I gots Rocket Knight!

I took a bit of a chance and got it for the PC through Steam. Fortunately, it seems to run just fine with all settings up and max resolution. Everything looks pretty nice and the character expressions come through clearly.

The gameplay is quite polished and, to me, the control tweaks they made are justified and improve the game. On a 360 controller, X uses the sword, A jumps, and B causes you to rocket in whatever direction you are holding the Left Analog, which also moves you to the left and right. You can double tap A for a boost jump. There are also some combos you can do with firing projectiles from the sword and spinning in midair. The camera is pulled farther back from the SNES and Genesis games, and while this comes at the expense of the sense of speed, you ultimately feel like you are in better control of Sparkster.

Then, there's the flying stages. These are probably more at R-Type than anything else, since you can fire individual shots or charge for a more powerful shot. You can also hold down B to boost. All rocket related things deplete your rocket's power bar, which automatically refills.

This is only about 20-30 minutes into the game in Free Play mode. The only thing that stood out as bugging me were Sparkster's eyes. He looks tired. I don't know if that's the intent, given that he's older and jaded, or if they were going for a Buzz Lightyear kind of thing, but it's a little distracting. Axle Gear has the same deal.

Oh, that's one other thing. As near as I can tell, the characters only talk through squeaks and chirps, just as they did in the originals, and Axle's "voice" is adorable. XD