Rocket Knight

[Dante]

1UP

Rocket Knight PC, PS3, 360

Release Date: N/A

XBLA/PSN/Steam

Genre: Action

Publisher: Konami

Developer: Climax

 

It used to be that you couldn't swing a dead hedgehog in your local game shop without hitting a dozen smirking rodents who desperately longed to be gaming superstars. Time and technology have weeded out most of these Sonic-come-latelys: Gex, Bubsy, and Earthworm Jim botched their transitions to 3D, while others like Kao Kangaroo, James Pond, and Jazz Jackrabbit seem content to linger on through the occasional regurgitation of their old adventures. Grim men in body armor have replaced the marsupial mascot in modern games; say what you will about the change, but at least there are a lot fewer smarmy grins on shelves these days.

 

Yet one mascot has been conspicuous in his absence through the years: Sparkster, Konami's Rocket Knight. Sure, he appeared fleetingly in a Contra ending, and he raced alongside other unlikelies such as Pyramid Head in last year's New International Track & Field, but outside of these brief cameos Sparkster has been completely missing in action for 15 years. It's a strange fate for a character clearly designed to be a corporate spokescreature; in the latter half of the 16-bit era, Sparkster appeared in no less than three games and on the back of Konami's instruction manuals, too. Yet once the 32-bit era arrived, he vanished without a trace, even though his creator -- Konami veteran Nobuya Nakazato -- continued to work on the Contra series through 2004's Neo Contra.

 

In a way, this vanishing act has worked to Sparkster's advantage. "The funny thing about Rocket Knight is that when you look for information on the Internet -- if you can find it -- you never see anything bad about him," says Konami producer Tomm Hulett. "The people who played the games and remember Sparkster really love him."

 

Hulett counts himself among those fans; one of his first efforts when he began work at Konami was to draft a pitch for a Rocket Knight revival. Finally, two years and four revised pitches later, Sparkster is finally returning in a proper adventure: A 2.5D platformer for XBLA, PSN, and Steam, programmed by Climax, with Hulett at the helm. "It was really a matter of reworking the concept -- making the right pitch at the right time," he says. With the success of modern retro recreations like Bionic Commando Rearmed, the proper format for Sparkster's return became obvious, and the game -- tentatively titled Rocket Knight -- is slated for release in early 2010. [Check out 1UP's Cover Story for more!]

 

Unlike Rearmed, this isn't simply a tarted-up remake of an old game; Rocket Knight is a sequel, set 15 years after the last game in the series, 1994's Sparkster for Genesis. "The idea is that there haven't been any games these past 15 years simply because Sparkster hasn't had any adventures," says Hulett. In a Nakazato homage, the new game's backstory is fairly dense: Sparkster saved the opossum kingdom of Zephyros (and its princesses) back in the day, but found himself disenchanted when the villainous pigs he battled in the first game were allowed to take up residence in Zephyros. He moved away with his family -- and notably didn't marry the princess -- and lived in quiet and peace until he looked up one day and noticed a war raging in the sky over Zephyros. To his surprise, though, his former enemies (the pigs) were fighting on the side of the opossums against an army of wolves; even stranger, his former nemesis, the nefarious Axel Gears, had become the kingdom's rocket knight in his absence. And so Sparkster puts on his gear and launches into the fray.

 

Despite the complexity of the plot line, don't expect to have the action broken up by endless, chatty cut-scenes; Rocket Knight is an old-school game in every sense of the word. The plot plays out in-game through simple pantomime sequences, just like in the 16-bit titles. When you reaches the end of the first stage, Sparkster faces off against Axel with a look of determination -- which quickly changes to cartoon panic as a massive robot bursts through the wall.

 

Hulett says this expressiveness was a major factor in Konami's decision to work with Climax on the revival. "We have a good relationship with Climax, and they do great work," says Hulett, who has also worked with different teams at the developer on Silent Hill: Origins and the upcoming Shattered Memories, "but this wasn't just a case of us saying, 'Hey, we've got a game for you.' We talked to a lot of developers before going with Climax. In the end, they were simply the best fit." That comes down in part to the developer's facial animation technology, which allows Sparkster to change his expression dynamically according to the situation. The original games earned great renown for their lush animation and sprite art, which in classic Konami style pushed the Genesis to its limits; despite the move to polygons, Sparkster's personality still comes through nicely.

 

That's no small feat considering how small the character is on-screen: 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."

 

While Hulett finds that sense of danger one of the more unique and compelling traits of the series, he doesn't want the new game to punish gamers for making use of its trademark feature. "We've zoomed the camera out so you can get a better sense of where you're going." Sparkster's rocket is thus free to play a bigger role than ever in Rocket Knight; during our brief demo of the game, Hulett used it to ricochet around stages, collecting the traditional gems and bouncing into hidden areas loaded with power-ups and secrets.

 

One of the hallmarks of the original Sparkster trilogy is that the play mechanics were different in each game. In Rocket Knight Adventures and the Super NES Sparkster, players fired the jetpack by holding down the jump button to charge the rocket, and Sparkster's sword fired energy beams. In the Genesis version of Sparkster (a completely different game from the Super NES title), the rocket pack meter constantly filled on its own and could be fired consecutively, but Sparkster's sword was downgraded to a mere melee weapon.

