Hey everyone, it’s about time I made a third review, wouldn’t you all say? After a lot of tossing things up in the air, I finally decided to do a review on another hidden gem I uncovered very early in my childhood (thanks a ton, dad), Rocket Knight Adventures.


*ZOOM*

The blue blur speeds into the video game market, taking so many conventions of platforming at the time and turning them on their ear. This is one of the most recognized “fights” in gaming history, when Sega created an anthropomorphic mascot built around speed and maneuverability in order to contest Nintendo’s retro age reign. And they did a mighty good job, too, with the mascot eventually turning into a fad in the early 90’s with other game-making companies at the time. Some were big-time companies looking to cash in on the trend, while others were up-and-coming companies trying to find their first mascot.

Whatever the reason, the video game market in the 90’s certainly didn’t have a lack of animal mascots. Many of the more “famous” mascots today from that era are known for all the wrong reasons, examples being Bubsy the Bobcat, Speedy Gonzalez (one of the most blatant rip-offs), and Awesome Possum, to name a few.

However, once upon a time, Konami was seen as one of the grandmasters of game creation (not to say they’re bad, but they were certainly more of a forefront at the time, if only because of a lack of other notable companies). Much like Rare at the same time, they could nearly do no wrong. And this held true when they finally decided to bring their talent into the realm of animal mascots (it was only a matter of time). Then, in 1993, this new mascot, an opossum knight by the name of Sparkster, finally starred in his first game, Rocket Knight Adventures.

Rocket Knight Adventures is a game for the Sega Genesis, and the first game starring Konami’s very own opossum knight. But this is no ordinary opossum knight (as if there’s ever been an example of an ordinary opossum knight). Sparkster’s armor has a very powerful jet pack on it, allowing him to propel himself forward at great speeds, while doing tremendous damage to those in his way. He is, of course, a Rocket Knight.


It’s Konami. Must more be said?

…Okay, fine, let’s elaborate on this.

While the Sega Genesis excelled in its, ahem, “Blast Processing,” it’s clear that the graphics tend to dip quite a bit in most heavily-aesthetic games such as this one--

…Where do they falter? If it wasn’t already said, one could think this to be a mid-age Super Nintendo game, not a Genesis game. The color depth on most of the characters and enemies are simply astounding for console standards, which is supposed to be one of the weak points due to hardware. This does make the performance dip in a few areas of the game, and it can lag the game, but these lag points don’t last very long and don’t usually deteriorate your ability to defeat enemies or play the game as a whole. There are even cutscenes intermittently dispersed throughout the game, and while they’re nothing overly spectacular, they still look very nice.

The graphics fail to get a ten due to lack of recognition of where you are (minus a few stages such as the pig ship later on in the game) with overall mediocre backgrounds and some not-so-great tilesets.


As a huge fan of this game, I hate to give the sound such a low score from an overall perspective, but I have to.

Rocket Knight Adventures doesn’t have bad sound, but most of the soundtrack is relatively forgettable, which is very shocking, considering that this is Konami we’re talking about here. This is a company that has done a VERY good job in bringing memorable, fun soundtracks throughout history. But in Rocket Knight Adventures, the soundtrack just falls flat. There’s not that much soundtrack variety overall, and the only piece that sticks out to me is the battle against the final boss. And even that one is…meh? This game deserved a better overall soundtrack. The quality is there, but the tunes are just mostly forgettable.



This is a game that took many lessons from Sonic the Hedgehog. Fast-paced, exciting, and action-packed gameplay is the key to getting a good level of addiction towards your games, and it holds true in this game. Much like Sonic and his spin dash, Sparkster relies on his rocket pack to bulldoze through enemies and as his main method of attack, even against bosses (minus a few, thanks to them not having invulnerability frames between hits and the regular sword slash lasting for a long while). It’s a fast way of travel, and his only way to gain a decent amount of vertical distance. It seems rather complicated, but the use of the rocket pack is actually rather simple and very easy to get used to.

To get the rocket pack to work, hold down the attack button, and Sparkster will charge up his pack. Once it reaches maximum charge, you can hold a direction and let go of the button, causing him to fly off, full-speed, in the direction you’re holding (this also works for directional movement!). If you aren’t holding a direction, he simply spins around in a stationary ball, while his sword is out causing damage to those around him (this is honestly never useful). The biggest weakness to using the jet pack is that if you’re caught in the air at the end of the charge, you’ll fall straight down, helplessly, until you land.

Sparkster can also use branches to latch onto with his tail (opossums do this?) to keep him from falling, as well. This is necessary in some areas, but is shown early on that it is possible.

Sparkster’s sword can also shoot a sword beam that deals half the damage of the sword itself. While the damage output is miserable, it’s a good way to still get damage in while trying to study a boss’s pattern.

