Rocket Knight Adventures is a game with a lot of charm and a great style, but unfortunately gets pretty annoying in a few too many places.

The first big thing is limited lives/continues. I've never really liked this sort of limiter, and makes games needlessly punishing. Playing with infinite lives made the game much more fun to play, and kept challenge intact. In fact, most of the game is a good challenge. The bosses are the highlight, as the parts with regular enemies are fun enough but not particularly memorable. Most bosses are quite fun, although a few are annoying.

Presentation wise, the game's great. The music is really good (especially that boss theme) and the spritework is appealing and expressive.

All in all, pretty above average for platformers of it's time. It's got a few signs of age in the game design that unfortunately bring it down a bit for me, away from the likes of something like Gunstar Heroes. However, it's still a good time and I can recommend it.