Rocket Knight gets sacrificed

[JoshF]

Here's a link to Jeremy Parish's 2-page commercial.

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3176349

A long-forgotten mascot returns in a faithful update to Konami's 16-bit trilogy.

What won't be changing is the series' unique personality.

It's important to note that "personality" in American cartooning has a completely different meaning than the word most people are used to. It doesn't have anything to do with originality or stylization. As long as you draw a random animal with the omnipresent raised eyebrow, your art is said to have "personality".

[zinger]

Where Sparkster was a fairly large sprite back in the day, the new Rocket Knight pulls the camera back away from the action for the sake of playability. "Something that struck me, looking back on the old titles, is that after the first stage of each game you were sort of discouraged from using Sparkster's jetpack, which is his coolest feature," says Hulett. "The rocket pack was dangerous."

What was so cool about the jet pack was the feeling of truly awesome, disproportionate power at your disposal, which you had to learn how to control.

I was disappointed when I first played Mega Drive Sparkster, because the graphics weren't as detailed as in the first game, but this... It might just be the worst looking of all recent revivals of classic games.

[El Chaos]

More footage of Ratchet Knight: http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3177362

The life bar seems to be MadWorld size, and it looks like this time's big baddie is having trouble finding enough wolf soldiers to populate the stages.

[El Chaos]

The game is finally out. Some general impressions:

Ok, short answer? It's probably worth your while! For the long answer, I could nitpick the hell out of it but I'll leave that to someone else. I'm trying to be more tolerant these days.

It's not like the original Rocket Knight, and probably not like either Sparkster (I'm less familiar with them). The pacing is entirely different, possibly partly due to the zoomed out screen, but primarily just to a different design philosophy that relies more on solid platforming than the crazy arcade-like flash of the original game. The stages are longer and filled with more secrets, but also feel more homogenized and less special. It's still a good game but that's the trade off, and some may like it better. There's way less bosses. Like, you fight more bosses in the first two stages of RKA than you will in this entire game.

For having longer, slower levels, it does feel short. I played through on Normal and it felt like it ended abruptly, maybe suggesting that there's more to the game on Hard mode, as in the original. The omission of anything sort of giant boxing robot match (a staple of the original) makes me suspicious, because all three 16-bit titles had one and I sure as hell wouldn't have left them out if I were in charge.

You should try the hard mode, Silv!

I've only played through the first world so far, but I've played through it twice... once on Normal and once on Hard. Among other things, hard mode completely floods the levels with enemies -- enemies jumping out from behind things, enemies plummeting from the sky, enemies clinging to every wall and ceiling, enemies everywhere! Normally I hate the "throw in more enemies" approach to difficulty increases, but in this case, it really feels like the hard mode is the "real" mode, while the normal mode just cut enemies out. It feels more like the games I remember, where you couldn't take more than two steps forward without having to murder something.

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