There are moments on the ground where you need to use it to quickly move out from under a crushing ceiling, but if you wanted to land gently on a far-off platform, good luck to you. It’s more useful as a weapon, bashing the little knight into his foes with no care for concussions. Sparkster absolutely speeds off whenever it’s charged and unleashed, and there’s no way of controlling it beyond your initial vector.
The jetpack isn’t really helpful for platforming, either. It never goes as far into left field as something like Earthworm Jim 2 - the mechanics always remain the same - but you could never accuse it of being formulaic. It has a habit of throwing single-use sub-bosses your way, pushing you through horizontal shoot-’em-up, or sometimes weirder situations. You’re never really doing the same thing twice, and that begins with the first level. This is where the Contra DNA finds its way in the mix Rocket Knight Adventures is something of a situation rush game. Instead, you’ll be doing all manner of things unrelated to jumping across floating chunks of rock. However, platforming is maybe 25% of the game. Swinging Sparkster’s sword emits a projectile, and the big hook to platforming is charging his jetpack and launching him across the screen. The gameplay may initially hit you like a factory standard platformer. You play as Sparkster, the titular Rocket Knight, who’s just doing his job, trying to save the kingdom. A pig army is invading and there’s an evil knight dude who steals the princess. The story of Rocket Knight Adventures exists largely in the instruction manual, but the essentials can be gleaned from the game’s cutscenes. It belongs on a pedestal, and I’m putting it there. But Rocket Knight Adventures doesn’t belong in the same dustbin as Bubsy and Aero the Acrobat. A glut of mascot platformers following Sonic the Hedgehog all but buried the game in 1993. Rocket Knight Adventures was directed by Nabuya Nakazato, the same guy who directed both Contra III: The Alien Wars and Contra Hard Corps, so it has its papers. It’s Rocket Knight Adventures, a game that got snubbed from being included on the Genesis Mini.
It’s not Sonic the Hedgehog 2, not Streets of Rage, and not Gunstar Heroes. If you had my Goldstar 3DO Interactive Multiplayer at gunpoint and demanded I tell you what my favorite Sega Genesis game is, you probably wouldn’t believe me.
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