Rocket Knight Adventures (Genesis/Mega Drive)

Today on Super Adventures I'm spending an hour or so playing Konami's Rocket Knight Adventures, released exclusively on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. This is the first game of a series, though Sparkster here wasn't really the most well loved mascot hero of his time. Sure three games is a lot better than many of his rivals managed during the Anthropomorphic Mascot Wars of the early 90s, but after 1994 he was left forgotten for sixteen years before landing his fourth (and possibly final) starring role in Rocket Knight.

I've seen his other games but I've never really had a go of this one before, so I can promise that I'm coming at this entirely unburdened by nostalgia or foreknowledge. Though I admit that I'm always going to be a little biased towards liking games with 'Super' or 'Adventures' in the title.

This is the final 'R' game I'll be looking at this year before I move on to the letter 'S', and to be honest it's one more than I'd originally planned to play. But it was requested, and I felt bad for not having one single 16-bit Sega game on the site since early February, so here's a bonus platformer for you. Though of course this does mean that one of the other letters is losing a game.

I dropped the difficulty down to its sanest level, hit Start, and was rewarded with this flashy camera move.

Man, if I had two tanks of jetfuel on my back, I'd be more careful where I stashed my sword. Then again Sparkster doesn't seem like the type who gives a crap about his personal safety, seeing as he's balancing on a rock pillar high above the clouds, facing down what I can only describe as being 'a video game boss'. It's like they combined Ganon with Andross and then gave him a monacle to make him extra evil. He was more menacing before the bouncing though in my opinion. Now I'm more scared of getting a headache from staring too long into that Virtual Boy sky.

This pillar scene is how the US and European versions of the game start, but the original Japanese game begins a little differently:

The Japanese version opens with a cutscene showing some anthropomorphic opossum people frolicking merrily in the meadow with their non-anthropomorphic pet dog, when all of a sudden pig soldiers come to... well, kill them I presume. There's no opening narration text, so this is all the story set up the game has outside of the manual, and even this is missing entirely from the US and European versions. Though folks outside of Japan do get the benefit of an unobstructed view of the villain's left hand... so there's that.

Nice starfield, though it's more 'Star Trek' than 'Sparkster'.

This stage screen is another thing that's different between the versions, as the Japanese game has a band playing here instead.

Like so.

One more thing that changes between regions is the name of the difficulty settings. Here, check this handy (and yet easily ignorable) table to see some rows of numbers and stuff:

JAPANESE	EUROPEAN	USA		LIVES	CREDITS
Normal	Easy	Children		3	5
Hard	Hard	Easy		2	3
Very Hard	Very Hard	Normal		1	1
Crazy Hard	Crazy Hard	Hard		1	0

Okay, what the fuck did the US do to piss off Konami so much, because that is just cruel. You can't even play what the US version considers to be a 'Normal' level of difficulty in the Japanese or European games without first beating the whole game on an easier difficulty, or putting in a cheat code. Because it's a difficulty level for speedrunners and madmen.

Personally I decided to go with the Japanese definitions on this one, and gave myself 3 lives and 5 continues. I know you like to see me suffer, but I figured you'd want to see me reach level 2 at least.


STAGE 1.

Wow, looks like Dracula's having giant spider problems over in the background. Yeah yeah, I noticed that it's only got six legs; it's a video game spider, they always come up short.

This level theme's making good use of the console's sound hardware (youtube link). It's perhaps not as ridiculously heroic sounding as the SNES Sparkster's level 1 theme, but then what is? It seems to suit the guy too, as he comes across as more earnest and cheerful than the average cool 90's mascot hero with attitude.

But on the other hand he also has a sword, and likes to cut pig soldiers so hard that they die naked. He can't jump on heads, but he can kill a pig with sword energy blasts from across the screen, so that kind of evens things out.

Actually there's nothing balanced about this at all, I'm effortlessly slaughtering these idiots the second they jump on screen, it's a total massacre.

Well it was until they drove a truck into my ass anyway. My precious hit points!

Don't worry, I'll catch them when they drive back from the right to finish the job, as I'll have the space on screen to see them coming next time. It's always nice to find a platformer that gives me room to react to things, so that I don't have to slowly edge forward the whole time.

Crap, I'm a little stuck here. I've figured out that I can charge my attack for a few seconds to launch myself upwards, but I can't steer in the air afterwards so that's pretty useless to me right now. This is definitely the right way to go though, as it won't let me backtrack far and the level's apparently only as high as the screen, but unless I can talk him into pulling off a double jump I'm pretty much trapped here.

