Blaster Master Cheat Codes & Secrets
Complete collection of cheat codes, passwords, unlockables, and hidden secrets for Blaster Master (1988).
Password System
Blaster Master uses a five-character password system composed of uppercase letters (A–P). Passwords encode your current area and SOPHIA III’s gun level. The Game Over screen prompts you to record a password before any continue attempt — write these down, as the game offers no auto-save.
Password structure tracks: current area, cannon upgrade level (1–4), and sub-weapon acquisition status. Higher gun levels persist into your next run only if encoded in the password.
| Password | Area | SOPHIA Gun Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| AAAAA | 1 | 1 | Default start state |
| AABBA | 1 | 2 | Area 1 with upgraded cannon |
| NCCGH | 2 | 3 | Skip to Area 2, mid-power weapons |
| IBLGP | 3 | 3 | Skip to Area 3 |
| HDAAN | 4 | 3 | Skip to Area 4 |
| PLOBM | 5 | 4 | Skip to Area 5, full SOPHIA cannon |
| MNCLP | 6 | 4 | Skip to Area 6, fully armed |
| GDCHM | 7 | 4 | Skip to Area 7 |
| PLGDA | 8 | 4 | Final area, maximum loadout |
Verify each password on first use — subtle character differences (N vs. M, B vs. D) can land you in a different area or a broken state. Emulator users can save state immediately after successful password entry.
Gun Level Preservation
SOPHIA III’s cannon downgrades one level each time the tank takes significant damage. Dropping from Level 4 to Level 1 mid-boss is the single most punishing mechanic in the game. Several techniques mitigate this:
- Hug the ceiling in corridor fights. Most enemy projectiles travel in low arcs. Pressing up against overhead geometry in side-scrolling sections causes many shots to pass underneath SOPHIA.
- Bait, then retreat. Lure dungeon enemies toward you and backtrack to a cleared corridor to dispatch them one at a time rather than taking splash damage from groups.
- Priority-pick the gun icon. When SOPHIA does take a hit and drops a level, the ejected gun icon stays on screen briefly. Reposition immediately and drive over it to reclaim the level before it scrolls off. In tight rooms, this is often recoverable.
- Jason dismount tactic. Some corridor bosses can be engaged exclusively with Jason on foot using grenades, keeping SOPHIA parked safely outside the trigger zone and preserving its gun level entirely.
Beneficial Glitches and Exploits
Hover Skip in Area 7
Once you acquire the Hover sub-weapon, SOPHIA III can sustain elevation across otherwise impassable gaps. Area 7 contains several platforming sequences with narrow ledges over instant-death falls. Activating Hover before each gap and holding the direction of travel lets you ghost across without touching the ledge geometry at all. This skip eliminates two mandatory traversal segments that are responsible for most casual player deaths in the back half of the game.
Jason Wall Phase
In dungeon areas, Jason’s hitbox during door-transition frames is briefly misaligned with the room geometry. Pressing into a door while it is mid-animation (specifically on the frame the door reaches approximately half-open) can push Jason through thin dividing walls into adjacent rooms without triggering the normal entry sequence. This is frame-precise and inconsistent, but useful in Areas 4 and 6 where it can bypass enemy-locked corridors.
Enemy Spawn Lock
Dungeon enemies despawn and respawn based on screen scroll position. In rooms where a strong enemy guards a pickup, walk Jason to the spawn threshold — the pixel where the enemy would appear — and stand at the edge without fully scrolling it in. The enemy never fully instantiates in this state, letting you approach the item with reduced risk. Works reliably in Areas 3 and 5 on specific corridor configurations.
Boss Door Re-entry Exploit
After defeating a dungeon boss, the boss door unlocks. If you re-enter the boss chamber immediately without collecting the tank upgrade orb, then exit and re-enter again, a subset of bosses will respawn in a damaged state (beginning at roughly half health). This has no practical run value but is useful for practicing boss patterns in a single session without full resets.
Boss Weaknesses and Cheese Strategies
| Boss | Area | Reliable Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Plutonium Boss | 1 | Stay far right, shoot diagonally up; it cannot reach that corner effectively |
| Crabullus | 2 | Lightning sub-weapon hits all segments simultaneously — 3–4 volleys end the fight |
| Octohead | 3 | Level 4 cannon at close range during its charge animation; cancel the pattern early |
| Divada | 4 | Grenade spam from Jason on foot; SOPHIA is too large for the room geometry |
| Skull Squid | 5 | Hover to maintain upper elevation, fire straight down during dive |
| Bomber Gragg | 6 | Multi-warhead sub-weapon hits the core through its own projectiles |
| Fire Salamander | 7 | Level 4 cannon bursts during its brief stationary phase between attacks |
| Mother Brain Core | 8 | Lightning sub-weapon to the central eye; the split-phase clones can be outpaced by circling left |
Speedrun Techniques
Early Hover Acquisition Route: Experienced runners sequence-break the intended area order by obtaining the Hover sub-weapon as early as Area 4 and using it to access surface transitions in Area 6 that would normally require the Area 5 key item. This saves approximately four minutes in any% runs.
Tank-Free Boss Fights: Several bosses in Areas 2–5 are faster to kill with Jason on foot using grenades rather than in SOPHIA. The grenade’s blast radius covers multi-hit bosses more efficiently than the cannon at equivalent damage output. Practice the dismount timing so Jason lands adjacent to the boss’s weak point.
Pause Buffering: The game processes certain enemy AI ticks on unpause frames. Rapidly pausing and unpausing during the approach phase of Crabullus and Skull Squid can interrupt their movement cycles, briefly stalling them in a vulnerable position. This is legal in most emulator-based categories.
Developer Easter Eggs and Hidden Content
Sunsoft Credit in ROM: A text string crediting the Sunsoft development team is embedded in the game’s ROM data and can be viewed via a hex editor. It is never displayed during normal gameplay.
Japanese Version Differences (Meta Fight): The North American Blaster Master is a localization of Sunsoft’s Chō Wakusei Senki Meta Fight. The Japanese version contains a slightly different password character set and a hidden test room accessible via a specific password string that was stripped from the North American release. The test room displays all enemy sprites cycling through their animation frames — a standard debugging tool left in the Japanese build.
Scrolling Staff Roll Condition: Completing the game without using any passwords in a single continuous session (all eight areas, no game-over resets) triggers an extended ending scroll that includes a brief additional text block. This screen is absent from any password-resumed completion.
Controller Soft Reset
On NES hardware, pressing A + B + Start + Select simultaneously at any point during gameplay returns to the title screen. No in-game progress is saved, but this is useful for resetting after a failed password entry without powering down the console. On original hardware this is instantaneous; some NES clones have a slight delay.