March 25th
Today's challenge is: “Best game recommended to me by a friend”.
All right, now we're onto the additional themes that were suggested by friends of mine. This theme was suggested by
T-Force.
A couple years ago, I asked Felix if he'd want to do a little challenge with me. We'd each give the other a retro game to complete/master, and go back and forth like that in hopes of expanding our gaming experience beyond what we naturally feel drawn to (reserving a right to veto dumb suggestions, of course). He gave me Atomic Runner, which I beat fairly quickly (found out that the spiky balls were OP against bosses, something Felix was surprised to hear), then he gave me Eternal Champions on the Genesis (he said I could use any character, and only had to beat the game once, but more on that later), and I gave him Keio 2 on the Sega Saturn (and the fucker never even beat it). I went to a local game store, bought the game for 5$, then I completed the Eternal Champions challenge in a rather ridiculous way: I got to the roster in arcade mode which only shows one character at a time, scrolled right twice to see this circus girl called Jetta, didn't even bother to look at the rest of the cast and grinded her until I could beat the game like once every two tries. When I told Felix, I don't know how he felt about it exactly, but he probably thought it was fucking retarded.
After that, I said he could still do Keio for the next round (I don't think he even played it again), and he gave me another childhood game of his, which is the game I'm gonna talk about today:
Rocket Knight Adventures, for the Genesis as well.
I didn't own this game, but my friend Phil had it and he agreed to lend it to me for a while. At first, I wasn't too impressed with it, and I thought the first 3 levels had great variety, but were a little boring. Things picked up after that with the 4th level, which was the flying battleship level. There I thought the design was starting to look like something I wanted in a game like this, then on the next stage, it started out with a shmup section, then you were attacking the main enemy base, then you saw your rival, who climbed into a giant robot that's several time the height of the screen and tried to crush you, and then you found a robot of your own while running away, jumped in the cockpit and your cutesy face turns into a pissed off frown, then the screen says “FIGHT!” and then the two robots engage in spiky ball fistycuffs and OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS GAME?!
And guess what? It only gets crazier from there. You go into outer space (yes, shmup level), the rival is there, and has a laser cannon that can cover almost all of the screen, and then a giant spaceship that can warp and morph into pretty much anything as you destroy its parts, then it's on to the mothership, which has a ton of bosses. You settle the score with your rival, he gets frustrated when you defeat him and blows up the wall behind you, and now you're being sucked into outer space. You have to hold onto some bars to avoid dying while the enemy is trying to make you fall, but eventually you succeed and he's the one who gets sucked outside to die a miserable death.
But oh dear god, you've haven't even seen the best yet. Now you have to defeat the true mastermind, a pig uploaded into a computer that controls a giant robot. A cute boss fight plays as you start beating it up, but then it gets pissed and the regular boss theme plays, but faster and in a very eerie way. You still break it down and the whole mothership gets destroyed. You manage to escape into a tiny escape pod, BUT IT'S NOT OVER YET! As you plummet towards earth, the boss chases you to kill you before you escape, but you're out of ways to attack, so all you gotta do now is survive and hope that atmospheric reentry friction gets the best out of him...
When I first saw that, I had no fucking words to explain what happened. This is stuff made from dreams, and this being one of Felix's favorite games ever is no nostalgia goggles issue, because it definitely stands as one of my favorite Genesis games as well now.
Rocket Knight Adventure is just your average platformer. With a very unique and fast paced rocket mechanic. With incredible and diverse level design across the whole game. With the most unbelievable set of bosses you've ever seen. With some fairly great music and graphics slapped on. No, really, it's crazy good, and you should play it. Felix, thank you for making me play this, although you should finish Keio 2 you stupid fuck kthx.
The OG Ossum 'Possum game is exclusive to the Genesis. The Super Nintendo “version” is called Sparkster, but it sucks anyway.