Oh! It turns out that I can also pull diagonally when I trigger the jetpack boost to send him flying at an angle instead. So that's one problem solved... or at least it will be when I get the hang of hitting the diagonal at the last second instead of holding it and sending him walking back over to the wall; he doesn't lock in place while it charges annoyingly.

Damn, a boss fight so soon? I've only been playing for three minutes, and I spent a chunk of that trying to jump up a wall.

The thing's armed with a both a flamethrower and a cannon, and he's just activated multi-ball, but fortunately it's not armoured all that well; a handful of hits on the nose and the whole thing went up in flames... taking the bridge with it.

Oh crap, he's still alive? He's just darting back and forth across the water now so I just have to swipe at him when he gets close, but if even the weakest boss has multiple phases then the later ones are going to be a serious pain in my ass.

Hey he actually does use his goggles!

I got a jetpack upgrade for winning the fight, so now I can take to the skies... just like everyone else is doing right now. Way to make me feel less special guys. I'm sure this rocketeering won't last long, but an easy shoot 'em up stage is a nice change of pace. Plus I love how Sparkster kicks up a trail of water behind him as he gets close to the surface, it's a nice touch.

Another boss fight, are you shitting me? So it's going to be one of those games then is it? Where the levels are just a quick breather between set piece battles.

The guy likes to leap out of the water from the right and jump in an arc over my head, so I'm trying to smack him in the nose then quickly drop beneath him each time. It's a little annoying to have to keep hitting him over and over, but I have to admit he's playing fair. Plus the developers have made great use of that chained sprites technique to give the thing a proper snaking body, even if he does look like he's made of boiled sweets.


SOON.

Aha, my theory about the meaning of these strange wall markings has proven correct!

Even though the shoot 'em up level supercharge has worn off, this jetpack can still generate enough lift from a regular diagonal boost to ricochet me from side to side all the way to the top of this gap. A saner opossum might have hesitated before flying face first into a brick wall, but this is pretty tame compared to what Sparkster did to break into this castle in the first place.

Oh, we're in that castle from the background now by the way. The one with smoke pouring out of it and a spider thing on the roof.

Well I've solved the mystery of the smoke at least.

It's a bit too soon to judge this, seeing I'm not entirely clear what just happened, but I'm leaning towards this death being total bullshit. This blast of fire came at me with next to no warning, and I still managed to get my ass behind a wall and duck in time. Didn't help in the slightest!

That's my first life lost, and I've been restarted back at the start of the castle. I guess next time I'll just have to make sure I have enough hitpoints left at this point to survive it.

Uh?

This is the same 'puzzle' as before, except that they've taken away part of the wall and set the floor on fire. It's not going to be instant death to land in it, but there's no way I'll be using it as a launch pad this time.

I don't get it, I've thrown an entire life away trying out different angles here, but I just can't get him to bounce up through that gap. And I'm sure I'm meant to be going that way; there was a trail of gems marking the path, and there's no possible way to ever get lost in this game. It's not like I can backtrack and pick up a power-up as there's no backtracking and no power-ups.

Oh, oh... I bet I'm supposed to leap across into the fire and then trigger the diagonal boost mid-jump at the top of my arc. I can't double jump, but I bet that'll work.

Yup.

Hey I think I've finally ran into that spider wannabe who's attacking the castle, though this isn't really the boss fight I expected from it. The thing's spitting out bugs all over the room, and I have to follow them around and leap from gap to gap to avoid stepping on any. Then I simply have to keep doing this over and over until I figure out what the game wants me to do.

I'm 90% sure it's waiting for me to hit the red bug, but all my attacks have totally missed so far, and the blue bugs seem to be immune. I'll keep working on it.


LATER.

Man, when is it permanently going to click with me that these bosses usually have a second phase? All I'm doing this time is hitting the head when I have a chance and then getting my own head down before I get a spiked tail through it.

And that's it, with the castle boss defeated Stage 1 has now been successfully completed! Wait, what? That was all one stage? You can't put three boss fights into a single stage, that's not right.

Actually I'm more bothered by the fact that there's no password here, no save option, no world map, nothing. If I want to replay Stage 2 again after this I'll have to get back here the long way, every time.


STAGE 2.

Oh no, that dragoon bloke from Final Fantasy IV has taken the Queen! Or maybe the Princess, I have no idea. Either way it's most impolite to kidnap royalty, and highly disrespectful to boot a King across his own battlements.