This game has action. It has lots of action. What isn’t there to love about an action-packed game, headed by the same person who made Contra III and Contra: Hard Corps? They knew what they wanted making this game, and it showed.


The story of Rocket Knight Adventures, at its surface, is the same as that of the Super Mario Bros games. Rescue princess from evil empire’s king. Rather simple. At least this time, there is a king who is father to the princess, so the existence of this princess makes more sense.

Moreover, there is actually a good overall backstory that leads up to this, and even the present story in-game has a little bit more than your standard Mario game. The story is not made clear through the game, but it does exist, regardless.

The past story involves all of the events that led to today. Covering it all in this review would be rather long, and an unnecessary use of words, but I will leave a link to a pdf in another post in this thread of the instruction manual, where you can read the whole unspoiled part of the story in the “A Brief History of Zebulos” section. It mentions the beginnings of Sparkster, his doppelganger Axel (Axle?) Gear, and the current situation in the game. It’s a very interesting read, and gives a lot more meaning to the cutscenes that are shown.

Ultimately, the story is pretty well-driven, and actually gives reason for the kidnapping of a princess for once. For that alone, it’s a good story, especially for the 16-bit times, which still didn’t have much story (outside of RPGs, of course).


(I’m going over these two sections together, since I find it hard to talk about one without mentioning the other)

Rocket Knight Adventures is not that long of a game. It’s okay, but most of that “length” comes from trying to beat the game on a higher difficulty (yes, this game has difficulty levels). The game is structured like an arcade game port: you have a limited number of lives and continues, and if you don’t win before you lose all of them, you lose, with no chance to save progress. So this game is a bit of a practice in tedium, but when you know where to go, what to do, and how to beat what, it is such a rewarding feeling. The difficulty (minus the number of lives and continues you have) also doesn’t really affect too much in the game, but more your leeway for error. Each region had different difficulty selections, with the US release being the only one with four legitimate difficulties to choose from (the other regions both have four difficulties in memory, but the two harder ones can only be chosen through use of cheat codes; these ones are marked with a *):

US

• Children (talk about mocking the player…this is also the only mode that does not grant the true ending)
• Easy
• Normal
• Hard

Europe

• Easy
• Hard
• Very Hard*
• Crazy Hard*

Japan

• Normal
• Hard
• Very Hard*
• Crazy Hard*

A fun fact to these difficulties is that despite the misleading names, the hardest difficulty of all twelve listed is the American Hard mode. It is unknown as to why the difficulty change was made.

All in all, this is a game that is certainly on the hard side, but beating it the next time after the first will be far easier, rewarding your mastery of the rocket pack you now have instead of just handing you the reward upon realization that you can use it (much like Sonic’s spin dash). It requires you to plan your moves and be one step ahead, so you’re bound to die a good few times on your first try. However, the reward is far better than the difficulty, and there’s never a moment when you’re suddenly given an unfair challenge that you shouldn’t have been prepared for.


I may have been very strict in the scoring of this game, but most of the complaints that have been listed are very minor (minus the sound, unfortunately), and the game still manages to ace this crash course. The sound ruined the potential for a very high score, but it still gets a high score nonetheless.

If you are a fan of retro Konami games, play this game. If you are a fan of action platform games, play this game. If you’re a fan of fair, but hard games, play this game. Rocket Knight Adventures offers so much, and it’s very sad that such a hidden gem failed to see the light of day until well after its release.

This is just one of the many examples of Konami’s curve-leading game development ability. It’s clear that there was far too much inspiration taken from Sonic, but it’s something that most shouldn’t mind, as it is different enough to not be called Cinos the Edgehog (hey, look, a Sonic Shorts reference!).

This is an absolutely stellar game, and it’s sad to see the series have such a small impact at the time of its release, fading into the background until it was much too late. Take a look of what could have been a huge hit 20 years down the road as a series. Take a look at Sparkster, the leader of the Rocket Knights!

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Very nice. Good job on the review. Also I want to try this game now, so thank you for giving me yet another thing to resist wasting all of my time on instead of working! lol But seriously, this was well written and informative. Good job on another review.

Oh and on a side note, I loved Awesome Possum as a kid. Now I realize it had some...er...faults. Ah the blindness that was being a child gamer.
Oh and HTML (like your hyperlink to the .pdf) isn't allowed in reviews. Sorry about that. Though the instruction manual really is handy when stories are left out which was unfortunately all too common in retro games.

Eirinn : Kind of the same way summons aren't allowed on the review post?

Easy fix in that case... Instruction Manual

Thanks for letting me know, and also glad you liked the review! It was a very big part of my childhood, so I'm glad it doesn't sound like it came off too biased.