Sonic Blast Man (SNES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Taito's 1993 beat 'em up for the Super Nintendo, Sonic Blast Man.

Played through on the normal difficulty level.

This SNES-exclusive belt-scrolling brawler stars a superhero known as "The Blast Man," and according to the manual, "[d]anger transforms you into Sonic Blast Man. You charge into battle using your Dynamite Punch and other skills to defend people who are being threatened by vicious criminals."

He first appeared in Taito's 1990 arcade game of the same name, a game that features five scenarios in which Sonic Blast Man must save the day by punching things with his 100-megaton punch. To play the game, you would put on a glove and punch a large sensor-equipped target attached to the front of the game cabinet. Despite being branded as "the arcade hit," Sonic Blast Man for the SNES is not the same game. Recreations of the arcade game's stages do, however, serve as bonus rounds between stages.

Sonic Blast Man's console adventure is, first and foremost, a beat 'em up in the same vein as Capcom's Final Fight (   • Final Fight (SNES) Playthrough  ). In addition to the standard array of punches, jump kicks, and throws, he has a screen-clearing dynamite punch, and there are several unique ways to end a combo: he can fling the enemy into a crowd, fire a sonic boom that stuns everyone in its path, or merely punch the enemy so hard that they go flying off the screen.

There isn't a lot of variety, the gameplay doesn't flow as smoothly as Final Fight's, and there's a lot of heavy slowdown, but it's good, short-term fun with enough depth to prevent stages from devolving into mindless gauntlets of button mashing. It would've been nice to have another selectable character or two, though, or the option to play with a friend.

The graphics are nice but uneven - the sprites are huge, SBM's dorky strut and flowing scarf are good for a laugh, the animations look good, and the impact words ("BAGOOM!") give it a nice bit of comic flair, but the backgrounds are dull as dishwater. Zuntata's music is catchy, too, in that quaint, early-SNES way, featuring a ton of raw sawtooth waves, marimba, and slap bass.

The absurd intro and the special stages are the most memorable parts of the game. They all present some sort of dire situation - a woman is about to be raped, a meteor is about to hit the earth, a semi-truck is about to hit a baby stroller, etc. - and the solution to every problem is to punch it. Hard.

For instance, a lady is strapped to the railroad tracks. Oh no, whatever will we do?

(Sonic Blast Man zooms down from the sky and punches the fast approaching train, presumably killing everybody aboard.)

Yay! Our hero!

There's even a giant enemy crab! Hmm... I wonder if the guys behind Sony's 2006 E3 presentation were Sonic Blast Man fans.

Because you only get the opportunity to play four of the five selectable hit games over the course of the standard game, I punched in a stage select code to show the final one at the end of the video (59:34).

Sonic Blast Man isn't an all-time genre great, but it was excellent weekend rental fodder back in the early 90s.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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