to spawn in the adjacent room, though not without problems; the screen will be rather wonky.  However, the boss cannot move or shoot at you in this wrong-load state; you can just stand there underneath it and shoot at it until it blows up.  You must still go back into the boss's actual lair to collect the Dive parts, however - if you try to leave without them or die, the parts will disappear, and you will soft-lock the game by being unable to proceed to Area 6.  It also helps to clear out the adjacent room first before attempting this, as the enemies will still be there if you get the glitch and didn't kill them all beforehand - while the boss can't exactly do anything, the enemies will still be able to move around and hurt you.

Utilizing Deaths and Game Overs for Death-Warping
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When you die in the overworld (as opposed to inside an interior area as Jason), you respawn at the entrance of the room you were in with Sophia, even if the tank was in an entirely different Area from where Jason is.  When you Game Over, you're taken back to the entrance of the entire *Area* you were in (again, with Sophia).  Jon presently only utilizes the second type, using all four of his credits to his advantage:

-Game Overs for Area-Warping-

* Area 3.  After killing the boss and picking up the Hover parts, it would take positively forever for him to drive back to the entrance, as the path to get to the boss is a very long one.  So he takes a Game Over after exiting that interior to death-warp all the way back to Area 3's entrance to get there much faster.

* Area 5.  After defeating the boss and picking up the Dive parts, he takes a Game Over to warp back to the Area's entrance.  Since the entrance to Area 6 is pretty close to Area 5's entrance, this saves a considerable amount of time.

* Area 4.  Upon returning to Area 4 (after doing Areas 5 and 6), as he still doesn't have the Key, he can't get back through the gates to go back to Area 1, so he takes a Game Over in the room with the gates in order to get back to Area 4's entrance.

* Area 7.  Upon acquiring the Wall 2 parts from the boss, he takes a Game Over to warp back to the Area's entrance.

Game Story
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-Original Plot Provided by NES Game/Manual-

The canon story for the US NES version is that one day, Jason's pet frog, Fred, escaped from its container, found an evidently open canister of radioactive material on the premises (why would it even be there?), and jumped into a hole in the ground.  Reaching for Fred, he accidentally fell into the same hole himself (it was a pretty big hole).

That much is easy to understand, but the original game's story gains some pretty large gaps from this point.  In the NES game and manual, it's seen that he ends up in a large cavern, discovering the tank Sophia III, and somehow ends up driving it around in the search for his frog, apparently ending in defeating the Plutonium Boss and saving the world, somehow having figured out the tank was important for that particular purpose on his own.  It just seems like some major element is missing - and Sunsoft agreed and fixed it with a book they have since canonized (see below).

-The Additional Canon Element One Needs To Understand to Complete the Picture-

The original story leaves out a very important element that later became canonized: Eve, a girl from another planet who devoted her life to finding and defeating the Plutonium Boss, who Jason finds in that same cavern with the tank, brought into canon by the book "Worlds of Power: Blaster Master."  This is of import to the plot and part of canon because 1) she's the owner of the tank, 2) she's the one who actually *informs* Jason about the existence of and threat posed by the Plutonium Boss, and 3) she and Jason are the mother and father of the sequel "Blaster Master: Blasting Again"'s Roddy and Elfie, and Elfie introduces us to the concept that Sophia operations are done by a pair: a driver and a spotter - meaning Eve was Jason's spotter as he drove the tank.