Rocket Knight trailer sparks our interest

by JC Fletcher on Oct 9th 2009 12:40PM

Two things about this trailer for the new Rocket Knight (after the break) stand out upon our first viewing:

The stylized projectile/jetpack effects
It's a Rocket Knight Adventures game

That last one may seem obvious, but we're still a bit shocked to see Konami bring the series back after so long -- to be honest, we're a bit shocked every time Konami announces a game that isn't Metal Gear.

And, to our delight, what we see here is true Rocket Knight: Sparkster has his sword and his jetpack, the latter of which is used basically to bounce all over the screen. It's here that the 3D remake actually benefits the game: with the wider area and the smaller Sparkster, he seems to have a lot more freedom to fly around. Even the shooter stages have returned, with some interesting dynamic camera work.

If you never paid attention to this series because of mid-90s animal mascot platformer overload, you should start getting familiar with it now. Forget Gex, Aero the Acro-Bat, Punky Skunk, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel, Awesome Possum, and Socket. This one's actually good.

Source

Tags: Action, Climax-Studios, konami, Microsoft, Platformer, psn, rocket-knight, steam, xbla, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (40)

Again, Konami. Snatcher remake. Get busy.

Agreed, if I remember correctly, Sparkster made a cameo appearance in the strip club scene in Snatcher.

This is a definite buy for me

Looks like a blast! hahaha pun intended

AH, I C WAT U DID THERE.

Well played, sir.

Ok, I recognize the rest, but I'm gonna have to look up Punky Skunk...

A lot of these new side-scrolling games seem to have the same Little Big Planet-like atmosphere to them.

The still screenshots make the game look like Donkey Kong Country or something. In motion it looks a lot better. It just has a look about it like "Japanese license that was handed to an American studio." But the gameplay itself looks promising. I just hope they add several more layers of paint and give it enough attention that it has it's own unique style.

...but I like Gex.

I actually dropped in quick to say that I really liked Gex too... Though I was thinking the 3D ones... I never played the 2D ones.

The 3-d Gex games seemed to take a bit of heat for being "rip-offs" of the Mario 64 3-d collectathon formula, but, unlike many of the other mascot-based collectathons of the time, Gex was really fun.
They definitely stuck to the genre, with the overworld, themed levels with nonlinear goals to complete (to collect star...er, remotes), and horrible camera issues. But the levels were designed well and the movie genre themes were a nice departure from the usual grass/mountain/snow/water/desert levels of your typical 3-d platformer.

I wish there were a few more decent platformers (and yes, collectathons) in the market now. Galaxy is the only thing that really comes to mind, and that could only fulfill my need to collect shiny things from imporbable places for so long.

New high budget 2d sonic game, a Splatter house remake, and now Sparkster Genesis fans rejoice!

(if only we could get a new Ristar game c'mon sega)

There is no statement that encompasses my desires as a gamer more than "new Ristar game". It is great to see that I am not alone.

I liked Aero the Acrobat and Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel. Socket is pretty fun too. But sparkster is the best. . .Hopefully konami will release a compilation disc with all these retro revisits on it.

I'm no longer worried about this franchise's future.

Needs more textures... Other than that, I'm sold.

I really liked the personality of the art style of the original. The expressiveness of every enemy was impressive. You could knock the pig-beast armor off, for example, and they'd run away in fear in their undies. The lighthearted styling details were really nice.

I hope they manage to carry that over to this version.

Hmmm... I happen to think these look decent, but over on the finicky niche gamer board I occasionally read, reactions to this game tend to range from "travesty" to "abomination," mostly due to it not using 2D graphics.

Shit looks pretty good

RKA was good, but it was Sparkster that was truly fantastic. Regardless, I'm glad to see new life in the series and hope that the originals will be released on VC as well.

These graphics are... well the effects are good. But the rest looks kind of lackluster and it's a bizarre choice to make the character models so ridiculously small. It makes the environments look empty, and there's something about the way the crystals stand out that makes it even weirder. Oh well, all I really care about is whether it's fun, and all it really needs to do to ensure that is stay true to its origins.

You know, I never played Sparkster sadly. I played Rocket Knight Adventures to death. I still have it complete with case and manual. Too bad both my Genesisis.....Genesises......Genesi? don't work.

I will definitely be getting this. It looks just as good as the originals!

Oh man I loved that rocket knight guy! I will definitely buy this, can't believe they are making another. One of my fav old school games.

Does anyone remember the movie Howard The Duck? That was such a great film.

I don't like the look of the 3-D graphics. Too blocky.

I'm still not entirely sold on the graphics. 2-D gameplay mixed with 3-D graphics can actually be great (Klonoa on the Wii being the first example that pops into my head), but these just look kind of generic, I guess. Regardless, my hopes are still relatively high for this one.

You should see the other forums. 3 to 1 downright hating it right now.

While not graphically perfect, it overall looks pretty good.

Why? Geez, I love these types of games.

I loved the original. I don't care if other people hate this, gameplay is ALWAYS more important than graphics. Always. (Always).

agreed.

Don't know why that's such a problem with most folks...

I loved Sparkster, and I'll play this one too for sure.
I just didn't dig those graphics and wind waker effects yet. Hope they change it before release.

now, give me another assault suits leynos/ target earth, assault suits valken/cybernator and my life is complete.

Looks nice. Have to see more footage, but overall a very good effort by Konami so far.

"Forget Gex, Aero the Acro-Bat, Punky Skunk, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel, Awesome Possum, and Socket."

Who?

They forgot the other Sparkster :C

I'm not a big fan of the art style of the game. It looks off. But hey new Rocket Knight, I'm not complaining.

Wow. Never would have guessed I'd see Sparkster again.

Yeah, I don't recall the "Sparkster" game with fox-enemies.
In my game they were demons or imps or something.

With a pretty weird final-boss that changed bodies with you in mid-battle.
Because it's a smart thing to do to give a player the ability to throw meteors at you...

God I loved that game..
If this game is gonna be good (I loathe the new design of sparkster's Rival) after the trial, I'll definitely pick up it.

Sweet. I remember Sparkster being the last 16 bit game I bought from KB on clearance for 3 bucks. Loved playing it.

i loved the original and now i can't wait for this one!

looks like a school project to me, but will buy

The first RKA was by far and large my favourite, the others were fine but I don't think they tried as hard with the graphics. I just loved the style of the first one, before they tried giving little sparkster that sonic-esque bad attitude, and the music was unbeatable.

I hope to death that this new game is great, I loved the first one, and in retrospect feel privaledged to have played it in it's own time and not just sheepishly played it on an emulator. This guy holds a place in my heart rival to that of sonic or mario.

Opossum + knights' armour + magic sword + jetpack ? I don't know how the origional wasn't more of a success. On the flipside I'm glad it wasn't in some ways, it looks like they really want to capture its essence. I'd hate to see Sparkster turned into a monstrosity like the majority of Sonic's 3D exploits.

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Rocket Knight trailer sparks our interest

Reader Comments (40)

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