Sparkster (SNES) Review

Sparkster is a completely different game than Rocket Knight Adventures on the Sega Genesis. Yeah it’s still created by Konami and it’s a bit of a sequel or spinoff to Rocket Knight Adventures where you can charge up and dash in different directions. You also now have a rolling attack which is exclusive to Sparkster. Since you’re a possum you can also hang off of branches with your tail.

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Let me start off by saying, you won’t want to play Sparkster for the storyline. There’s no real text to tell you what’s happening, just a couple of cutscenes here and there between Sparkster and the rest of the characters where you’re set off to rescue the princess which is like 90% of all platformer storylines so nothing new here.

The use of the Mode 7 graphics was fantastic. Check out the water effects casting a shadow below you. The levels are nice and bright with some nice parallax scrolling.

Overall the controls are very good, I was never out of control when using the dash attack and the hit detection was on point for all of the enemies.

Sparkster feels a lot like sonic since everything you do is similar to the old Sega Genesis motto of blast processing. The Sega Genesis has blast processing, the Super Nintendo doesn’t. So what does blast processing do? Man that one brings me back to a simpler time.

The music in Sparkster is fantastic. Everything from the background music to the sound effects were great. The way the music fades in and out making you feel like everything is super fast paced to all of a sudden incredibly critical when a boss encounter took place was fantastic and really set the tone well in Sparkster.

The boss battles were a bit of a mix up. Some were great and others took some serious button mashing to finish off.

Some of the levels were great with wide open paths and multiple ways to finish off a level. Some were a little generic like the auto scrollers where Sparkster rides a chocobo in a race to the end of the stage.

What I didn’t like about Sparkster was one of the later stages where you break out into a vertical shoot em up that reminds me of the great shmup released by Konami in Axelay and then all of a sudden have to face a boss in a giant space suit like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots? Man this battle was tough and I don’t think it adds much to the gameplay so late in the game.

Don’t get me started with the water level that you have to make your way to the top. It was a huge pain to have to time each of the dashes without taking a death.

There’s a password system in Sparkster which takes just about forever to enter in a single password. I was literally there pondering to myself, should I just play the full game again rather than putting myself through this climbing mess of an entry.

Overall Sparkster is a decent game. I just wouldn’t put it over Rocket Knight Adventures if I had my choice. You can do far worse with some of the other lackluster platformers on the SNES.