Book: Worlds of Power: Blaster Master
- Author: F. X. Nine (producer), A. L. Singer (writer)
- Published: 1990
A very short and simple novelization of the Sunsoft game, Blaster Master.
Worlds of Power was an attempt to entice young gamers to read more. Books in this series were written in short sentences with a limited vocabulary, and they made liberal use of cliffhangers in order to keep those Nintendo-fried brains engaged. I'm not sure what reading level the producers were targeting, but this Blaster Master novelization is stylistically simpler than The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and about half as long.
Like many video games from this era, Blaster Master doesn't have much direct storytelling past the introduction. A boy named Jason follows his loose pet frog down a tunnel, where he discovers a mysterious underworld. There is a cool tank, and… that's basically it. Blaster Master otherwise consists of tacit action and exploration, so it was necessary to flesh out the novel while still adhering to the game's progression.
Two new characters are added: Eve, the tank's navigator, whose speech is littered with malapropisms, and Alex, Jason's goofy friend. The villain's role is also greatly expanded, and the author does attempt to describe some elements of gameplay, like the tank's functions, and the need for Jason to occasionally explore on foot.
Regrettably, the book zooms by without leaving much of an impression. It's passable, but feels insincere; the game's underworld is treated like something to be bulldozed through. (For example: Levels 5 and 6 are recounted in back-to-back paragraphs of fewer than twenty words.) If it helped some kids improve their reading skills, that's commendable, but I think I would have been disappointed back then. It's a fun piece of merchandising, in any case, complete with a collectable trading card and a long-expired chance to win a Nintendo® GAME BOY™ compact video game system.