Thanks to Mega Cat Studios for the review copy
Title: Rocket Panda
System: Genesis
Price: Various (Depending on Physical Option)
Release Date: 2024
Story
In this escort mission/navigation game, you take control of a Rocket Panda, with the ability to fly around and rescue badgers trapped in varying worlds based off Sweets! Not much else to comment on, it looks just as goofy as it sounds.
Presentation
Being a Genesis title, this looks the part and fits well due to some nice sprite work. The levels are all sweet/candy themed and look distinct enough as a result, and what I assumed would be more like Zool with the candy theming ended up coming off as a game that even goes more overboard with the theming than that game’s Candy world. That isn’t a bad thing though, as it helps Rocket Panda keep a consistent theming! There’s even a neat little closeup sprite for when you pause the game.
The only real gripe I have with the visuals is the odd black font between stages, which makes reading the stage results very tough on the eyes. The strange part is the rest of the game seems to use very readable white font, so I dunno why the between stage result screen is way harder to read.
The music on the other hand is just OK. Nothing bad and way better than most western Genesis games from back in the day, with a playful vibe and instrumentation that’s easy on the ears, but compared to some of the other Genesis Mega Cat games I’ve played via Evercade, this has a more forgettable OST. Nothing bad, just pretty generic stuff you’ll quickly forget, though the cheerful level clear jingle and title theme did stick in my head for way longer than I expected it to.
Gameplay
In Rocket Panda, you guide the titular panda between several different worlds, with your main goal being to grab a key, rescue the badgers, and head to the exit! Except the exit won’t open if you just grab the key, since you need to keep a badger around in order for the door to be open. Said badgers are scattered around each stage, and the control is really smooth for the most part, making it pretty easy to get to grips with the movement.
By himself, the Rocket Panda cannot fight. If he rescues a badger and hits a hazard, the badger will die, acting like an extra hit to keep the panda from dying (think of them like Sonic’s rings) However, if Rocket manages to grab a cup of coffee, he can use it to perform a charging dash, which is the only way to defeat enemies and break through certain terrain. Coffee isn’t always plentiful, so keeping your cups conserved is far better of a strategy than just immediately using them to get through the stages quicker. Whether you get to the goal with all three or just one, you’ll still be able to beat the stage, though you get more of a bonus for clearing a level with all three.
For the most part, that is Rocket Panda in a nutshell; stage by stage dodge-em up action with a bit of an escort element to it. The stages start off gentle before getting rather nasty near the end, and thankfully you can choose the order of the worlds to play them in any order you please, so you don’t exactly have to do everything in a linear order. The worlds can take a decent bit of time though, and they all end in a boss fight. Here, you must wait for the boss to be vulnerable before attacking its weak point, and if you don’t clear the fight with a badger following you, you’re stuck and have to redo the fight, so no abandonment for you!
The bosses are fine. Way more annoying than the stages due to the amount of waiting it takes before you can even do anything to them, even early on, but I understood the change of pace they were aiming for, even if I felt the levels were more of a stronger package than the boss fights. Seeing some of the later worlds and how they ramped up navigation and the level designs really showed me just how well this game uses its mechanics, and while Rocket Panda still is a simple controlling game, I can’t deny it has a solid formula behind it.
If Coffee bashing wasn’t enough for you, there’s even a silly minigame on the title screen which is literally an Asteroids clone with nothing special about it. You fly around and shoot things that explode as a cute panda, and it was very apparent this only exists because the dev clearly wanted to play around, and that’s admirable.
Conclusion
In the end, Rocket Panda is a cute little game. It sticks with a very simple mechanic relying mostly on movement as your main control, and it does a decent enough job to still be fun for quick bursts of play. The simplicity does make it feel like it takes quite a while for the stages to get more interesting, though the world select letting you choose your own order to play the worlds in helps mitigate that a little by letting you tackle the tougher stages when you feel ready.
Even still, Rocket Panda is an adorably charming and cute game, but nothing I’d consider mindblowing. Decent fun with a throwaway minigame, but dull waiting game bosses and some really simple early game stages does make this a Genesis title that takes a while to really click, and even then you may find it a bit unexciting. Still, once it does click, it really leads to being a comfortable time, and I think if you like fun games with simple control schemes, Rocket Panda is one that I can recommend decently well. It may not be as easy to jump into as a RetroSouls game, but still enough fun to be worth a try, and I kinda hope this one comes to Evercade; it would be an especially great fit for that pick up and play nature.
I give Rocket Panda a 6 out of 10.