Plazma Burst: Forward to the Past and Plazma Burst 2 are online, freeware 2D platform shooters created in Adobe Flash (or rather, Adobe Animate) by Ukrainian developer Eric Gurt. Due to the discontinuation of Flash Player, both of these games cannot be played on the website; however, you can download them with the Plazma Burst Launcher.
Around the end of 2024, work was started by Eric Gurt to develop the HTML5 port of the sequel which, while still in-progress, achieves better performance than it's Flash counterpart and can be played on a browser.
In 2025, the third installment of the series, Plazma Burst 3, has been released for closed beta testing, about 10 years after the game's development began. A subscription to Eric Gurt's Patreon of any paid tier is required for players to gain access to the game, regardless if said subscription is active or otherwise. The game's campaign mode is still a work in progress.
This game provides examples of:
- Airborne Mook: Level 11 in the first game, and Drones in the second game.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: One for each game. In the first game, you meet Noir Lime at the end of Level 10 and play him on levels 14 and 15. In the second game, you play as Proxy on levels 30-36.
- And the Adventure Continues:
- Plazma Burst 1 ends with the Player Character and their ally Noir Lime reaching a ship that will take them to Earth. With the former having been wounded by the Final Boss and the ship being only big enough for one person, they elect to stay behind and find another way down while Noir Lime takes the ship; the two split up, vowing to meet again.
- Plazma Burst 2 ends as the protagonists find another Time Machine, boarding it and setting out to Set Right What Once Went Wrong once and for all.
- Arm Cannon: Some aliens in the first game have rapid-fire energy guns where their hands should be.
- BFG: Several, especially in the second game. The CS-BNG in particular is practically a direct clone of the BFG, all the way down to the Doom³ version's tracer beam mechanic.
- Bloodier and Gorier: The second game is almost like the 2D-shooter version of Happy Wheels.
- Boom, Headshot!: Shooting an enemy in the head can cause their head to explode, killing them instantly.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Civil Security Bosses and Usurpation Destroyers in the second game.
- Bottomless Magazines: Except for grenades and the rocket launcher in the first game.
- Bullet Time: Pressing Z in the second game, also happens in Level 40 when Noir Lime's ship crashes.
- Combat Pragmatist: What you are forced to be in order to win in hard difficulty and above.
- Crate Expectations: Wooden crates in the second game, which may contain guns or grenades.
- Critical Existence Failure: You and vehicles fight to the last hit point.
- Damage Discrimination: No infighting in Hard mode in the second game. Otherwise...
- The Determinator: In the second game, dying enemies, even if they are cut in half and bleeding out, will still try to kill you as long as they are alive.
- Difficulty Levels: Three in the first, four in the second.
- Drop Pod: You drop from the sky in one at the start of the second game.
- Energy Weapon: Plenty, including weapons that shouldn't be, like pistols, rifles, and shotguns.
- Excuse Plot: The original plot vaguely intimates that your home planet was almost completely destroyed by some unspecified calamity, with you being sent back to change history; however it's mostly there to provide nominal context for why you're Running And Gunning aliens and other foes. Plazma Burst 2 fleshes the plot out slightly by explaining that the calamity was an Alien Invasion of Earth by a hostile species, who came through a portal that humanity unwittingly opened to their homeworld.
- Exploding Barrels: Both games have barrels (red metal in the first, glass in the second) whose only purpose is to, well... explode.
- Export Save: The second game lets you copy-and-paste game states as text to save as a file and/or load one such game state you have saved. This option can be found as "Export game state" located in the "Settings & Performance" option in the main menu.
- Falling Damage: You, enemies and vehicles take damage if they hit the ground (or a wall) at high speed. The second game uses this to introduce your character: He appears in a container falling from the sky, and when it hits the ground, Falling Damage breaks it open and the game begins.
- Friendly Fireproof: Two or three heroes fight together in the final levels of each game. You can't shoot each other, but you can hurt each other with Splash Damage.
- Gatling Good: Noir Lime has a minigun in the second game.
- Grimy Water: Acid in the second game.
- Heal Thyself: Medikits in the first game.
- Hit Points: The first game gives you 100, the second gives you either 500 or 750 (or 130 or 200, if at impossible difficulty) depending on your battle suit.
- Humongous Mecha: The Sword Bot, the final boss in the first game, and the Hound Walker in the second game.
- Informed Equipment: Averted in the second game, as all your weaponry can be seen on your back, his hip, or (in the case of the defibrillator), strapped to your thigh.
