Blender Bros

(Review posted: October 30, 2020) This is a game that's always been dear to my heart ever since playing it as a child, back when I got the GBA version. It's so obscure though that not many people know about it, and the only playthroughs I've seen of it online are people playing it for the first time, with little to no knowledge of the game. I always wanted someone to make some sort of guide of this game (someone that knows enough about the game to talk about almost everything, anyway), but got so fed up waiting for one that I decided to use the knowledge I got playing this game for hours as a kid to make one myself. Despite this, I figured not many people would care about it because this game never got any sort of sequel or remake, and any hopes of one were shattered when the company that made it went out of business. Suffice to say that the last thing I'd expect was a Steam port of this game to ever exist someday... And to my surprise, I found out that it did! Obviously, the first thing I did when I found out about it was to play it immediately and see if there were any changes from the original version... There weren't any changes at all. Not really anyway. There are some things I'd like to talk about the game here though. Keep in mind from here on out this will be a "review" of this port of the game in particular. Also, I'm not going to bother making a "Pros and Cons" list; I'm just going to put together all my thoughts here randomly. Sorry if that bothers anyone. - Saving in this game doesn't work for some reason. You can only save progress with the "save-state" option provided by the Steam version by pressing Escape. The only downside to this really is that you have no way of playing a cleared file of the game (after beating the final boss). All this does is let you re-fight the bosses though, so whatever. - You can also press Escape to change the controls of your controller/keyboard. The default is the same as the GBA version, except the A and B buttons are switched for some reason (probably for Xbox controller users). Also, there's an option to choose what you want the Select button to be, even though that button does nothing in this game. - As much as I love this game, even I have to admit its price is a bit too high. I ended up buying it when it was on sale for about $5, and assumed that was its actual price at first without questioning it. - The audio quality at times is a bit... weird. And not in a good way. It's most noticeable during the Jackbatlar fights and in Militar/bomb race missions. - The screen when playing has this weird, "90s TV" quality to it as well, which I also don't like very much because it kind of hurts my eyes. The border surrounding it is pretty cute though, and it reminds me of the ones you see when playing in the GB Tower in Pokémon Stadium. - There was another person who reviewed this port that mentioned that you can only have a max health of 5. I've confirmed it's 10 (which means 7 health upgrades), just like the original. I have no idea what made that person think it was 5, when a lot of people don't even know you can get any health upgrades at all. By the way, I confirmed it was 10 with the golden hotdogs; I have no idea if playing mini-games can increase your health as I've not played them yet. Considering how my playthrough of this port went I'm assuming that's unchanged as well. So, those are the things about this port I wanted to talk about, assuming I didn't forget about anything. Now, would I recommend this port? I mean, considering this is pretty much the only viable way to get the game (legally) at this point, I suppose so. Considering the quality of this port and the game in general, I'd recommend waiting for it to go on sale first. I'm still really happy that this game got a Steam port though, as this'll potentially give it more love from others; love I think it deserves. (Edit: September 29, 2021) - I don't know if this was fixed, or this has always been the case and I didn't realize it, but after playing through the Steam version again there's some things I want to mention. One, the "90s TV" effect the game has can actually be turned off, so if you don't like it (like me), you don't have to worry about it. Second, you CAN actually have a cleared file of the game, despite the game not keeping regular saves; you just need to save the game (normally) after watching the end credits, select the file you just saved, then make a save-state, while not ever turning the game off during all this. Which means there technically isn't actually a downside to not keeping your regular saves and having save-states instead (except for the fact you have to remember to save with save-states I guess). So yeah, other than that, everything else should be correct.

