Happy as I was at the idea of Konami bringing back their heroic opossum and former mascot, I had reservations about Rocket Knight from the word go. Most of my doubt rode on the 3D artstyle, which is quicker and cheaper than the way mom used to make games, but nothing worth doing is ever easy.
After more than a few play-throughs you still won’t change my mind about the charm of the oldschool approach, but Rocket Knight looks quite a bit better than I expected. Keep in mind that the game uses a zoomed out perspective, which offers plenty of space for details to overwhelm the eyes, with characters in the background, objects in the foreground, and Sparkster himself all fighting for attention. There were times I took damage simply from losing Sparkster for the trees.
The trade off is that you never really get a close-up connection to the characters, so smaller details that make me continue cherishing platformers of the past never really come into play here.