 

Rocket Knight offers a mix of both styles. Now, the auto-filling meter powers both the jetpack and the sword. Sparkster uses short-range attacks by default, but he can fire energy balls and extended beams of energy at the cost of some of his rocket power. His rocket is operated by a separate button from jumping and can be activated at any time, although it no longer fires consecutively; instead, Sparkster can fire a quick second rocket burst while in mid-air as a sort of Klonoa-style double jump to give him added distance on a jump, though not extra height. Meanwhile, traditional Sparkster skills (such as hanging from and shimmying along beams with his tail) are present and accounted for as well. And his attack range has also been boosted; where the older games let him deflect certain enemy attacks with his sword, now he can bat some projectiles back toward his foes for extra damage. Although the game's development is far from complete and only a couple of levels are in a presentable state, what we've seen of the platformer segments looks like an appropriate evolution of the Rocket Knight concept; levels feature multiple paths, and stage layouts subtly invite players to experiment with the breadth of Sparkster's skills.

 

There's more to Rocket Knight than just jumping and dashing, though. Like the original Rocket Knight Adventures, the new game sends Sparkster through a number of side-scrolling shooter stages. These are more or less Gradius minus the power-ups, and they tweak the game mechanics slightly. Sparkster's rocket meter charges more quickly than in the platform stages, freeing players to use ranged attacks more frequently. Enemies pop into the fray from the background, and the camera occasionally changes angles for dramatic effect, a la Einhänder.

 

What won't be changing is the series' unique personality. One of the most striking things about Sparkster is that he wasn't a typical mascot with attitude. Yes, he was a cute, heroic animal, but he was far more earnest than the standard wisecracking 16-bit mammal. He smiled rather than smirked; he braced himself for battle instead of posing cockily; and when his rocket boosts petered out, he briefly lost his composure and flailed his arms in panic. "We've spent a lot of time trying to get Sparkster's personality right," says Hulett. "There have been times when we've looked at the animations and said, 'no, that's not right'." Fortunately, the team has an easy solution for balancing things out: "Whenever we have an animation that seems too cocky for Sparkster, we just give it to Axel."

 

And despite their cutesy appearance, the old Rocket Knight games were hard. Given the series' Contra and Gradius DNA, the merciless difficulty was inevitable, but Hulett admits it may have something to do with the series' relative obscurity. Still, while he doesn't want to dumb down the new game, he also doesn't want to drive potential fans away by beating them down. The team's solution: Offer multiple approaches to the game. "For the old-school fan who wants a challenging experience, there's the Arcade mode," he says. Arcade mode is more in line with the 16-bit titles; there's no saving, progress is strictly level-by-level, and the final version could potentially limit continues. On the other hand, the Free Play mode is more in line with contemporary game design principles: Players can save their progress, restore at any time, and move around a level map to select a stage. "We'll also be tuning Achievements to reward really hardcore players for time and score," Hulett says. "And yes, all of that will be posted to Leaderboards."

 

Although Rocket Knight is still very much a work in progress, it's great to see a character of this vintage and quality making a return in the hands of people who clearly have a keen appreciation for his original adventures. At the Retronauts PAX panel this year, someone in the audience asked what it takes to make a good classic revival. My off-the-cuff answer was that the key is for the creators to understand what it was that made the original such a classic in the first place, to really dig into the game and see what the core appeal was. By all appearances, Rocket Knight is shaping up to be a textbook example of this principle. If all goes well, maybe Sparkster will finally find the fans he deserves when Rocket Knight launches next year.

 

 

 

[tapedeck]

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!

 

Happy days. :D

[S.C.G]

Oh fucking hell yes!!! now this is more like it Konami!

[Mundi]

Doing the happy dance!

[Cube]

Looks fun and cheerful. "2.5"D on download services seems to be the best place for old revivals.

[Solo]

No no no no, no. I want the original or nothing else, remember Turtles in Time '2.5D'?

[S.C.G]

No no no no, no. I want the original or nothing else, remember Turtles in Time '2.5D'?

 

Fuck that... they can - and will - release the original again on XBLA but this is a 'Brand New Installment' to the excellent and underrated series, how can you say 'no' to that?

[flameboy]

awesome news...the original was an awesome game...get this released sell shit tons and then get a 3D reboot in development.

[Shorty]

No no no no, no. I want the original or nothing else, remember Turtles in Time '2.5D'?

But Bionic Commando Rearmed was awesome.

[BeerMonkey]

OMG OMG OMG!! i LOVED rocket knight adventures on the mega drive defo getting this :D:D:D

[Dante]

New Trailer

 

Rocket Knight Demo Footage

[mcj metroid]

kinda confusing.. sparkster had a game on super nintendo called sparkster as well...

 

and sparkster: rocket knight adventures 2

 

confusion..

but ya the megadrive version was the best..

[Shorty]

The comic in STC was the best