Rebirth of Rocket Possum

[Blount]

Yeah, I was trying to remain optimistic (a new Rocket Knight game doesn't happen very often), but it's hard to do it when the game looks like ass.

When they make a trailer comparing the new game to the old ones, and the new game actually looks worse, you know they just didn't care. It's bland, ugly and deprived of emotion. In the old games, Sparkster would react with exaggerated cartoony expressions upon certain events (barring the second game), but now... a huge boulder falls right next to him and his only reaction is to jump very slowly in the air. Actually, the whole game looks incredibly slow. What's up with that?

[Dr. BUGMAN]

Sparkster blends into the scenery too much. I can kind of see what they're trying to do with not having him fill a large portion of the screen, but goddamn he took up more of the screen in the other games.

[Wombatwarlord777]

Sparkster's traction seems to have regressed as well. In those old game clips, he could turn on a dime, but in the new game... Yeah, he's a lot less reactive. Pretty much every sense of urgency and energy has been lost.

[Crowbar]

Wow, that looks very Dreamworkish. All we need now is something like Neil Patrick Harris or Matthew Perry doing his voice.

Nah, Jack Black.

Or Nicholas Cage.

[G.Silver]

the whole game looks incredibly slow. What's up with that?

This is because they pulled back the camera. Even if he were moving at the same speed he was in the original game, because the camera is further back, it reduces the perception of speed.

I don't like the look of these particular levels, but from a strict gameplay perspective this is pleasing to me, it still looks fun. I hated that wolf robot in the screen shots, but the bit at the end where Axel and Sparkster stop fighting to watch it tear down the wall behind them got me a bit excited. They at least have the boss entrance down, and there's a lot of companies who can't even get that right. For 1500ms points or whatever, sure, I'll try it.

[Ngangbius]

^At least try a demo before jumping in(no pun intended) with your points. Remember, this is being made by a company who've developed some pretty lackluster platformers.

[gr4yJ4Y]

It looks more like a Crash Bandicoot game than anything.

I felt like it was a mix of that and what I'd expect a 2.5D remake of the Donkey Kong Country games to look like.

[Needlemouse]

It seems to play similar to the old games, but EGADS! THE GRAPHICS! I knew Rareware was commissioned to provide middleware for X360 developers but I didn't know that included an N64 emulator. ¬_¬

[Maruyama]

As with most retro revivals, the mechanics will be there, but not the soul. Games are primarily a visual medium as well as an audio one. The difference between Rocket Knight Adventures and most games during that time was not only the quality in gameplay, but the stylistic charm the game had as well. If you can't bother to replicate that, why use the Rocket Knight IP at all?

It really should've been given to the Contra ReBirth team. Then the game would at least have something in common with the original in terms of visuals and sound.

[Green Gibbon!]

I'm kind of of the same mindset. I've never understood how people can separate "aesthetics" from "gameplay". Do they play with their eyes closed?

[Segaholic2]

My favorite were those Wii fanboys who argued that graphics don't matter. They're called fucking "video games" for a reason.

[Kogen]

My favorite were those Wii fanboys who argued that graphics don't matter. They're called fucking "video games" for a reason.

snes has betr grfx than genesis u kno

[G.Silver]

I'm kind of of the same mindset. I've never understood how people can separate "aesthetics" from "gameplay". Do they play with their eyes closed?

My favorite were those Wii fanboys who argued that graphics don't matter. They're called fucking "video games" for a reason.

Attractive aesthetics and graphic fidelity are not the same thing.

[NeedlemouseReturns]

OK, I LOVED RKA & Sparkster SNES. So when I saw the release screens, I was thinking "WTF", but I still decided to wait for the trailer. The trailer is released, and I laugh at the attempt to instill the sense of nostalgia, but a lot of the NeoGAF fears are put to rest, and yes it does look different, but not nessecarily (I can never spell that, sorry) bad. I like the fact that they didn't scrap the rocket-bouncing physics as implied in that one interview, and also to the contrary, the pace seemed the same to me.

So I'm a little more accepting now, but you're damn right I'm going to wait until the game is out to give my final judgement.

Also, regarding the posts by Green Gibbon and Segaholic: The graphics could be ugly as sin, and asthetically gaudy or garish to the max, BUT AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOT INTERFERING WITH THE GAMEPLAY (like making some enemy or pit impossible to see) THEN THE GRAPHICS ARE ACCEPTABLE.

The RKHD screens seem to indicate that the game will have this problem, unless they brighten up those backgrounds.

[cjmcray]

I've been waiting for a new Rocket Knight game for years. This thread severely disappoints.

