Back in the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System, one of my favorite games was Sunsoft's action/adventure game, Blaster Master. This game had it all ... big subterranean worlds, bigger mutated monsters, and a rockin' tank armed to the teeth with which to take in all the sights. Of course, that was more than two decades ago. Since then, times (and consoles) have changed dramatically, and the Blaster Master franchise has faded away to obscurity. That is until now. Sunsoft is gassing up the ol' SOPHIA tank one more time with Blaster Master Overdrive, a WiiWare exclusive re-imagining of the original cult classic.

In the original Blaster Master told the story of a boy chasing after his pet frog who stumbled across a hidden underground world. Overdrive ditches this innocent premise for something with a little more of an action hero flair. This time around animals all over the planet are being infected by a strange virus, turning them in bloodthirsty mutants attacking humankind. Instead of playing a boy looking for his pet, you're now the world's foremost authority on biological threats, and you're looking for a cure in order to save your wife and son. Oh, and you've just so happened to be building a heavily armed prototype exploration vehicle, which you've conveniently finished just in time to track down the source of the viral outbreak. It's almost a complete one-eighty from the plot of the original game, but it still manages to explain those "big subterranean worlds, bigger mutated monsters, and a rockin' tank armed to the teeth with which to take in all the sights" that fans like myself loved.

Storyline changes aside, the minute you hear the classic Blaster Master theme and see SOPHIA drive off into the underground tunnels, you can't help but feel like you've just slipped into a comfortable pair of shoes. Beneath Overdrive's updates audio and visuals is the same basic gameplay that made the original game so much fun. Once again, you'll split your time between driving around in SOPHIA, jumping, hovering, diving, and blasting your way through all manner of monsters in classic side-scrolling exploration. At times, you'll need to hop out of safety of SOPHIA's armored hull and explore up close and personal. Usually, this means exploring a temple on foot. When this happens, the game changes from a side scroller to a top down shooter. By mixing things up, Blaster Master feels like two distinct games meant to be blended together ... sort of like chocolate and peanut butter.

Generally speaking, Blaster Master Overdrive polishes the original game. New features like an accessible area map are nice touches, as is the obvious upgrade in presentation. Unfortunately, there are still some problems from the original game that persist in the revamp. For example, when you're on foot in a building, power ups to your weapons come few and far between. That wouldn't be such a bad thing if not for the fact that the slightest touch from an enemy drops you back down to your standard, weak pistol. This makes the bulk of these areas much more difficult than they need to be and can draw out a boss battle for what seems like an eternity.

The biggest problem with Blaster Master Overdrive, though, is that the devs neglected to fix the biggest issue with the original game: the controls. In fact, they actually made the controls worse than they were over twenty ago. For starters, you have to play the game with the Wii Remote and only the Wii Remote. There's no Nunchuk support. No support for the Classic Controller. Even the GameCube controller was left out of the loop. Okay, I get that it lends something to the game's legacy. But if the controls suffered in the original NES version, why not fix it when you've got the chance? Making matters worse, strafing is locked into the B button, meaning you have to hold down the trigger on the Wii Remote to strafe. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad ... if you weren't holding the Remote sideways. It's awkward and clunky and could have been fixed easily by simply allowing some sort of joystick support.

At the end of the day, Blaster Master Overdrive does a fair job of bringing back the flavor of the original franchise. The new visuals and audio help to bring things up to date, though the controls a sorely lacking. Ironically, the biggest competition Blaster Master Overdrive has on the Wii is Sunsoft's release of the original game on the Virtual Console. Sure, it might not look quite as pretty or sound as rich as Overdrive, but at least the original supports the Classic Controller and GameCube controller for gameplay. Oh, and it's half of Overdrive's 1000 ($10) Wii Point price tag.

Final Score: C+