This guy must be Sparkster's nemesis then; an evil opossum wearing the same rocket knight gear, but with an army of pigs to back up him up. Or maybe he's actually a possum, and they've got some kind of marsupial rivalry going on.

And I'm thrown straight into another boss fight! The game didn't even bother to give me a level first this time. This guy looks a little bit like Bender from Futurama, if he was a giant clown with spinning sawblades for hands, and I get the feeling I'm supposed to be jetpack boosting up into that red nose of his a few times. Always the nose.

Oh by the way the top of the water flickers, apparently to fake transparency, so I merged two frames to simulate the effect. I went with presentability over authenticity, showing what it looks like to humans rather than screen capture software.


LATER.

There was plenty of level to play through before a reached this boss. Enough for me to learn the basics of these platforms anyway, before the game dropped me right into the deep end.

There's two layers on screen right now, separated by the waterfall, and I can switch between them by landing on one of these two platforms. Though I have to make sure I'm on the same side as it when drop, or else I land on the nasty spiky sea urchins instead. So I have to keep track of where I am, what layer I'm on, where this thing is, what layer it's on, and what's going to be under me when I jump off, and my poor brain isn't happy about any of this.

Oh well, I'll get plenty of time to practice with the platforms in peace again soon, when this thing finally takes off my last hitpoint and puts me back to the last checkpoint.


EVENTUALLY.

There's the pained look of a man who's just realised why adult opossums don't hang from their tail. Either that or he's as surprised as I am that one of these underwater spiky things just decided to drop on his head without warning. None of the others did that! It's not an instant kill, but it's not that reassuring when you learn that a game might change the rules on you whenever it feels like.


SOON.

Damn, I think I blinked and missed the moment I was supposed to duck under the spikes. I can't say that the game didn't warn me, but a row of exclamation mark signs isn't all that informative. That's why signs in real life have words little pictures on them! Like 'duck' for instance, that's a pretty short word, I bet that'd fit on sign.

At least I know what the signs mean now, so I can... uh, the mine cart is flashing. It's slowing down and it's flashing and there's a gap in the track. Oh shit I'm supposed to jump aren't I?

Look at that, I reacted with just enough time to get a foot on the roof! I fell right through anyway of course... another life lost. In my defence I didn't know what I was supposed to be jumping for, as the cabin looks like part of the background, or the roof does at least.

Wow, I only just noticed that those signs have red 'X's on this time instead of exclamation marks. Not that I knew what that was supposed to mean either. But I do now! Next time I'll be ready for them...


SEVERAL LIVES LATER.

Well there goes my first continue, wasted on a bloody mine cart level. Weirdly it seemed to restart me the last checkpoint afterwards, so losing a continue is pretty much the same as losing a life.


STAGE 3, 15000 POINTS LATER.

Aw crap, the lava's coming back up again, blocking off the hole I was trying to escape through. Strange reflective lava, instantly fatal to the touch.

Well okay if I'm not supposed to go down here, then where do I go huh? I can't go up as there's a cave ceiling in the way, I can't go left as that's where I came from, and I can't go right as there's a big orange block of crystal sitting in the way.

Huh, I thought Sparkster was blonde. Man you can tell how engaged I am with a game when I'd rather stick around at the start of a level and watch the hero's idle animations mirrored in the reflective lava than try to work out what it wants me to do.

It's not getting rid of me this easily though; I'm playing this 'til my credits run dry.

Oh I see... I was supposed to realise that the orange crystals are in the foreground as they have no reflection in the lava! This bit's a lot clearer though: I'm standing behind the crystals now so I have to use my mirror image to see what ledges I'm jumping onto. To make this harder I can jump higher than the screen, and the lava's constantly going up and down, but I made it through the whole thing just fine.

And then I got caught by the lava straight afterwards, because I was so used to looking at reflections my brain went into autopilot and I forgot that if I leave poor Sparkster standing a low platform here, the lava will rise up and kill him.

Oh shit, this isn't good. A giant robot fish is eating the platforms, and he's eating them fast. Hitting this non-reflective lava isn't instant death, but it's a miracle I've got any hit points left with how fast these things are flying by now.

After the moving platform bit, he pops up out of the center of the stage and starts spitting fireballs at me, and I've got just one opportunity to hit him back before I'm leaping across platforms again. He's a boss fight so of course we have to go through the whole routine three times (or more).

When I run out of hitpoints I'm kicked back to the last checkpoint to do it all over again from scratch, and I'm losing so many lives here that I'm not optimistic I'll ever manage to get past this.


EVENTUALLY.

