Collection essentials #251: Sparkster (SNES)

I already talked about Rocket Knight Adventures and Sparkster for the Sega Genesis, two really good platformers from Konami. RKA was the first game, releasing in 1993, and then Sparkster for both SNES and Genesis came out in 1994 at the same time. The peculiar thing about these two games is that they have the same cover art and name on the box, and they came out at the same time, yet they’re completely different games! How weird is that? 

The main gameplay hook to these games is that your character Sparkster has a jetpack that he can charge up in order to zoom forward at high speed for a second, with his sword pointing outward to hit any unfortunate enemy in the way. In Sparkster for the Genesis they had changed a bit how the mechanic works, but in this game it’s more like the original game, where you have to willingly hold down the button to charge and then release to ZOOM. There’s some good variety in level design too, and some with gameplay variations such as some shoot ‘em up action. Back then Konami was fond of locking the true ending and sometimes even the true final boss behind the “Hard” difficulty setting in the options menu, and this is an example of that. I haven’t attempted to beat hard mode in this game…yet.

I don’t have a ton more to say about Sparkster. Not only have I talked about the other games in the series, but I’ve talked about so many other quality platformers and Konami games that I feel like I’d be just repeating a lot of the same points. I guess the moral of the story is that old school Konami was amazing and you should play their games if you’re inclined!