Pocky & Rocky (SNES)

Arena
Checkpoints OFF
3 Difficulty levels
6 Stages
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by Natsume
Published by Natsume in 1993

Even if by dint of small talk or Internet lazy exploration, many people are certainly aware to some extent of the praise Pocky & Rocky on the Super Nintendo gets from all sorts of sources. What a few might not know, however, is that the game is also a rare example of a console-designed sequel that improved and surpassed its arcade original Kiki Kaikai in every single way, exception made to the difficulty of course. Pocky & Rocky is not a quarter-muncher by definition, but it does offer decent challenge on top of a sweet colorful setting that makes for a great relaxed shooting time.

One could say the game is a cute'em up, which makes sense I guess. Most stage themes are dark but carry a fluffly design, kinda like Twinkle Tale on the Mega Drive, another sweet contemporary title that behaves like and arena push-scrolling shooter almost all the time. Much of the embrionary formula created in the previous decade is kept here, including the fact that you can't lock shooting direction and strafe, which on a first glance would require lots of moving around to escape bullets and hazards. The good news is that you have not only one, but two ways of safely dealing with that. And that's one of the reasons why Pocky & Rocky is such a joy to play.

But who are Pocky and Rocky, by the way? Pocky is a shrine maiden (a young priestess who takes care of a Japanese religious shrine) and Rocky is a racoon dog who comes to her in search of help because his siblings - the Nopino Goblins - have gone insane. And there they go, either separate or in co-op play, to discover what happened to the poor goblins and fight the evil entity who's behind everything. If you're into storytelling, Pocky & Rocky will certainly entertain you with lots of dialogue and panels that flesh out this story as the stages unfold, all of them properly written in the English language.

Pocky ascends to the skies at the end of stage 2
(courtesy of YouTube user A_alla_quarta Retrogames)

The multidirectional gameplay allows both characters to shoot (button A and Y for autofire), to wiggle a close-range attack (button B - the stick for Pocky, the tail for Rocky), to detonate bombs if available (button L or R) and to slide (button X). All these inputs can be remapped in the options. Right off the bat it's clear that the game allows much more flexibility than the dire conditions of original Kiki Kaikai. As I mentioned above, the only thing missing is the ability to strafe, which would help immensely with the diagonals of the SNES controller, but alas!

Discovering what Pocky & Rocky has to offer is, simply put, a delight. The game is gorgeous, the music is soothing and what seems to be insurmountable at first, such as the raft section that leads to the second boss, soon becomes more and more manageable with continued practice. Winning is pretty much a matter of patience and a little routing. Each life has a health bar that gets expanded for every level you're able to beat in the same credit, to a maximum of 8 hearts instead of the initial 4. Lose all hearts and lose a life. Lose all lives and the game is over, as you ascend to heaven with angel wings.

Items are found either by destroying a full wave of a specific enemy or by hitting chests. There is some randomness as to the items you'll find, but not by a significant margin. Weapon upgrades are given by colored balls: blue powers up the starting shot type, which evolves to a spread attack once three consecutive items are taken; red activates a fire shot that splits to the sides when powered up. Other items include extra bombs, a 2-hit shield, a magic drink (partial life refill), a magic snack (full life refill) and the mad dog (you'll ride it as he jumps and makes you invincible).

Although both main weapons are effective, eventually you'll end up leaning towards a specific one. I settled with the fireball during the first half of the game, but from stage 4 onwards I preferred to use the spread shot due to the amount of enemies approaching from off center. By all means, don't underestimate the ability of the close range attack to deflect regular bullets. Most often than not that's just much better than attempting to evade and dodge. And of course the slide move is there to help you escape long range or ramming attacks from large enemies, such as bosses and mid-bosses. Beware from falling off cliffs though, since it will take away a larger chunk of your energy.

Do you want to play me?

Besides the great arsenal at the characters' disposal, what many people often take for granted in Pocky & Rocky is that the close range attack can be charged for a more powerful move: Pocky will spin around to damage enemies, Rocky will turn into an invincible stone statue for a few seconds. This is very handy, especially because you can still shoot while this attack is charging (I confess I only learned about this after I had beaten the game... duh!). Much easier to figure out were the places in each level that conceal the hidden lucky gods that, once freed, release three random items (hit their secret spots). Besides that, a single item for an extra life can be obtained by hitting the shell of the first boss with the close-range attack after he's defeated.

Even though the temptation is there for greedy people who might want to keep going back and forth to amass more points, this is nicely avoided by the timer. If the time runs out a life is lost. A bonus is given for remaining time when a boss is defeated (10 points per second left) and for remaining energy hearts (500 points for each heart left). This means that in order to maximize scoring the recipe would be to take your time exploiting enemies while avoiding all damage, especially during boss fights. Regardless of how you decide to approach the game, the fun factor of Pocky & Rocky is undeniable. It's got captivating characters, impressive diversity, a great rhythm and a steady difficulty progression. A few bouts of slowdown appear in stage 4 when you come across those clouds shooting lightning strikes and also during the fight against the last boss, but that's it.

My character of choice was Pocky. Both characters are well rounded, but Pocky's bomb is definitely more powerful. Stocking bombs is a good way to take care of bosses, so if you have difficulty with any of them the best tip is to just drop bombs during the trickiest parts of the battle. I played in the Normal difficulty and got the 1CC result below, beating evil lord Dark Mantle on my last life. I did not do any milking throughout the credit.

Next: Pocky & Rocky 2.