Blandia

I only recently came across Blandia, a 2D fighting arcade game from the nineties.  Not really getting into arcades until the late 90’s meant I missed a lot of great games that only came out in them earlier in the nineties.  Throw in the fact that I didn’t live near one meant when I did get a chance to go to one, it was always different games there.  If I would have seen this game in an arcade I would have played it.  I also would not have been very good at it.

Blandia is a sequel to the arcade game Gladiator.  The game has the basic story of a bad guy shows up and a group of good people have to beat him.  You can pick from one of six characters, all of which have their strengths and weaknesses.  The game has you fight the five other fighters, three bosses, the final boss and then a copy of yourselves.  Each fighter has a different stage until you get to the boss characters which does reuse some stages for the same bosses.

The gameplay is similar to other 2D fighters at the time except the fighters have weapons.  Each fighter has a high, medium and low attack along with a ranged attack.  The goal is to damage your opponent's armor until it breaks off (head, chest or torso) and then hurt the character by hitting those exposed areas.  Overall I liked the combat of this game and made it feel different from other fighters at the time.  While it wasn’t hard to pick up and learn how to play, the game does get tougher as you progress which is nothing new for an arcade game.

Arcade games usually have pretty good graphics and this one is no exception.  The game uses bright, colorful graphics for its characters and stages.  Everything also has a decent amount of detail to it.  The sound effects were good but nothing special.  I thought the music was also good and was something I enjoyed but again nothing special.

Overall this is not a bad game.  The combat is different and while some people may not like it I had fun with it.  The game does get harder the farther you get but every fight I lost I was able to beat after trying it a few times with different strategies.  In a nutshell this is a pretty standard arcade game from the nineties.  This is one I can see myself going through again with different characters to see their endings.