Blast Corps
Overview
Rare's Blast Corps is a great concept (and really showed off the Nintendo 64) but sadly, between the graphics and especially the controls, doesn't hold up all that well today.
Review
Wouldn't it be fun to just drive through buildings with a bulldozer? After all, that's what Marvin Heemeyer did over twenty years ago (though out of pent-up anger rather than looking to have fun), and for many years, Blast Corps was the closest thing to that, with ugly graphics and some questionable controls that make some of the levels much harder than they should be. (I'm not sure about today. I know there's games like Teardown but that's all voxels and frankly the demolition aspect is still pretty janky so it focuses more on heist missions and "creative solutions" a la Scribblenauts (well, that's what Zero Punctuation seems to indicate anyway). Problem with Blast Corps, is the first level is pretty good. An out of control nuclear tanker needs a path cleared and it's you, a bulldozer, and a whole lot of buildings that are going to be expediently eminent domained. Despite the buildings looking like gray blocks on the inside it's fun and there was nothing like it at the time. However, the later vehicles aren't as fun, the dump truck has to be basically controlled so the bed of the truck slams into buildings, which is not as fun to control. (I think I dropped it at that point). Maybe I'll get into it, but the fact remains. Some of the N64 titles like Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time are great and hold up today but games like Blast Corps and others in the once-lauded Rareware collection aren't nearly as timeless. I think I also may have held up Blast Corps in high regard for me personally over the years because it was one of the few games that weren't re-released; the Wii Virtual Console let me play a good version of Super Mario 64 (as opposed to janky emulated versions, or worse) but Blast Corps was never released for the Virtual Console, it saw its first official re-release as part of Rare Replay in 2015 and even then it wasn't a perfect port, as one of its music pieces (Skerries, also known as "Speed Test") had to be removed as it was a remix of the boss battle theme from Donkey Kong Land. I don't know what Microsoft replaced it with, but I'm sure it was inferior.
Player Notes
I re-played this in 2024 as it was supposed to go up when the 20th anniversary of the Granby incident was timely.