Blaster Master Zero 3 releases on July 29, bringing the four-year arc of the remake series that the Zero games represent to a conclusion. The original Blaster Master Zero was a remake of the 1988 Japanese title Blaster Master. BMZ 3 takes a vastly different direction than the first game and its 1988 predecessor, as while many of the gameplay elements remain the same, the third installment brings in a whole suite of new mechanics and lore elements. However far the series has come in the last four years, it would not even exist if not for a chance meeting all the way back at E3 2015.

For Blaster Master Zero 3, the story began thanks to an encounter between Inti Creates CEO Takuya Aizu and a Sunsoft representative at the gaming conference. In a recent Game Rant interview, Inti Creates localization lead and producer Matt Papa discussed this fortuitous meeting at E3 2015.

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Blaster Master's original series spans over five titles, six if the 1987 spiritual prequel RoboWarrior is counted too, across 13 years. Interestingly, the first Blaster Master game had a different name, and, according to Papa, an entirely different plot and setting. While the original Japanese title is commonly referred to as Metafight, that is not the full name. When the game came out in Japan, its name was Cho Wakusei Senki Metafight, which roughly translates to "Super Planetary War Records: Metafight." Despite boasting other extravagant game names like Azure Striker Gunvolt 3, Inti Creates chose to simplify the name to Blaster Master Zero for its reboot.

Much like the localization of Persona, the western version did not just change its name, but also a lot of the original content. As the grandiose title "Super Planetary War Records" would imply, Metafight had a rather ambitious scope, according to Papa.

"In Japan, [Blaster Master] was a big '80s anime science fiction' style game with the invading mutant army and the, 'We must defend our planet' type of thing. Two very different situations."

This is different to the English localization. Papa described the Western adaptation as "boy meets frog, they get into the robot, the rest is history." As a result of this, the original game did not do fantastic in Japan. Furthermore, the Blaster Master reboot Overdrive in 2010 did not sell brilliantly, leaving Sunsoft without a solid presence in the west. That was the task facing Inti Creates when it collaborated with Sunsoft for the Blaster Master Zero series. According to Papa, Inti approached the challenge with the mindset, "Let’s take all these floating ideas and funnel them all into one cohesive unit."

However, there was a pivotal step before Blaster Master Zero could relaunch the franchise into the west: The two companies involved needed to meet. This happened during E3 2015, which was also Papa's first time at the gaming conference.

"I was there with other Inti Creates staff, but none of them were English speakers. That includes our president, and I was there in all the meetings to interpret for him, be that English-Japanese bridge there."

That sounds excellent in theory, but the "promised land" of E3 brought its own issues - Papa pinched his sciatica nerve severely on the first day there, which rendered him "completely helpless." The rest of the Inti Creates staff, including president Aizu, had a "free day to do whatever they wanted." During Aizu's free day of traversing without his usual translator, he happened across a representative from Sunsoft that he recognized - another native Japanese speaker, who was struggling to get a meeting with industry giant Nintendo.

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Apparently, Aizu called a bilingual industry associate to help translate, and the two eventually got the Sunsoft representative in to speak with Nintendo. "If you don’t have an exhibitor pass," Papa said, "Even if you have a meeting with Nintendo, security isn’t going to let you waltz in." However, the story does not end there. Later in the day, the CEO stumbled across this meeting between Sunsoft and Nintendo taking place.

Unfortunately, the meeting "wasn't going so well." The two were talking about reviving Blaster Master for the west, but the conversation was "stalling." This did not deter Aizu, who "just asked if there was anything he could do to help."

"He said 'well, why don’t we at Inti Creates help develop the game?' Everyone seemed to say 'yeah, okay.' Just like that, Blaster Master Zero 3 was officially born."

Anecdotes like these just go to show how luck can be such a massive factor in the creation and distribution of video games. Without this interaction, an entire franchise may have languished without a reboot in the modern age.

Blaster Master Zero 3 releases on the July 29 for PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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