Arcade flyer for Blast Off.
Blast Off (ブラストオフ Burasuto Ofu?) is a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up video arcade game designed by Nak and Tak of Namco, the latter published in 1989 in Japan only, running on Namco's System 1 hardware. Despite the major differences, it is the sequel to Bosconian, released eight years before Blast Off
Gameplay[]
Being similar to other Namco games like Xevious, the player controls another Star Fighter, and this time, the player can cycle through different weapons in the shape of circles. Red is the first weapon, they are circles in a spiral pattern Yellow is a straight arrow in three different directions, Blue is a single laser in two directions vertical, and Green is two diagonal lines and one behind.
While the game is a sequel to Bosconian, it is more gameplay-wise to Namco's own game, Dragon Spirit (which itself is gameplay-wise with Xevious). this can be vertified as the player increases in size in every third area and must defeat a boss of some kind. Since the game is very, very different from Bosconian (as with a few other Namco sequels),some players don't consider the game as a sequel. However, the marketing for the game had the hexagon-shaped space stations from the first game in Namco's NG Magazine, and in several flyers and pop up cards and such, as well as being in the game itself.
The game also uses English text, despite being a Japan-only game.