Konami Resurrects Rocket Knight Adventures

Konami is preparing a new game in the Rocket Knight Adventures series.The game, under development at Climax, is scheduled for a 2010 release on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC, via digital distribution networks.Rocket Knight Adventures was a bastard-hard side-scroller in which opossum knight Sparkster fought off an army comprised largely of robots and pigs, using both a sword (capable of firing energy beams) and a jetpack.According to 1UP, the forthcoming Rocket Knight is a 2.5D game which sees Sparkster’s jetpack and sword intrinsically linked, with the sword largely providing melee attacks, but capable of firing energy blasts and beams at the cost of some of his rocket power (which, thankfully, automatically recharges.)The view has zoomed out a bit, too, to make the jetpack more useful – Konami producer Tom Hewlett comments that in the original games the view meant that “you were sort of discouraged from using Sparkster’s jetpack, which is his coolest feature,” adding that it was “dangerous.”It’s still going to be bastard hard, but with concessions for the less-hardcore crowd. The game will have a Free Play mode, which will see Sparkster choose his levels from an overhead map and allow the player to save and restore their progress, in addition to an Arcade mode which will function much as the original games did. Namely, continuous levels, no saving, and “potentially [limited] continues.”We can’t wait to get our hands on Rocket Knight when it blasts off next year.