Retro Weekends plays and reviews Rocket Knight Adventures for the Mega Drive. All gameplay footage taken from real hardware.
What we thought
I thought this was relatively fun, it had some good sections, good colouring in the graphics, a likeable character, and the controls were quite nice too. I like the way you can bounce off the walls with your jet pack and there were some quite cool and unique sections to some of the levels. All in all a very good game but not quite a genre-defining title for me, just a very high 4/5.
4/5
This is a good action-platformer with great set pieces, great boss fights, and varied levels that often have their own distinct elements (such as the lava level where you had to watch your reflection, or the waterfall stage where you move in and out of the background). I think the character design is also quite memorable. The rocket pack in the game was quite an interesting element that brought a new flavour to the gameplay, it was implemented well, with many of the level layouts set up to use that gameplay mechanic well such as a section where you had to escape from a giant robot. All around this is a great game, but is it one of the greatest platformers of the time? I have to say it only just misses the top score for me, just because the best games at this stage generally either were more groundbreaking (Sonic), or had more content and battery saves (Mario World).
