Sparkster: Konami's Lost Mascot, Recently Rediscovered

One of the most heart-wrenching moments of retro gaming is when you find an obscure title that's completely awesome, and then discover that its been more or less forgotten by its creators.  Such is the case with Rocket Knight Adventures, a platformer for Genesis by Konami.

 Platforming in this case involves rocket packs

The game came out during the animal mascot game era or gaming, among other such contemporaries such as Bubsy and Aero the Acrobat.  The mammal du jour of RKA is a possum named Sparkster, who blasts through a vaguely steampunk world saving other possums from an army of pigs while occasionally fighting his rival, Axel Gear.

More games need to let you fight your rival in giant robots

 

 Like most mascot characters, Sparkster pretty much disappeared by the 32-bit era, which is a shame since his games were notable among the genre in that they were actually good.  Aside from some odd cameos here and there it seemed like Konami had forgotten about Sparkster.  Which made it all the more surprising when I saw that 1up.com was doing a cover story for a new Rocket Knight game.

To be honest, I couldn't be more surprised if Nintendo announced a new 2D Metroid or an English version of Mother 3

What's even more surprising is that this new game is actually trying to recapture the spirit of the original game instead simply making a grimdark adventure and calling it a day. I'd go into more detail about it, but it seems a little superfluousness without actually giving more background on Sparkster and his game. So in the following few days I'm going to play through all three of his games and post my impressions here. That way everyone can have a better idea of what the series is and what this new sequel should do to stay true to it.

1up's Rocket Knight Coverage