Bally Alley

"Blast Droids"

Review by Kevin O'Neill

(October 1983)

This is a review of Blast Droids for the Bally Arcade/Astrocade. This review first appeared in NIAGARA B.U.G. BULLETIN, 1, no. 5 (October 5, 1983): 13.
Blast Droids Box
 The rare Blast Droids Box

Blast Droids is the second independently-produced cartridge game by Esoterica Ltd. Esoterica is new to the cartridge field, their former products all being cassettes, but by the quality of this game, I can see quite well that they handled the conversion well.

The game is fashioned on the Atari "Asteroids" coin-op. There is no comparison between this cartridge and Atari's home version of the popular Asteroids. The object of this game is to clear several sectors of alien droids, who are protecting force-fields in various stages of construction. In the first two levels, you need not move your ship, except for clockwise or counterclockwise (right and left on the joystick), in order to aim your blaster at the droids. After these two levels, you are situated in open space, and the droids wrap-around to sneak up behind you. If you collide with any aliens, your partner's ship (in 2-player game) or your own shots (which is, by the way, possible), you lose a ship.

Blast Droids Cart

Levels 4 and 6 contain mazes, which are a different and welcome addition to the game. You must maneuver through these, to the center, and shoot one of the droids inside a force-field there. The catch is that the force-field has a door, that slowly closes, and if you don't make it before this door closes, you lose a ship.

The cartridge also contains a training sector, which was good idea, because it does take a while to hone your skills enough to brave one of the mazes, and this certainly helps. The training sector can also be used, by the pro, for dueling with another player, though scores will not register for hits on friendly ships. Over all, I found "Blast Droids" to be a very good game, compared to the Astrocade carts, although it wasn't quite as good as some. I feel it is well worth the price. Esoterica will soon be having a new cartridge release, a game called "Sea Devil." Details later.


Blast Droids Screenshots


Blast Droids - Level 1
 Blast Droids - Level 1

Blast Droids - Level 2
 Blast Droids - Level 2

Blast Droids - Level 3
 Blast Droids - Level 3

Blast Droids - Level 4
 Blast Droids - Level 4


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