Blaster Master (1988) has one of the great absurd setups: your pet frog hops into a radioactive box, mutates, and dives into a hole in the yard, so you give chase in a powerful tank named SOPHIA THE 3RD. That's the American story. Sunsoft's Japanese original, Chou Wakusei Senki Metafight, is a straight science-fiction war story with no frog in it at all. Somebody at Sunsoft of America decided a boy and his mutant amphibian was a better hook, and they were probably right.

The genius is the structure. You drive SOPHIA through interconnected side-scrolling caverns, collecting upgrades that let you reach places you couldn't before: the hover, the wall-climbing tires, the dive unit for underwater sections. That's Metroid's logic applied to a vehicle. Then you park, climb out on foot as Jason, and walk into a door that switches the whole game to a top-down view for a dungeon and a boss fight. Two games sharing one map.

The weapon system has a bite to it. Jason's gun levels up as you collect power-ups and drops a level every time you take a hit, so a bad stretch strips you back to a pea-shooter right when you need firepower. It's the same pressure Gradius applies, applied to a platformer.

And the US version is punishing in a way the Japanese one isn't. Metafight shipped with a password system. Ours didn't, and there are no continues, so a death in area 7 sends you back to the yard. Eight areas on one life bar, with bosses at the end of each.

Naoki Kodaka's soundtrack carries it, and the opening area's theme is one of the best things on the console. Brutal, atmospheric, and unforgettable. That tank is an icon.