Blast Wind is a 1997 Vertical Scrolling Shooter video game developed and published by Technosoft for the Sega Saturn, based off an unreleased arcade game.
A global thermonuclear war has devastated the Earth. A man known as Noa foretold the catastrophe and managed to gather a small number of people to be preserved in an underground bunker known as the Ark, to be released once the radiation has cleared and the Earth's surfaces becomes inhabitable again. However, when the survivors emerge for their stasis, they found that the Earth has been occupied by a violent cybernetic civilization known as Gorn, who had emerged from the Earth's crust after the nuclear war. Left with no choice, the Human Federal Government has entrusted the two ancient artificially-created "Ultimate Destroyers" Forn and Kyo to rid the Earth of Gorn's evil.
Players control either Kyo and Forn (who have different ships, but are hard-bound to controller positions) in a series of 7 stages. Both characters have access to a main shot (a powerful rebounding wave for Kyo, and a straight-firing laser for Forn) and an alternate (a homing shot for Kyo, and a Spread Shot for Forn) that they can switch to at will. Players can trigger switches to get items or switch to alternate routes within the stages.
Blast Wind contains examples of:
- Bittersweet Ending: The Ultimate Destroyers manage to defeat Gorn and ensure the safety of Noa's people, but longstanding environmental abuse is about to make the Earth expire. They decide to put their children in a colony ship to find another habitable planet, with the Ultimate Destroyers as their guardians.
- Church Militant: The speech before the Final Boss implies that, despite their actions hastening the Earth's end, Gorn sees themselves as having the mandate of Heaven.
- Every 10,000 Points: Extra lives are acquired automatically when reaching 400.000 and 2 million points, and a 1-up item is dropped for every 50 coins collected.
- Gratuitous English: The cover features a Wall of Text describing the game's premise in a dramatic way.
- New Era Speech: The leader of Gorn does a brief one prior to boarding the final boss.Gorn Leader: Citizens of Gorn, hark! We are the forces of Heaven! Gorn is forever!
- One Apocalypse After Another: Humanity, rebuilding after a nuclear war, was faced with another deadly threat - Gorn.
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: The remaining humans on the planet were gathered aboard a ship called the Ark by a prophetic man named Noa.
- Route Boss: Stage 2 has a different boss depending on which path you take. The default path's boss is an airship named Gamma Ray, while taking the alternate path will lead to a giant weaponized motorcycle called Sprigun.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: During the nuclear winter, Gorn was sealed beneath the Earth's crust and emerged when the remaining humans came out of the Ark.
- Self-Deprecation: A subtle example, but the runway of the final boss is emblazoned with "World of Technology"... which is Technosoft's slogan.
- Talkative Cover: The game's cover features a Wall of Text describing the game's premise in a dramatic way.
- Tyop on the Cover: On the cover, the title is misspelled as "BLUST WIND" in the rambling text behind the game's logo.