Creative Spark: Reinventing the Rocket Knight
The Attitude
"
Something that I think is pretty important is that Sparkster didn't marry the princess after the earlier games," says Rocket Knight producer Tomm Hulett. "I think everyone assumed the hero ended up with the princess after he saved her, but that's not the case here." Instead,
Sparkster married someone else, moved away from the kingdom of Zephyrus, and started a family in quiet anonymity.
Fortunately, it seems the team behind Sparkster's return resisted the temptation to take the easy route of making their hero more "mature" by giving him a dark edge. While the process of revisiting a classic videogame hero has essentially become a routine -- applying the comic book template of growing out their hair and making them more violent and angry -- Konami and Climax seem to recognize that much of Sparkster's classic appeal stemmed from his down-to-earth demeanor. Where old-school contemporaries like Bionic Commando's Captain Spencer (and to some degree, even Sparkster's inspiration Sonic the Hedgehog) have been forced down a questionable road of ill tempers and snarled obscenities,
Sparkster became a mellow family man. In the thick of action, he remains a striking figure for his sheer sincerity.
At the same time, Konami hasn't dropped him into a timeless, Mario-like stasis, either.
Fifteen years have passed in-game since the last entry in the series, just as in real life, and Sparkster has grown a little in the interim.
He's a more confident hero now; where his rocket boosts
in previous entries were usually capped off by a wild-eyed sense that Sparkster was constantly on the edge of veering out of control,
now he tears around the level with a sense of collected confidence.
This, too, ties in with the game action. "The idea that Sparkster was a little out of his depth was fun when players were first getting a feel for the games," says Hulett, "but
by the end it was a little frustrating. The old games kind of discouraged you from using the rocket pack after the first level. Boosting around the levels is such a key element of the game, and it shouldn't be punishing for the player, so we've given you more sense of control."
Still, the feeling of danger isn't lost entirely. "
Because of the power meter, you have to think about how much you boost, and how you attack enemies."
The Backstory
Sparkster may be an easygoing kind of mascot, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have his flaws.
After defeating the Devotindos Empire and its ultimate weapon the Pig Star in the original game, he was frustrated to see the peaceful opossum people of Zephyrus put forth the olive branch and offer their now-homeless former enemies sanctuary. To put it in nerd terms, Sparkster is a little like Captain Kirk:
After fighting so hard against the bad guys, he's had a tough time accepting their change of heart.
Sparkster's dissatisfaction with the state of things in Zephyrus is why he moved away in the first place. And it's had its share of ramifications:
Not only is he living far away when Zephyrus comes under attack again, but he's caught off guard to discover that -- despite his prejudices -- the pigs are on his people's side in the new war.
Sparkster's self-imposed exile has also allowed his shifty rival Axel Gear to take his place as Zephyrus's new rocket knight. This fact understandably rubs him the wrong way, since Axel spent the previous games generally abducting the princesses he now seemingly protects. "Axel is a great character," says Hulett. "It was pretty unusual to see the hero's main rival not also be the final boss -- for instance, in the early Sonic games, you just fought Eggman/Robotnik at the end of each level. For us,
Axel's always the mid-boss, and you face bigger threats at the end."
The Gear
For his long-awaited return, Sparkster is also benefiting from a significant visual overhaul. While his new look makes him instantly recognizable as the 16-bit hero, the modern Sparkster looks at once sleeker and more advanced than in the old days.
There's a strong hint of steam punk in his new appearance; his style is now less medieval and more technological in nature. According to Hulett, this evolved as a consequence of the original games. "The old games always started you out in this sort of rustic woodland, but
as you advanced into the pigs' territory, things became a lot more industrial. We've incorporated some of that into Sparkster's design." His visor has become a pair of flight
(huh?! Não eram já?) goggles, and his armor is smoother, more angular, and decked out with rivets.
"His sword looks like it's been bolted together from hunks of metal," says Hulett. "
We've added a cable between the sword and the rocket pack, too. It never made sense why he had this sword that fired energy, but now that's all explained."
One thing hasn't carried over from the Rocket Knight Adventures sequels, though: Sparkster's punk hairdo. "In the first game, he was just a cute mascot character in cool armor. For the second and third games, though, they gave him this spiky haircut that maybe pushed him a little too close to the 'mascot with attitude' style the series was trying to avoid," says Hulett.
Sparkster's new helmet and goggles fully cover the top of his head again, steering him safely away from Sonic/Dragon Ball/Cloud Strife territory and back toward being the modest, unassuming rodent he originally was.
The Mechanics
And most importantly, Sparkster still seems to play like his old self. While
we weren't able to go hands-on with the alpha build of the game when we saw it,
Rocket Knight looks and moves like a very similar, but more polished and contemporary version what you would expect. The action remains zippy despite the addition of polygons;
there don't appear to be any extraneous animations to bog down the hero's responsiveness.
"
One thing we wanted to do was control the rocket pack with its own button, so you can activate it at any time," says Hulett.
He demonstrated by grasping a steel beam with Sparkster's tail, performing a rapid vertical spin, then launching himself extra high into the air. Then he sent the hero careening across the stage at 45-degree angles, collecting gems and bouncing into hidden rooms.
As with the earlier games, there are no power-ups to collect, only gems and health drops. Hulett contrasts this style with another classic Konami franchise he's worked with: Contra. "In Contra, you sometimes have situations where a player's entire strategy revolves around picking up the spread gun. So if they lose the spread gun, they're out of luck until they find another.
Sparkster's always got all of his abilities available, so it really gives the player a lot of freedom to play the way they want."
There is one significant change to the way the rocket knight handles, however: "
In our game, Sparkster only bounces off the walls when he rockets into them at a 45-degree-angle. If you hit a wall straight-on, you'll just come to a stop. In the older games, you always bounced off walls no matter how you hit them.
I feel like this new approach really does a lot to prevent that sense of being out of control."
The real question is whether or not Sparkster will be able to draw an audience in an era where cute mascots are an all but forgotten relic of the past. For his part,
Hulett sees a lot of potential in the hero's iconoclasm.
"I think it's an opportunity," he says. "
I think Rocket Knight was overlooked when it first appeared because everyone had a mascot animal game, so no one realized that this one was actually more of a grown-up game wearing mascot clothes. But now, there's really not much like it on the market. And since the game's coming out on XBLA, PSN, and Steam, it'll be inexpensive and accessible. People can try out the demo for themselves, and
hopefully they'll find that there's a great game behind the cute hero."
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