Rocket Man

Recently, I got on XBLA and downloaded the demo of the Rocket Knight Adventures revamp. Call it a curiosity: I remember playing the original Rocket Knight Adventures on the Sega Megadrive when I was a kid and thinking it was ace – And indeed, years later, I can safely say that this is a Megadrive game that actually holds up pretty well nearly twenty years later.

So I played through the demo but it left a rather mixed reaction. Sure the high def graphics are nice to look at and the platforming mechanics are still there but for some reason, the thing seems to lack…. Well….. heart.
One thing that endured Rocket Knight Adventures to me is it had a lot of creativity: I liked the various legions of pig-baddies and the various machines they had on board to stop Sparkster. Sadly, this creativity doesn’t seem to be present in the demo as the machines are absent and the baddies are all wolves – none of either have the character that made the original so appealing.
Also, I liked the fast action, the thrill of flying and the various efforts to mix up the action. And in a way, this new version doesn’t seem to have any of this: Instead of fast paced, flying action, it just comes across as being a standard issue platformer.

Which thus begs the question: What was this game trying to accomplish? Was it a remake? Or was it doing something new with the IP? Either way, I heard that this game was made not by Konami but by an English developer who (and don’t quote me on this) were motivated not by playing and loving the original but most likely for the sake of a paycheck.

And boy, even in a demo, does it show