Friday, September 19, 2025

Rock-On for PCE


Image: MobyGames

Rock-On

Twinbee meets R-Type


Genre: shooter - horizontal

Publisher: Big Club

Year: 1989

System: PCE


Gameplay Score: 2

Gameplay Notes:

Insanely difficult. Enemies swarm to you and fire fast projectiles and your hitbox is enormous. Powerups are everywhere - so many that it's not worth trying to avoid them. Just find the 8 Way gun and stick with it until you die. You collect three weapons and can toggle between them, although most are useless. 2 Way and Laser in particular. Speed pickups seem to stack forever until your ship flies around at breakneck speed, making it impossible to deal with the projectiles. I wish it played better than it does. Oh and you have to mash the button.


Level Design Score: 3

Level Design Notes:

Stages remind me of a mix between Gradius (tons of powerups) and R-Type (lots of environmental hazards and full screen bosses). The first stage is mostly dumb but the variety picks up after that.


Theme Score: 2

Theme Notes:

You're a chunky spaceship similar to Twinbee or Mr. Heli. Weird, out-of-place screens between stages feature a lady at a news desk along with a wall of Japanese text. Uh, ok


Art Style Score: 3

Art Style Notes:

This wanna-be cute-em-up features a generic and rather ugly set of enemy sprites to go with boring backgrounds. The saving graces are a nice-looking main sprite, a wide variety of backgrounds across levels, and a solid framerate.


Audio Score: 3

Audio Notes:

I really enjoyed ths simple 8-bit music, but the loud and prevalent sound effects are a major downer.


Overall Score: 49

Review ID: 8120



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