Believe it or not, I actually hadn’t heard of these games before. So playing them in a collection was definitely different although it was pretty fun. It’s definitely got that retro platformer vibe with a lot of fun level designs and colorful characters. I’d be down for a modern remake/reboot at some point.

The 3 games are all fairly similar but I’ll break down the differences. The core gameplay in each one is a 2D platformer. You have a jet pack which you can use to charge into enemies and through obstacles. You also have your close quarters weapon which does a lot of damage. Often times you will eventually have a vehicle or some other kind of assist tech that can really get you places. So definitely don’t lose that or you are probably going to be in a lot of trouble here. It can be tough to defend yourself in those suits so move with extreme caution.

One thing you will notice right away about the first game is that the difficulty level is incredibly high. You are going to absolutely have to pull out each and every stop in order to win without rewinding. I can tell you that I died so many hundreds of times that I absolutely needed it. This is a game where that feature is pretty much mandatory. Without it I would have been in a whole lot of trouble. You are able to save after each level so you can try doing that to potentially dodge the rewinding but the levels are rather long so I can tell you that this will still be a very difficult task.

The second game changes the boost feature so that it’s a separate button now. This makes things easier because you can just spam that without having to hold any of the controls down. Pretty handy stuff I would say. Unfortunately the trade off is that your blade doesn’t shoot any projectiles anymore so you have to get really close to the enemies. Your health bar is fairly low and your attack range is short so this is risky. When possible, use your boost instead. Of course the one drawback is when you use the boost attack, the recoil will often cause you to fall into another attack. So you will definitely have to watch out for that.

Sometimes you would get yourself into a loop where you get hit, rewind, get hit again, etc. Because once you’ve already boosted it’s hard to control yourself and everything is happening so fast. One thing about rewinding that you have to understand is when you are thrown back into the level, you have to immediately do whatever movement you were doing before. If you lose your momentum then you will be slow and will get hit by another attack. Even with the rewind this ended up being very difficult and not many games can say that.

Then we have the third game. I like how this one was the most colorful of the 3 and the characters were super expressive. It plays out more like the first one even down to the story. (Well all 3 don’t have much of a story beyond the Princess getting kidnapped but 3 is really just doing the same scenario as 1) Once again you have to charge up for your boost and your sword shoots energy blasts. I would say that it is the easiest of the 3 games though. I still had to rewind a whole lot mind you but the levels were considerably shorter.

The toughest part was definitely the final level. Defeating the giant mech suit I was up against was tough. I’m still not sure if I was really doing that the right way but it was fun. The third game experimented a bit more with the different fighting styles like riding on a kangaroo type dinosaur robot and then using an aerial one later. Platformers can always have a lot of fun like that but of course the main gameplay is always the best part.

The graphics are pretty solid like I said. The artstyle has really aged well for all 3 games. Meanwhile the soundtrack is also good although not quite as memorable. It’s not quite the next Sonic The Hedgehog in that regard. In terms of length, the games are all short but this brings all 3 of them so that helps a whole lot. You’re still going to wind up getting some good bang for your buck. There is also some replay value in going for the Platinum and I guarantee that won’t be super easy. You have to beat all 3 of the games roughly 3 times and you have to do the boss rushes. With enough rewinds you can pull it off but I was having trouble on easy mode. I can’t imagine what hard mode is like!

I’d definitely be up for a modern reboot for the series some day. The main guy has a lot of potential with the cool design. I also like how he’s not crazy about the princess like some other heroes and just runs off after saving the day. It works for a good contrast. There are naturally tons of stories you can tell within this universe and we just need some writers to step up and give it the ole go. There were definitely a whole lot of platformers back in the day and I look forward to seeing how the next one is.

Overall, Rocket Knight is a pretty fun game. Definitely one of the all time most difficult platformers that I’ve played. I don’t know how kids would have pulled this one off back in the day. It definitely would have taken a whole lot of dedication and effort to memorize all of the enemy patterns and keep it moving. So I give them a whole lot of props there. That being said, a remastered port should always have some quality of life updates and this game succeeded in a very big way. Rewind and Access Points are very huge. I definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a fun time.

Overall 7/10