Aw shit! That's me finally finishing the fish boss off without taking a single hit of damage throughout the entire fight! Look at that beautiful row of hearts up there. Didn't even need the health bananas it occasionally spits out.

I know this kind of goes against my frequent rants that boss fights are an unnecessary pain in the ass more often than not, a tedious speed bump that interrupts the core gameplay and eats through the player's lives, but that was such an amazing fluky win that I feel like jumping up and cheering right now.

They got them right, that's the only theory I have to why I'm not miserable right now. They got boss fights right. It's not hard to figure out how to kill them, they're not a massive difficulty spike, and they have the decency to go down in just a few hits instead of dragging the torment out.

Oh shit, the King... has a miniature triceratops! Also he's brought a cannon and I'm getting the feeling he's not planning on firing a cannonball at my arch-rival's airship up there while his daughter is captive inside. It seems that he's gotten tired of me dragging my metal-plated ass through these stages as slow as... well, a dinosaur dragging a cannon, so he's brought a portable shortcut for me to climb into.


STAGE 4.

Pull over.

He disconnected the nose and dropped me into the sky! I managed to grab hold of the rails hanging underneath the airship, but that just delayed my reunion with the ground a few seconds until a bomb enemy came shuffling along the rail to knock me off.

Now I'm on my final credit with one life left on the lives counter, so I can't really afford leave this 1up behind. It'll be fine, I'll activate my jetpack when I'm directly under it and boost up to grab the top rail. Nothing's going to go wrong!


SOON.

After defeating another boss, Sparkster heroically leaps between swinging platforms a thousand feet above the ground! Though I completely misjudged the timing here so he ended up plummeting to his death.

It's fine though, I hit a checkpoint just before collecting that 1up earlier, so as long as I don't screw up collecting it again I basically have infinite retries here.


LATER.

Shit, I wasn't certain I was supposed to jump until the swinging platform dropped away beneath my feet, with me dropping a half-second later into open sky.

I'd reached the door, I was done with this bit! I was done with this bit! Now I have to fight the bombs, collect the 1up, defeat the boss and jump the swinging platforms again.

I'm suddenly seeing the plus side to having finite lives. Or at least to having checkpoints after boss fights. I'm going to be stuck repeating this bloody loop forever now like some Sisyphean torture, never able to win, never able to die for good.


SOME TIME LATER.

My arch rival escaped to Fortress Pig with the princess, but my jetpack has been flipped back to 'on' mode so flying across the rooftops of Grim Industrial City in hot pursuit! Wait, that's no moon up there, that's a... spiny space pig?


STAGE 5.

No lives left, no credits, and not a damn thing here can shoot me out of this smog filled sky. Oh they're trying alright, with all varieties of anti-aircraft fire, but I'm in the zone right now. Or maybe the shoot 'em up stages are actually just really easy, who can say?

And then I got taken by surprise by a falling ceiling on the next bit and failed to run over to the gap in time. INSTANT GAME OVER.


CONCLUSION

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Well I'm not playing through all that again. I've got a lot of positive things to say about Rocket Knight Adventures too, but that's a pretty massive negative. You have to finish the game in one sitting, and if you screw up too many times you're kicked right back to the title screen.

Though to be fair, when it's not making you repeat sections of it, the game isn't all that repetitive. It reminded me a bit of Dynamite Headdy and Osman, in how it gets bored of things even faster than I do, continually throwing new content at you and funnelling you down a narrow path so that you can't miss any of it. It's a very scripted experience, something you could memorise and master, with pretty much zero scope for straying from the ride (except to grab the occasional 1up just off the path).

You don't need me to tell you that it's a nice looking Genesis/Mega Drive game, but I can assure you that it's as slick as it is pretty, and the soundtrack isn't so bad either. There's nothing I'll be humming to myself in a week's time, it's no Shovel Knight, but it gets some nice sounds out of that FM sound chip and I've learned not to take that for granted.

I'll never have the patience to finish the game, but I've got nothing against giving the first few stages another go sometime, so I'll let it have a star. I mean it's plainly not crap, I got some enjoyment out of it, the game's earned it.

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Next time on Super Adventures, I'll be working to drive all my readers away with a whole run of stylish spectacular semi-recent story-based sandbox shooters. Expect lots of screenshots of third person gunplay and modded cars, and zero shots of sword-wielding anime teenagers, inventory screens, or 16-bit pixel squirrels with attitude crushing evil turtles under their cute little boots.

PS. leave me a comment if you feel like it. I'm always eager for feedback.