Wow this was really cool. Upon some (very brief) research, it turns out this is a PC "port" of a GBA game by the same name. That's why the graphics, sound, and everything felt so... oddly familiar to me. I had not played the original, mind you. I LOVE the artstyle of the characters. Graphics were great, music was awesome, characters were all super adorable and nothing in the game ever felt too frustrating (except some bosses). [h1]In depth review:[/h1] Your moveset: Besides moving left and right and having a basic jump, you can duck and press an attack button. There's some intricacies here though that are quite interesting. For example, if you hold "down" in the air, you'll flip upside down and bounce on your ears to reach greater heights. You can then attack while in this state to do a sort of drill move (I honestly forgot you could to this during boss fights and thus never used it. Mainly because hit detection is too generous for the enemies to hit you so you can never get too close to them.) You can also keep pressing the attack button to widen its range around you, as well as pressing the button repeatedly in the air to spin and glide. Pressing and holding the attack will charge up an attack with super far range (I just spammed this on most bosses as they were too hard to get close to, like I said.) It was super fun pairing the ear bounce with air spins, I felt surprisingly maneuverable. Oh you can also grab a flight "power up" and climb pipes. What are "Mini Bros."? Think of them like pokemon but as a passive/active ability. You'll find them in levels (only about 3/4 levels have them). You can "evolve" them by letting them listen to music(?) by purchasing music discs from the shop. The genres are rock, reggae, and classical. Think of giving the mini bros. music as feeding them. Once they listen to the right genre (it's trial and error), they'll change forms. The discs are the only thing to spend your money on, so just constantly buy them and give them to your mini bros. Some mini bros do things like giving you a shield to block one hit, give you another hit point back, attack in front of you, act as a platform for you to stand on, give you invulnerability, or light up dark areas. However, a few of these mini bros. are mandetory to get, though they are extremely easy to find. You can find them (and the objective) by using your radar ears, so you'll never get lost (the levels are small anyway). Positives: + I liked the idea of switching Mini Bros to use different abilities. Gives it almost a pokemon-like vibe. (Some much more overpowered than others.) + Levels were easy and short (normally ~2 minutes each), and few of them reward exploration with max health upgrades and mini bros. to make levels or bosses easier. Negatives: - The bosses, man. You're agile, but not sonic or mario agile, quite. It's very difficult to fight bosses when half of them move faster than you and your vision is limited due to the small screen of the GBA. Some of them ramp up to having 20 health while you only have 5 (with two max health upgrades, even. You normally would only have 3.) - I thought it was kind of annoying that once you "fed" a mini bro a certain disc they would change and REMOVE the previous mini bro evolution. Sometimes they changed abilities entirely (one mini bro just made health regen better and better with each evolution, however others replaced abilities entirely like invulnerability changing into "freezing enemies"???). This meant that once you evolved a mini bro and weren't happy with their new ability, you had to go back to a previous level to grab the first evolution again. Not that big of a hassle since you can exit the level via the menu as soon as you grab them, but was still annoying to have to backtrack because we didn't know what new ability they'd gain. The in-between: ~ The game has a weird obsession with time-based levels. There's at least 5-7 levels that are on a time limit. I only failed once, and that was on the first "cosmorider" level they set you on where you have to drive by and pick up remotes. They don't explain where they are, so I missed the first one and failed. But other than that, the time limits are extremely generous. (There's a 10 minute level that you should end with about 4 to 5 minutes remaining.) I honestly NEED to see more of these characters. I want more games with them in it. This was such a treat. They're so adorable and the moveset is so strange yet fun and new to me (I'm not an expert platformer and have only played few platformer games (some mario, a good amount of kirby and sonic and that's kinda it.)

For a GBA fan who cares about preservation, this is all that a GBA release on Steam needs to be for me - a legal way to acquire a ROM. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Blender Bros\res contains the file "game", simply copy it and rename it with a .gba extension, then throw that bad boy in your emulator or flash cartridge of choice. Not that the emulation wrapper this comes with is bad by any means. Despite being advertised as not having controller support, it does, though you'll still need to press escape to access emulation settings. You can rebind controls from there, though there's no way to map the emulator menu to your controller. Savestates are available, though the ingame save worked for me, despite reviews to the negative. There are graphics settings too (turn off default CRT mode ASAP, it's overbearing and not even authentic to GBA hardware), despite, again, reviews to the contrary. Your normal resolution, full screen, and... *ugh* stretch settings. GBA emulation has not developed widescreen hacks yet to my knowledge, so I see no reason to complain about 4:3; the price is a bit high, but not source-port-with-widescreen high. In any case, it's a GBA game, so the gold standard visual experience is gonna be playing on original hardware, not on emulator with altered resolution. That's what I did, hence my short playtime in the Steam app. I have not yet played the game itself extensively - seems budget but very polished; pre-rendered scrimblos reminiscent of Klonoa, with obvious care behind them; translation is the only noticeably low quality aspect, but a boss called [Shartle] is worth that price - I will expand the review when I do so, but this is obviously shaping up to be a hidden gem, and I'm always happy to expand my library of legally acquired ROMs anyway.

