[3][4] Blaze of Glory was recorded by the band's original Davis, California-based lineup of Scott Miller on guitar and lead vocals, Nancy Becker on keyboards, Michael Irwin on drums and Fred Juhos on bass.

In July 2014, Omnivore Recordings announced their reissue of an expanded version of Blaze of Glory, remastered from the original tapes, which was released on September 2, 2014, on CD and vinyl.

[1] Vallor wrote that the album "remains the wonderfully uncynical pop gem Scott mischievously packaged in a trash bag when it first appeared on vinyl in 1982.

"[1] Harvard professor Stephanie Burt, writing in 2011, considered this album "true to the visceral power, the sexual charge, in guitar-based Anglo-American pop" while simultaneously exemplifying "the wordy awkwardness... of the nerd stereotype.

[13] At the outset of "Sleeping Through Heaven," according to The Big Takeover, Juhos' bass and "Nancy Becker's period-appropriate synthesizer chords and countermelodies" dominated Miller's "hushed voice in the mix," until Miller raised his voice to sing "with growing confidence in a way that suggests facing fears and emerging victorious," bringing a defiant edge to the chorus, "I want to go bang on every door and say, 'Wake up, you're sleeping through heaven.

as it gets.... recorded in leader Scott Miller's old bedroom at his parents' house in Sacramento, CA, and you can just barely hear his mom running the vacuum cleaner downstairs at one point.

Reviewing the 2014 reissue, Blurt's Michael Toland described Blaze of Glory as "that special kind of debut album – not perfect, perhaps, but boiling over with so many ideas and so much talent it makes you eager to hear where the band goes with the rest of its career.

Tinkly synthesizers weave in and out of jangling guitar paintings, while Miller's inimitable voice – high, keening, edging into a whine but never quite getting there – croons over the top.

[18] According to Wilfully Obscure, the debut "charts the slyly esoteric path that Game Theory were poised to venture off on," and "boasts some profoundly great signature tunes" in a "stunning reissue.

"[14] Elbel praised the album's "personal, handmade character" and Omnivore's restoration for preserving its "low-budget origin" with a "clean, clear and full-bodied" enhancement.

The London music magazine Uncut, in its review of the 2014 reissue, wrote: Sacramento's Game Theory, whose ringleader and songwriter Scott Miller literally brimmed with bountiful nervous energy, agile new ideas of what a pop song could/should be, and enough melodic invention to front a dozen bands, persisted on the fringes of the so-called Paisley Underground.

Wielding hooks as lethal as any by, say, The dB's, The Feelies or The Bongos, Miller's gift would fully bloom with the off-kilter classics The Big Shot Chronicles and Lolita Nation (to be anthologised on future Omnivore releases), plus his impressive '90s-era group, The Loud Family.

At its zenith, Miller's songwriting brims with the ebullience of youth, whether rewriting notions of romance – the swirling, carnivalesque "Date With An Angel" – or gallantly philosophising, via righteous critique of the decay brought on by adulthood, as on the timeless beauty of "Sleeping Through Heaven".

"[27] Game Theory's 2013 reunion show, a memorial tribute to Scott Miller, included performances of "Bad Year at UCLA" and "Sleeping Through Heaven.