PixlBit

It's not uncommon for a company to forget about a great franchise, or ignore one that fans have been clamoring about for years, and it's not surprising that the company I'm talking about is one I spoke about before in Part 1.  Konami seems to have forgotten about a little gem that I had on the Sega Genesis called "Rocket Knight Adventures."  Yes, there was a lesser known sequel called "Sparkster" that for whatever reason changed the appearance of the main character, and the overall graphical style, in my opinion, was not up to par with the aforementioned.  Also, there was a PC/XBLA release of a Rocket Knight game in 2.5D that was actually quite enjoyable, but was only published by Konami, not developed, so it just didn't feel like a Rocket Knight game to me, though it was fairly fun.

Normally, when you hear that Konami jingle at the beginning of a game, your blood pressure rises, as your body is preemptively preparing to be angry beyond belief (Contra: Hard Corps anyone?), but when my dad came home from work with Rocket Knight Adventures, we popped it into the Genesis, flicked that switch to on, enjoyed our Konami Jingle, pressed start and BAM!  Beautiful sprites, amazing soundtrack, fun gameplay.

The first things that stood out to me were the beautiful parallax backgrounds, the amazingly bright and precise player and enemy sprites, and the cheerful yet epic music.  This game blew me away in the first fifteen seconds of loading it up, and yes, that might have been 5 or 6 year old me, but hell even when I loaded up the game years later, it had the same profound effect on me, and I thought "Why the hell haven't they made a modern sequel for this?!"  Then I remembered it's Konami we're talking about here.  They were too busy getting rich off of Metal Gear, and I can't get angry at them for it, it was a good business move, and they've proven that they make great games, the Metal Gear series most definitely is a part of that, but it's a shame that they can't dedicate a small team to something as fantastic as Rocket Knight.

Oh yes, giant pig-mechs abound in RKA.

Let's do a step-by-step analysis of why this game slaughters everything that you know about platformers and rearranges it to give you the ultimate action platformer experience.

First and foremost, the sprite work is out of this f**king world.  The animations, the enemies, the bosses, the backgrounds, are all flawless.  Yet another reason why I'll never care how many polygons they cram into a model, how ultra realistic the humans are in the next overhyped console FPS, or how amazing the trees and shadows look in Grand Theft Auto 12, because these hand-crafted sprites are far more beautiful and artistic than any piece of rendered 3D "art," (BEGIN SIDERANT) because the last time I checked, I, and many others, play(ed) video games to get AWAY from reality and get to a fantasy world where anything is possible, not to recreate and glorify war scenarios. (END SIDERANT)  That, of course along with the fact that the sprites are bright and colorful, as opposed to the modern school of thought where everything is shit-smeared and "gritty."

Prallax backgrounds, giant missiles, and a reference to Dr. Strangelove.  Oh, Konami, you silly thing.

Second, the gameplay is smooth and enjoyable.  On your first playthrough, you're going to be giddy as a schoolgirl when you figure out that you can charge up your jetpack and WHISTLE ASS ACROSS THE ENTIRE LEVEL.  The best part about it, is that it's not just a gimmick, the levels are designed to make functional use of the jetpack, and one level in particular (a boss level where the room begins to descend and you have to climb up without getting crushed) makes EXCELLENT use of the jetpack mechanic, because you can not only blast in any direction you wish, you can bank off of walls and into/off of enemies.  It's fantastic, and it's a pleasant sight in the platformer world, since many of them didn't bring too much of anything new to the table.

"PREPARE TO TASTE MY BLADE!"

Third, the storyline is pretty solid for a lesser-known platformer game, and while it isn't filled with incessantly beeping text boxes, it does have some rather cute cutscenes of a princess being taken, a douche-bag possum-gone-wild named Axel Gear turning on the kingdom and making sure you think he's the main antagonist, etc., it's a nice touch considering a lot of platformers didn't have any kind of obvious plotline.

Finally, the music is outstanding.  I'm a huge fan of videogame music to begin with, but considering that some people hate the Genesis soundchip (and understandibly so, some games utilized it horribly), I must say, this game has a beautiful soundtrack, and utilizes the Genesis soundchip with expert proficiency.  Let's put it this way, the song that's played when starting a new stage is my wake-up ringtone for work, and every day starts like an epic adventure because of it.

So with all of my wishes, please, Konami, once you're done with Zone of the Enders 3, make a high-quality in-house Rocket Knight sequel, and I can assure you that you'll not only be making previous fans such as myself extremely happy, but you could potentially be opening up a past franchise to an entirely new audience.

 Check out Retro Rampage: Episode 3 to watch me whoop RKA's ass in real life!