Blender Bros is an ancient game from 2002. It's a whopping 21 years old at the time of this review. The game lacks support for any modern gaming display resolutions (or widescreen monitors), hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on modern gaming PCs. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an ancient game. This seems to have been put on Steam as a nostalgia gouge. This console/handheld (GameBoy Advance) ported platformer is a basic Sonic the Hedgehog ripoff that was unwisely dumped on a gaming console dominated by Mario... and history shows, it went absolutely nowhere. It was a failure then, how are we supposed to see it now? And look at the price on this... what's really going on here? This GBA reject has no serious value or merit for Gameboy players back in 2002... it has absolutely zero value here on PC competing with Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio. It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming. Because this is designed for consoles, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the inferior console gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the console-centric developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for consoles forces upon a game. Once more, console peasants have made gaming worse for everyone. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 3 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. Blender Bros is stupidly, unethically expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $11 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again. Even when it was new, this was never a triple-A game. This is the kind of game that went almost directly from the warehouse into the cheap bargain bins at the front of the shop. Now, on Steam, without any modernisation? This is impossible to recommend. [b][quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/quote][/b]Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.

Underrated GBA platformer that somehow got rereleased on Steam. It won't blow your mind, but it's a nice platformer you can beat in a couple hours.

There's nothing particularly remarkable about this game but it's so straightforward, with a good pace, a couple of well placed level gimmicks to add variety and some cool Mini Bros abilities that it's something quite welcoming to play, even if it doesn't leave much of a mark. It's cool innocent fun, and with the cartoony pre-rendered models with black outlines aesthetic and the happy upbeat tunes... it makes me feel like I'm playing someone else's childhood. About the Steam version... it's fine, it's basically a ROM file working with an emulator. It works fairly well, I've had some input issues (tho I'm not sure if it's the emulator or Steam's overlay fault) but the rest works as it should. 9 euros is way too much for something like this, so play it at minimum 50% discount, as the game is nothing spectacular and neither is the porting process.

Blender Bros has quite the odd backstory. Originally a GBA title - this game was exclusive to North America, but the back story comic was exclusive to Japan. If you try to find a physical copy of this game nowadays, it will set you back hundreds of dollars. The game itself is a pretty average platformer, however the characters and universe as well as Blender's unique abilities made it worth my time as a first time player with no nostalgia for the title. It's nice seeing such a rare and obscure game made officially available here on Steam, but as it is a re-release of a GBA game with no major changes made and it's actually a very short game (seriously, some levels are under a minute in length!), I heavily recommend waiting for a sale if you're interested in picking it up officially.

https://youtu.be/Pf2J16KpZtM Originally a GBA title the gameplay and mechanics show their age. Without any personal nostalgia it is unlikely there is anything to draw new players in.

Blender Bros. is a Game Boy Advance platform-game that was born from a collaboration between Infogrames and Hudson Soft (the latter of which was best-known for series like Adventure Island, Bomberman, and Star Soldier, before being absorbed into Konami in 2012). An early release for the system in 2002, it went pretty much unpromoted in its day, so in spite of being a platformer enthusiast, I only heard of it for the first time when I recently stumbled across Piko Interactive's emulator-wrapped Steam re-release. The story sees an "animalman" named Blender (who leads a team known as the Cosmo Keepers) seeking to prevent a malicious group (the Zooligans) from wiping out humans. Blender is a dog-person with giant ears which he uses for tasks such as hanging from ropes, as springs for performing high-jumps, and as a radar for pointing you in the general direction of items and stage-exits, and he can also collect small backup creatures dubbed "Mini Bros.", which offer further abilities. He even rides a jet-bike in some into-the-screen driving sections which are there to break up the sidescrolling gameplay occasionally. Additionally, if you enjoy going back and trying to beat your best records, the game keeps track of how fast you finished each stage, too. Blender Bros. was originally designed for a handheld console with two main face-buttons and two shoulder-buttons, so the controls are simple to pick up when mapped as you want them (which I would suggest doing with a community-made emulator, rather than the provided one - more on that below). The handling is precise, as you would expect from a game of this type made during the era it's from. Most importantly, movement feels fun, as Blender has more abilities than the simple inputs might suggest. The visuals are pre-rendered, in a fashion reminiscent of the likes of Donkey Kong Country, Klonoa -Door To Phantomile-, and Tomba!, and the character-designs are also in the same vein - they're quite charming and expressive for what they are. The music is upbeat and the sound-effects are cute and fitting, and they go perfectly with the game's look and tone. Unfortunately, the provided emulation setup is not very good - the display is cropped to 4:3 even though the Game Boy Advance used a 3:2 aspect-ratio, the default look uses a very unfitting TV-style filter, and there are no options to display the game correctly. Thankfully, one of the best things about PC gaming is the wealth of options we have - including emulating old games, which is handy in cases like this. It's easy to retrieve the ROM-file for this title (inside the install directory is a folder named "res", and in there is a file simply named "game" - copy that out, rename it, and give it a .gba extension), and then drop it into the likes of RetroArch or RetroDECK (or whatever you prefer), where you'll have many more options for how you play and view the game. Putting aside the poor emulator that it comes with, once I dropped it into RetroDECK I thoroughly enjoyed the game. The only quibble I really had with it was its dry and painfully-literal translation, which lacks personality compared to the charming graphics - though it is sometimes unintentionally amusing, with obvious examples including your base mistakenly being described as a basement instead, and a combo-animal boss being named "Shartle"! The game is short but sweet, which is a positive for me, but might be a negative for others - that being the case, I would advise waiting for a sale, especially since it sometimes drops as low as 41p on legitimate key-reseller sites like Fanatical (though even the standard price is infinitely better than you'll find the cartridge for on the secondary market!). I'm glad that Blender Bros. got a second chance on Steam after flying under the radar at the time of its original release. It's a nice, solid little game, and I would recommend it if you enjoy 2D platformers in the late 1990s/early 2000s style - just make sure that you play it through an outside emulator instead of the one that it comes with!

