Topic: Rocket Knight

[Xessive]

Holy SHit! I loved this game back in the days of my Sega MegaDrive (Genesis)! There was Rocket Knight and its sequel Sparkster. Now Konami brings it to PC in new graphics. It's on Steam here.

Even if you've never heard of it, if you like platformers this may be up your alley.

[Cobra951]

I know it's coming for XBLA.  I'm curious to see what they've done with it.

[Xessive]

I payed so RK and I like it! I just posted in the Steam forums about a strange omission from the game:

I just played some Rocket Knight and the nostalgia hit me like a bag o' bricks. SO far I'm enjoying it.

That said, I did notice one odd design choice. When you first start the game it says it would be best experienced with a gamepad. Great. I have a wired X360 controller so I hooked that in. The first thing I noticed was that all the commands still display the keyboard keys and not my gamepad's buttons i.e. it says push SPACE to jump, and Z to fire etc.

The game is on XBLA, and that version has the correct graphics for the controller. I'm just curious as to why the PC versions seems to be missing it.

Hopefully an update will fix that.

So yeah, that was kind of a strange thing to leave out especially with the advisory splash screen that says "This game is best experienced with a gamepad."

[Cobra951]

This should be out shortly for the Xbox.  I'll give it a shot tomorrow.

[gpw11]

Interested, but I'll probably wait for a bit.

[Cobra951]

Very cool, from what the trial offers.  You get stages 1.1 (platforming) and 1.2 (flying/horizontal shooter) in arcade and free-play modes.  It looks like they got the gameplay honed nice and tight.  Full 60 fps on the Xbox.  I imagine the same is true of the PSN offering (and PCs with oomph).  Very smooth, colorful and pretty.  I'm very tempted.  I'm looking for reviews, but so far can only find previews.  I guess advance copies to gamesites didn't happen?  Now I feel like trying out the Genesis original for perspective.

Edit:  Hah.  Took me a while to remember the Genny/MD emulator of choice is Kega Fusion (Steve Snake).  I had lost all my old shortcuts since my system-drive crash, and hadn't revisited Genesis emulation since.  Not surprisingly, Rocket Knight is much harder right off the bat, in its original incarnation.  It looks and plays great for such an old game, but it's more intent on punishing the player than letting him pull stunts with the possum.  That may be why I never got into it much back in the day.

[gpw11]

Oh, there's a demo!  Thanks for mentioning that...downloading the demo off Steam now. 

[Cobra951]

The game is good.  The shortness complaints I'm seeing aren't really fair.  It's an old-school arcade game with extras, mostly the free-play mode.  The idea is to hammer away at it for better points and mastery.  They've done a great job with the gameplay and level design.  There's plenty of both, and it comes at you fast.  Very fun, with some serious challenges in the later stages, even in the normal difficulty.  60 fps full time, from the opening scene to the final boss, whom I have yet to figure out.

[Xessive]

I'm really enjoying it so far.

I am still a little irked by the lack of proper button prompts but I already know the buttons by heart so it's not a huge deal.

The game is very classic in its gameplay and general style. I love that about it.

[Xessive]

Well, Konami finally responded regarding the gamepad issue:

Thank you for contacting Konami Tech/Customer Support. Please note that due to there being a multitude of gaming controllers out there we are not able to include photos or button configuration layouts as each controller can vary. We suggest that you use the keyboard control layout and outside of the game configure your controller to set the keys that you would use on the keyboard to the buttons you prefer.

Is it just me or does that sound like "we really can't be bothered, go solve your own shit" ?

Anyway, their excuse is basically there are too many controllers out there for them to make images for them all. Which is bullshit. The two standards for game controllers on PC are basic (buttons 1,2,3,4 etc.) and xinput (X360 Gamepad A,B,X,Y etc.). So really they only needed to make two sets of images (one of which already exists for the XBLA version of the game).

[Cobra951]

I beat the game on Normal tonight.  Hard is going to be a bitch for me.