Blackthorne
2025-09-22
"Blackthorne" (on the other continent it was "Black Thorne," I think but can't remember which where) is a representative of a little underused, and half forgotten, genre called cinematic platformer. Think "Another World" or "Flashback," or "The Way: Remastered" from newer stuff. Probably 3D made it all go away. Anyway, this one's fully drawn and slower-paced, at least so far. Due to backing out of the line of shot, the shootouts are more about timing if anything else, which works for a handheld.
Story
The plot is marvellously 1990s: bad Sarlac (Star Wars, anybody?) takes over the kingdom, but the king manages to send his son to Earth where he spends the next 20 years (or 25), until he's just teleported to a mine. And so the game begins. There are slave miners here and there and you can talk to them, and they sometimes give some goodies or advice, but that's the whole setting. So now, as a prince returning to your land, you have to take back what's rightfully yours.
And also for the good of the subjects.
Gameplay
This is 1994 and SNES, so there are no saves. Instead, you get a code to write down on a piece of paper to start from that point next time. Works fine, especially when you re-install the system a couple of times in a single day. You don't lose any equipment this way because it's being cleared whenever you hit the checkpoint. This way each area becomes a tactical puzzle to solve, just like sections in "Another World" or "Flashback." Or "Hotline Miami" (I always think of that one).
If you get stuck, you can always restart the section. Mostly you might deplete yourself of bombs and won't be able to blow up a door or something. Happened to me many times because I press the wrong buttons in the heat of the shootings, despite them being not speed but timing-based (I swear then a lot). Over time, our hero gets more health but it's not related to anything we do in the game; he just gets tougher.
As a kid, I never finished "Blackthorne," so I'm fairly excited. I had it wishlisted on Switch, but it's a part of a bundle with 2 other games in which I am not interested. And the pixelation looks as if it was designed for a 3.5-inch screen. All the better.
2025-09-23
Aesthetics
BTW, speaking of the 1990s aesthetics, the prince looks like a biker or a rock star in his jeans, white wife-beater, and long dark hair. We can only imagine what he would be saying had he had any dialogue lines outside of the intro, where he has this tired and coarse tone of voice. The intro is of course not voiced because it was SNES and a cartridge, but I can hear it in my head. The times of anti-heroes.
Nintendo liked toning down if not outright censoring games, so the initial BLIZZARD game studio logo doesn't get blood-splatted when the game loads. And of course now that I'm writing it, I realise-- no, I am realising that the blood in-game is green. I'm fairly certain that it was red. But you can still execute slaves chained to the wall. Blackthorne has this ability to aim his shotgun behind him and shoot without looking, like a true badass. We liked that as teens. Very manly.
However, in the spirit of gun safety, there is no running or jumping with the shotgun in our hands. You have to unequip it. On SNES' gamepad it could be dictated by the number of buttons, but I'm pretty sure it was like that on PC as well. This is realistic the same way that "Flashback" was realistic 2 years earlier (just think about it: a platformer where you can die if you fall from too high; that was a new quality).
Okay, so the other title was not "Black Thorne," as I thought, but "Blackhawk." And the main character's name is apparently Kyle "Blackthorne" Vlaros (after Kyle Reese from "The Terminator"). I'm catching up with Wikipedia now. I suppose all the missing info was in the manual, which was a normal practice back then. At least there is a training mission/tutorial (which I skipped this time around, given I did it 30 years ago; enough is enough).
2025-09-26
In the third section things got harder but more importantly, the section itself is just longer. Trial and error was slowly moving me forward, but it began to be tedious and not fun, so I started using state save. Now, the original game didn't have it, but the emulator allows that. And it works wonderfully. Still challenging but in smaller chunks. In remastered "Flashback" this frustrating difficulty was addressed with rewinding after death.
After that I met a long-bearded wizard named Galadril [sic!] who told Blackthorne that he waited for him and teleported him to the new world. We had "Star Wars," so why not "Lords of the Rings." Then Sarlac was informed that "the heir" had returned and ordered his minions to get him.
The second world must be where I never got because it doesn't look like anything to me; I was a really low-skilled gamer back then. I cleared the accessible area and now what?