- Item-Drop Mechanic: When enemies die, they drop their weapons (unless the weapon is built into their arm). Sometimes you can pick these up.
- Joke Weapon: The Shark. Firing it results in white flashes that are absolutely harmless.
- Laser Blade: Swords in the second game.
- Lens Flare: Lights flare in the second game.
- Level Editor: The second game allows you to create your own maps, including maps with single-player, cooperative multiplayer, and team deathmatch modes.
- Mêlée à Trois: You, humans of the world you've entered, and aliens.
- Magical Defibrillator: The aptly-named Defibrillator in the second game. Aside from healing or reviving your allies, it can also be used to incapacitate enemies if they have lower HP. Plazma Burst 2 also features a Medic Pistol, which has pretty much the same function as the ordinary defib, but for healing from longer distances.
- Mind Over Matter: The kinetic module in the second game allows for telekinesis.
- Mooks: Bad guys by the dozen, both human and alien.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: You don't fall off the bottom of the screen like in an old platformer. There's always something down there. If you fall too far and hit the floor, you'll get hurt or killed. But you might fall harmlessly into water. Or you could hit the bottom of the game world and die instantly. In the first game, this looks like ordinary ground, which doesn't make sense. In the second game, it's a black void, which also doesn't make sense.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: The enemies in the first level of the first game appear to have 1 HP. They can be insta-killed by shards of glass from Exploding Barrels.
- Ragdoll Physics: Corpses and the living who have lost their balance tumble around like ragdolls. You can also press X to ragdoll yourself.
- Recoil Boost: From minor speed boosts to flying at speeds that would turn you into fine gibs when meeting a wall.
- Regenerating Health: Health recovers in the second game, for you and for the enemies in Hard mode.
- Rocket Jump: Both games have a rocket launcher. Point it at the ground, jump, fire, and away you go. You can also jump with grenades and other explosive weapons.
- Run-and-Gun: Both games are straightforward platform shooters.
- Scoring Points: The first game has a completely pointless scoring system.
- Scratch Damage: In the first game, everyone can be hurt by shards of flying glass from Exploding Barrels, even though everyone appears to be wearing some sort of body armor.
- Set a Mook to Kill a Mook:
- The enemies in the first game and on Easy or Normal difficulty in the second game can shoot each other, and when they do, they get into firefights to the last one standing.
- The Usurpation and Civil Security hate each others' guts, and are quite happy to blaze away at each other as much as you.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The core plot of the game - Earth has been taken over by the Usurpation (a species of hostile aliens) after opening a portal to their world, without realising what they'd find. Two Space Marines (the unnamed Player Character and their ally Noir Lime) were sent on a one-way trip back in time to prevent that from happening, only to end up in the right time at the wrong place while being separated from each other. Thus, the plot of Plasma Burst 1 and 2 involves trying to find a second Time Machine and correct the past properly.
- Side View: Both games are seen in a straight side view.
- Soft Water: Water tends to break your fall in several levels without so much as a point of damage. Don't try this with acid pools, though.
- A Space Marine Is You: You play as a time-traveling armored space marine.
- Space Suits Are SCUBA Gear: Civil Security soldiers have oxygen tubes on their helmets.
- Splash Damage: Grenades and rockets and the BNG and plasma gun in the second game cause damage over a small area.
- Spread Shot: Shotguns and shotgun-like weapons fire two or more projectiles that spread out as they travel.
- Stealthy Mook: Invisible human enemies (Civil Security Ghosts) in the higher levels of the second game.
- Stepping Stones in the Sky: You can jump off of the explosive canister in mid-air.
- Title Drop: Inverted in Plazma Burst 2. As the player character, Proxy, and Noir Lime step aboard the Time Machine, the latter shouts 'Forward to the past!' - the title of the first game.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: Almost all weapons that appear in the campaign can eventually be retrieved from map placements, taken from dead enemies, or bought from the store. The Grenade Launcher is the sole exception, as every instance of this gun is carried by enemies and marked unusable to you, and is never purchasable in any of the equipment stores.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: Level 11 in the first game.
- Wall Jump: You can bounce off walls in the second game.
- Weaksauce Weakness: At the end of the first game a boss comes and one-hits your partner with swords. The seemingly invincible enemy isn't injured by anything except getting the door closed on it, and that isn't hard to do.
- Web Game: Both games are online Flash games.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: Plazma Burst.