I am reviewing most Piko Interactive titles differently to how I review all other games, as with Piko I am usually reviewing the poor emulation choices they have made that ruin the entire game experience. It's so sad that they have the licenses to so many retro games and just don't care about them. Now THIS is a developer who is what I call a "cash cow" who just churns out retro titles with zero attention to detail and zero quality care. This has never been updated and after 5 years it's clear it never will be. What is extra sad about it is that this sort of fix is arbitrary and could be coded into an update overnight if that, as it's simply an emulator flag they need to offer an option for that they have hard enabled. Even if I had to go to a config file to do it, I wouldn't care in this case, as at least I could enjoy the game. I went a bit nuts with Piko when they had a sale and bought most of their retro games (the ones where I already knew the original well and wanted to own on a modern platform), and almost all of them suffer from this,. For those that don't, they will get a more in depth review of the game itself. Be warned, if you want quality, sharp emulation, this is not it, and avoid like the PLAGUE. So, what IS the issue with Blender Bros? See that beautiful sharp image in the presentation video for this game? i.e. the video that is supposed to represent actual gameplay? Well you can forget about it, as there is a FORCED blur filter on the game (bilinear filter) and it's STRONG. Absolutely no way to disable it. They DO allow you to disable scan lines, but the blur is there to stay. FWIW, the scan lines are the worst I have ever seen in any kind of CRT emulator filter, ever, in 20 years of my retro gaming. The only one that comes a close second are the Konami CRT filters in the CV and Contra compilations, but I digress. For me, the insanely strong bilinear filtering removes all joy from the game, as it looks hideous, and one of the things about SNES games were the vibrant, colourful 16 bit graphics, that look washed out and dull even on a bright mini LED 4k panel! I am annoyed and fairly angry as all of their titles affected by this (all of them will have a review similar to this) are as if I lit my money on fire, as I will never, ever play them more than the bare minimum required time so I can review them to WARN others to stay far far away, unless for some reason you love "smeared" pixel art. Pissed off, and I STILL want them to fix this and would appreciate it, just do it, it's SUCH a simple fix for those who have access to the emulator settings, i.e. PIKO in this case. It's kind of disgusting really, how this and many of their other classic retro titles are presented. One tip, all their games' options pages are accessed with the escape key, so if you need to set up better controller mapping for example, change the window size, CRT (blech) filter and so on, escape is what you need to press (as well as have a mouse or mouse compatible input device to change said settings). Zero effort garbage, using free emulators mind you... Oh, and to really put the nail in the coffin, the titles are now 19 AUD each! They have lost the plot. As it stands, never again Piko, EVER. Fool me once (albeit in one large purchase for more than 10 of their titles, and I didn't think to just play and check every single one in the 2 week period - if you buy, at least don't make the same mistake that I did), shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Have some decency and fix this for your customers, THEN you may get my patronage back. Then and only then. P.S. For those that don't care about the smear filter and want some more basic emulation quality info, sound and control emulation is fine, as is input lag. For those that think I am being pedantic, try it yourself. The game looks nothing like the video, and if it was like that, i.e. actually pixelated or the option to have it so, I'd be thrilled.