I think a new Rocket Knight game would be better suited on the DS. The bottom screen could be used for sword combat on the ground, and when you charge-up his jetpack, fly to the upper screen.

[Esrever]

I'm kind of of the same mindset. I've never understood how people can separate "aesthetics" from "gameplay". Do they play with their eyes closed?

My favorite were those Wii fanboys who argued that graphics don't matter. They're called fucking "video games" for a reason.

Attractive aesthetics and graphic fidelity are not the same thing.

Yeah, talk about missing the point, 'holic! The classic Rocket Knight games -- in all their ancient, pixelated glory -- look infinitely better than the new one.

[Segaholic2]

I would argue that the term "graphics" encompasses both aesthetics and fidelity, rather than just fidelity. I would also argue that technical limitations serve no positive influence on aesthetics, because the more you can do (either by resolution or by color depth or what have you), the more freedom you have with the aesthetics. That's not to say that you can't have visually pleasing games on weaker hardware; just that weaker hardware is inarguably a handicap and complaining that graphics don't matter shouldn't be an excuse.

[Arcade]

I would care more about how the game plays that it looking ugly, if the game is fun, and doesnt make you want to hang the developers (Fishing in a Sonic game? A Sonic game where Sonic varelly is playable? Shadow with guns and the most awful Sonic game ever made?) this could be good.

A 2D game will never be the same in 3D, even if they made Sparkster look pretty...

Still, I would have picked "Jetpack" for using as base for this 3D stuff, since is a game that not many people knows and because it ages old, you can use a human main character (Hence you get the "I hate furries" gamers) and well, you can just not use swords, and save a ______ of time since there is no way swords work well in a 3D game where the character flies most of the time.

PS: Jetpack was a 2D videogame for DOS that featured a guy that used a jetpack, it was fun..

[Xyton]

FYI: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/j/jetpa ... ivearcade/

Just in case you didn't know. ;)

[Arcade]

FYI: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/j/jetpa ... ivearcade/

Just in case you didn't know. ;)

wrong game, I mean this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jetpack_(video_game)

[Wombatwarlord777]

Uh, Arcade, he's refering to a remake of the 1983 game.

[Isuka]

No, Arcade's actually talking about an entirely different game. So, in fact, he *GASP* isn't wrong when correcting Xyton.

Also, what holic said. Think of it this way: nothing prevents us from playing all the Rocket Knight games on a Wii (as long as some competent team ports them, like M2), but you can't play Muramasa on the Genesis or the SNES, at least not without severe sacrifices in the game's aesthetic aspect due to technical restrictions. Or we could play 3rd Strike on the Xbox 360, but not BlazBlue on the Dreamcast.

[G.Silver]

So after thinking about this more, I decided that the reason that "graphics don't matter" (for me) is because even though more powerful hardware allows developers to explore amazing new ideas that they could never have done before, new hardware will not cause me to enjoy this generation's games more than I did the last one. I should make clear that I am in no way implying that older games are better (even though that is exactly the sort of thing I would say).

I know there are some gamers who don't feel that way and in their most extreme form they start to say things about how sad they are that the PS3 has an intended lifespan of 10 years because they hate to see technology stagnate for that long, but my thinking is that whether they make new hardware or not, they'll still be making cool games, and it will be about the same percentage of them that will be interesting as they would be on new hardware.

[Ngangbius]

I know there are some gamers who don't feel that way and in their most extreme form they start to say things about how sad they are that the PS3 has an intended lifespan of 10 years because they hate to see technology stagnate for that long...

Other than a scant few exclusives, why would these type of gamers stick with any console as opposed to a fully-capable PC?

[Frieza2000]

I would argue that the term "graphics" encompasses both aesthetics and fidelity, rather than just fidelity. I would also argue that technical limitations serve no positive influence on aesthetics, because the more you can do (either by resolution or by color depth or what have you), the more freedom you have with the aesthetics.

Necessity is the mother of invention. In general, limitations can help bring out creativity that would otherwise not have been tapped. Speaking from experience, when I made my first RPG using the Blades of Exile engine the extreme limitations on what I could make it do motivated me to use the few things I was able to make it do in ways I otherwise would never have thought of. I suspect the situation was similar for a lot of developers in the early days, which may account, at least in part, for the comparative creativity of the first generations of games. This doesn't apply quite so much to graphics, and even if it did the moderate difference in creative freedom that the other systems' graphics afford over the Wii's is negligible, but I thought I'd make the general point.

Seeing it in action, it reminds me of the early 3d games on the PC, but I can't place exactly what game I'm thinking of. The pulled back perspective recalls the difference between Jazz Jackrabbit 1 and 2, but the way it moves isn't like them.