Rocket: Robot on Wheels

[+kisrael]

Just picked this game up. It's pretty cool! I'm only a few boards into it, but it really makes good use of its little physics engine. I like the level where you have to design/build a roller coaster just right, then ride it to collect tokens...that was pretty clever. Plus some neat vehicle usage.

 

Kind of reminds me of Banjo-Kazooie meets Space Station Silicon Valley...

 

Anyone else played this?

[Jasoco]

Wow.. Space Station Silicon Valley.. haven't heard that title in years.

 

Rocket was one I really wanted at one point. So was SSSV. But I never got neither.

[JankenTheGreat]

Space Station Silicon Valley...

?

 

Wow. Now THAT brings back memories!

 

"Quick, get the captain something soft to sleep on!"

[Rhindle The Red]

Rocket: Robot on Wheels is one of the great lost games for the N64. Almost no one bought it, but it's absolutely brilliant.

 

The physics engine is wickedly realistic and plays an intregal part of the game. It suffers from occasional annoyances, such as when that physics engine causes you to lose your balance and fall to the bottom of a large structure you've just climbed, but those are relatively few and far between. Most of the time it's works wonderfully.

 

Truly one of the great 3D platformers on the N64 and with the competition on that machine, that's saying something.

 

It was made by Sucker Punch, who went on to make Sly Cooper and the Thevius Racoonus for Sony. I hope they get another game on a Nintendo console soon.

[+kisrael]

SSSV was annoying because it would freeze if you had the memory expansion in place. (Great game...was by DMA who later become--wait for it--Rockstar North of GTA3 + VC fame. Heh, what did Rockstar do before it got Rockstar North?)

 

Rocket: Robot on Wheels (heh--shouldn't that be "Wheel"??) is indeed excellent, though with some annoyance: always the same little yelps (esp. on double jumps), a sometimes wonky camera angle (in confined areas, it's like the camera has two angles, ahead of you and behind you, and toggling between the two is annoying), and I keep getting messed up by the in game menu system (spefically, you can only get out of the "Hints/Status" screen by pressing Start, not B, which just flips through pages of it)--also if you accidentally start reading text, especially the multiple pages of control description for the robot on its own, it's weirdly slowly to get through, you can't just "A-A-A-A-A-A", it takes its time printing. (And one time I accidentally activated one of those instructional talking heads right before a tricky jump--the physics of your guy doesn't stop, so my controls were effectively disabled so down I fell.)

 

Still, those are quibbles. Over all it's great, interesting physics (though not perfect...on the Clown land, I tried to stack three boxes w/ the tractor beam, which causes the bottom thing to zoom off to who knows where) and a well designed mission structure w/ mission title hints ala Mario 64, except you can do the tasks in (almost) any order. At first I was worried it was a Rare-esque collect-a-thon, but really, the tokens for the most part are abundant, and in general I don't think you have to do every task/find every token to advance.

 

It's funny that the tractor beam sound effect is...well, a tractor, (idling), I think.

 

Also, is it just me or is your Robot "Marvin the Martian's" long lost twin, at least from the neck up...(and including the torso, though I guess not the lack of arms...)

 

Anyway, I think this game showed up on someone's most underrated list, and I'm glad I ordered it from Half.com...$10-15 well spent.

[MegaManFan]

I thought this name rang a bell, so I popped up my N64 cart list:

 

* Quake II

* Rayman 2

* Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2

* Resident Evil 2

* Robotron 64

* Rocket: Robot on Wheels

* Space Station Silicon Valley

* Starcraft 64

* Starfox 64

* Star Wars Episode I Racer

* Star Wars Rogue Squadron

* Star Wars Shadows of the Empire

 

Yup, there it is, sandwiched between Quake and Star Wars. I remember picking it up for a few bucks and thinking it was quirky, kinda cool, but never really spending long playing it. Now I might have to, knowing the Sly Cooper folks worked on it.

[+kisrael]

Actually, maybe one of you could help me...

 

I'm in the Jungle/Lava stage. I'm trying to do that one involving the spinning compass-looking thing in the jungle clearing...I can grapple up to the day/night switch, but it doesn't do anything...all of the other day/night switches seem to work. And I can't find the equivalent of that area during the lava time...I see the giant raccoon head, facing (at night) some of the rings for the ring race minigame, but there's just some ledges. There's a cave down there, but there's a cobweb blocking it, don't know if there's anyway to get through or remove the cobweb. Anyone know what I'm talking about, and how to get through it?