Released in arcades in 1983 by Williams Electronics (which would later become Midway), Blaster was one of the first FPS shooters and the first one that was full color and not vector (wire style) graphics, and even came with its own optional enclosed sitdown cabinet. The game was a sequel to the smash hit "Robotron 1984", and told a story as if the Robotrons succeeded in wiping out humanity. As the last surviving human, you capture a space shuttle and blast off in search of Paradise, a rumored safe haven, hoping to save and rebuild humanity.
The game consists of 20 stages and you can start as far ahead as stage 4 if you choose. Your craft's only weapon is a rapid fire blaster, which fires across the bottom of the large square in the center of the screen, which also represents the area where you can be hit by enemies. The ship also has a thrust feature that allows you to fly faster when used. You have an Energy gauge that powers your craft's shields, which allow you to take 2 hits, then a 3rd hit results in you losing a life. Some stages have a special giant "E" near the end-if you can grab this item by colliding with it, your energy is restored and you get a free warp to the end of the stage. The first several stages loop a couple times during the game, along with "time tunnels" which are bonus stages offering a short break from the action, followed by a longer "enduro" round at stage 15 then the longest and toughest stage, "armageddon" at stage 19 before reaching Paradise in stage 20. If you reach Paradise, you get a nice surprise, a bonus of 1 million points, and start a new, more difficult loop from the beginning (but the wave counter does not reset to 1). The game is endless, ending only when you run out of lives-if you don't reach stage 20, the game over screen will also say "Paradise is X Billion Light Years Away" with the X being the number of stages left to clear.
Also, note the constant changes in game speed and frequent slowdown because, in particular in the "robot grid" waves, there were far more colors, artifacts, etc. on screen at one time than the very old (but very modern 40 years ago) CPUs could handle.
The highest all-time score also can, if enabled, enter a message of up to 20 characters along with the player's initials. Watch through this at the end for a short message of appreciation from me!
While the game was originally released in arcades only, it did make it to the PlayStation & PC in 1997 as part of the game "Arcade's Greatest Hits-The Midway Collection 2" and again in "Midway Arcade Treasures" released in 2003 for PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube and 2004 for PC.
Recorded 3/19/24 using OBS Studio. Edited using OpenShot Video Editor.