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Sparkster Game Review

Sparkster is a 1994 side-scrolling platform video game developed and published by Konami for the SNES. It is another solid, but uneven sequel.

The first Rocket Knight game remains the best in the franchise by a mile. It received two sequels that both got released in 1994 for some reason. The first one for the Sega Genesis was solid, but very problematic in some gameplay mechanics. The second one for the SNES is more of the same, though overall it offers a slightly more enjoyable experience than the aforementioned entry.

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The plot is by-the-numbers and standard for this franchise. The inclusion of the wolves as the new enemies was a great choice that paid off. By adding the wolves to the collection that previously consisted of lizards and pigs, this franchise became a rather fun anthropomorphic series for kids and colorful platforming fans alike.

The gameplay is mostly the same as it had been before with the sword and the rocket working pretty similarly to the original and I would actually say that I prefer the rocket mechanic here over its immediate predecessor. However, the addition of the short-distance rolling dashes was highly problematic, unnecessary and not well utilized whatsoever.

The control scheme for this particular game was very poor as this dash requires different buttons for the left and the right direction of the screen, which I found to be a very frustrating choice that made no sense as it made the controls both overly complicated and annoying. Whenever I had to use those two buttons, I hated the experience. Thankfully though, most of the game did not require them, so I was fine playing it for the most part.

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Sparkster consists of nine stages that are all rather lengthy, thus the game is not as short as it might initially seem. These stages are all over the place in the variability of settings and the strength of their level design going from the frustrating second stage to the solid first and fourth stage to three downright incredible stages.

The pyramid stage is gorgeously animated and very intriguing in its maze-like elements; the bird riding stage is unlike any other Rocket Knight stage in its interesting cart mechanic; the scrolling shooter seventh stage is just hard enough and very fun to go through. Overall, these three stages are uniformly amazing due to their authenticity.

The bosses are also a mixed bag. Missile Core as the penultimate boss is frustrating as it requires too much button-smashing, but otherwise it is long and easy. Axel Gear is surprisingly easy and forgettable this time around. The tank and the worm bosses were also not that memorable and both were too easy. The same goes for the first two bosses.

But the lioness is quite cool in design and the difficulty curve was just right here. Robot Crawler was also quite fun while the best boss has to Powered Gear. This mecha fight was frustratingly difficult, but when using all of your weapons at the same time, it becomes easier. It is a phenomenal fight with particularly complex A.I.

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I didn’t quite care for the score in Sparkster, though the sound design is quite strong. The graphics and animation are both terrific with the character designs being uniformly excellent. I also really liked some of the level designs here, though again the vastness of some areas was overwhelming as I prefer shorter and less sprawling platforming areas myself.