 SNES STRUG I've always been curious about games before my gaming prime, namely games that I'd barely heard anyone talk about despite appearing on the cover of Nintendo Power. I've knocked out Vice Project Doom and Metal Storm so far. Next there's Power Blade, an action platformer that, speak of the devil, is very reminiscent of Vice Project Doom with the level design here, but without the gameplay variety that that game had. Power Blade is more story-driven than anything, to the point that it dictates the entire layout of the gameplay itself. In the 22nd century, Earth is run by a giant computer, alien terrorists show up to shut it down in an attempt to take over the world, and it's up to you to explore six different open-ended stages, and find the lost parts of the master computer to get Earth up and running again, or something. You can pick and choose what order to play these stages just like Mega Man. It's a good idea for a game, and it's done pretty well. The exploration aspect makes it stand out in the NES library. However, it was tough to do a Metroid style like this back then. I mean, just look at, uh, Metroid, for example. It just hasn't held up well, because it's so easy to get lost. That's another video altogether, but yeah, Power Blade suffers from the same flaw. First you gotta find the guy who gives you access to a secret room, and then you gotta find the secret room itself, and it's very time consuming. You'll be drawing maps on a piece of paper until you finally break down, go on eBay and buy the Nintendo Power issue that maps out most of the game. But really, that's the only flaw this game has. The action here is a lot of fun. You can fire your boomerang in 8 different directions, you can toss grenades, and there's tons upon tons of power-ups that do all sorts of different things. One for example works like the Cross in Castlevania, where you can throw up to 3 boomerangs at once. There's also a wide variety of enemies with different capabilities, and that keeps things interesting. One strange thing, though, about the level design, since there's such a huge map that's basically laid out as a huge grid like in Metroid, you'd think you can fall from one area down into the next, but the pits here are treated just like they are in a side scroller. That's kind of puzzling. This is remedied in the sequel, Powerblade 2, also for NES. However, that game is much more linear and streamlined, and as a result it comes across as kind of generic. I like the first game better. There's one goofy bit of trivia I want to point out about Powerblade. When this game was released, Arnold Schwarzenegger's lawyers sent this game's cover artist a nasty letter basically saying, don't use Arnold's image. The artist, a guy named Mike Winterbauer, came back at them saying he actually used a picture of himself as a model for the cover. Right. And he actually sent them a picture. That's some heads up thinking. Nice going. Anyway, yeah, Powerblade's cartridge is unfortunately crazy over price now, but if you stumble across it somehow, it's totally worth picking up. On the surface it kind of looks generic, you know, muscled up dude, action platform or whatever. But while the exploration aspect can be clumsy and frustrating, the game is still very playable and has a couple interesting ideas for its time.