Blazing Chrome
Nintendo Switch

Developed By : JoyMasher
Published By : The Arcade Crew
Category : Platformer, Run’n’Gun, Arcade, Multiplayer
Release Date : July 11, 2019

Welcome to the future! If you’re reading this and you’re a human, well…things don’t look so good. Humanity has been almost entirely eradicated, with the majority of the world being run by mechs and robots alike. Facing extermination, the few humans left in the world decide to stand up and fight against their robot captors, in this bleak future that plays out in Blazing Chrome on the Nintendo Switch.

The game features five levels, four of which are available to play right off the bat, but need to be beaten in order to unlock the finale. They are playable in any order, but they have spiking levels of difficulty so for your first run you might want to stick to going in order.

You can choose from up to four different characters to play as. As far as I could tell, none of them offered anything different or unique in the way of gameplay. All can perform the same basic walk and jump maneuvers, as well as firing off their weapons in eight different directions. Each starts with their own basic weapon but others can be picked up as you travel the levels.

Some levels will have you zipping around on hoverbikes dealing with enemies in front of and behind you, while other’s will have you traversing on foot, with the potential to jump into an armored mech suit. The platforming you’ll experience in the game is very simple, since again you can only perform a basic jump. A lot of games similar to this will take advantage of this fact, and force you into scenarios where you have to jump across gaps that are just as far as your jump can reach, but I actually didn’t encounter this while playing Blazing Chrome.

Enemies come in a few different forms, and if you’ve played any sort of retro-bit platformer you’ll be ready for all of these. They can spawn anywhere at anytime, and have specific spawn-points so if you end up wandering back just a bit too far, enemies that you’ve already laid waste to can be triggered once again.

Numerous times through the levels, you’ll encounter quite a few mid-bosses that will keep you on your toes. These guys are beefy and relentless, and to top it all off, you go down with a single hit just like the old days. Luckily you have a small sampling of lives to bleed through, so if you happen to get tapped, you’ll respawn on the spot until you run out of lives. Actual bosses take these fights and ramp them up by a few steps. Prepare for these ones to take longer and go through many phases of attacks before you finally best them as your limited abilities are put to the test.

Blazing Chrome was a fun experience for me, instantly transporting me back to my younger NES days when I…could never imagine to beat a game like this. Flash forward over two decades and…well I still struggle, but I’ve learned to enjoy the struggle. I’ve had the distinct pleasure of getting to play and review all three of JoyMasher’s games right here on The Switch Effect and it has been an absolute joy to do so.

Specifically to this one, everything about it just felt incredible. The graphics were colorful and beautiful, the robot enemies were fun (yes, even when they spawned on me while I was mid-jump and was hopeless to avoid it), and the boss fights were all instant classics. They were the boss fights that you complain and gripe about while you’re struggling through, but once you finish it you instantly want to play the fight again. To top it all off, the soundtrack was the icing on the beautiful cake, providing excellent tunes for laying waste to your mech enemies. If you haven’t stopped reading this review to go pick this game up yet, then go do it as soon as you’re done. While you’re at it, grab JoyMasher’s other titles Oniken and Odallus : The Dark Call and play all three while the world waits for what this amazing studio decides to do next.