How Does Pocky & Rocky Reshrined Compare to the Original Game?

As a child, I was fortunate enough to own a Super Nintendo, along with a collection of fun games, including some more obscure titles. We owned a copy of Pocky & Rocky, which I’m sure my parents bought because one of the characters was a super cute raccoon named Rocky. Surely these adorable graphics meant that the game was accessible to anyone, no matter their age. Well… Pocky & Rocky ended up being one of the most difficult SNES games I had ever played; even as an adult, the only way I was able to complete the game was to play with a friend and use the Game Genie to cheat, giving us invincibility.

Despite its difficulty, this is a title that I have come back to over and over again to test my skills and see if I have improved over time. There was a sequel called Pocky & Rocky 2 on the SNES and a title called Pocky & Rocky with Becky that was released for the Game Boy Advance, so I made sure to add those to the collection. But this wasn’t the only other title in the series. I discovered that there was a title released for the Famicom Disk System starring Pocky called KiKi KaiKai (which translates to Mysterious Ghost World) that was released in 1987. Since I had the FDS, I made sure to pick up this title too. So enough about my crazy collection; fast forward to 2022, when a remaster called Pocky & Rocky Reshrined was released on the Nintendo Switch and the PS4, followed by releases for the Xbox on the 7th of December 2023. I hadn’t gotten a chance to check out this new title until I picked it up for the Xbox Series S, so I am excited to see what has been improved and changed. I am secretly hoping for an easy difficulty selection.

If you have ever played Pocky & Rocky on the SNES, you know that in the options menu, you can choose between Easy, Normal, and Hard Difficulty. Even on easy, this was a challenging title! So when I started Pocky & Rocky Reshrined, there were multiple difficulties to select from: Extra Easy, Normal, and Hard. The catch is that you can’t select the easy option until you have 3000 coins to unlock it. So you will be required to play the more difficult option for hours to get the required amount to unlock it. It seems really mean to force gamers who need the easier difficulty to suffer through the harder mode first. The Game Stats in the Main Menu will tell you how many coins you have and the amount of time you have played. Besides the Story Mode, there is a Free Play mode available where you can play co-op with a friend, but like the easy mode, it is locked until you have 10,000 coins to unlock it. To make matters worse, the coin-farming system doesn’t work that well. Pocky & Rocky Reshrined only counts the coins that you have collected when you choose to not continue your game, making it extra challenging to acquire these coveted coins.

However, I will tell you a secret, there is a simple code/button combination that you can perform to unlock the Free Play mode. Go to the main menu and on the D-Pad hit: Left, Left, Left, Left, then Right, Right, Right, Right, followed by Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right. If you entered it correctly, the Free Mode should now be available to play! This mode will let two people play together using Pocky, Rocky, or any of the three other characters that you have encountered in the Story Mode thus far.

From the beginning of the Story Mode, you start playing as Pocky; and you don’t get to select between the two characters like you could in the original. Either way, both characters attack using the X button for a ranged attack, A for your melee attack that can deflect projectiles, B to slide/dodge, and Y to allow you to use a special magical bomb attack. This system hasn’t been updated since the Super Nintendo and, unfortunately, is still difficult because your character is not locked onto the enemy they are shooting at. Instead, you will constantly need to keep moving to keep up with your foe, making it tricky to avoid attacks coming towards you. It’s hard to fire, perform a slide to dodge, and move all at the same time; it is amazingly easy to get overwhelmed.

There are new cinematic movies between each of the stages that feel like they were pulled straight from an anime. There is no voice acting; there are just subtitles for all the characters talking. At least the game’s music is super catchy and well done! Plus, the visuals are still that pixelated look that we all love from the original but updated with great animations that add effects like leaves blowing around and fire burning that give the game that extra touch. I love how the bosses that I fought in the original game are back again, with a great updated look and some new attacks. Reshrined also introduces a few new characters that we never saw in the original title that you can play in Free Play mode once you have it unlocked. Otherwise, the gameplay is pretty much the same, except that I am playing on Normal instead of Easy as I have done in the past.

Pocky & Rocky Reshrined is definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of the series. Just be aware that until you get the Extra Easy difficulty unlocked, it may be a bit more challenging than you expect. I am looking forward to challenging the Extra Easy mode once I am able to select it so I can get back to coin farming to unlock the Free Play mode to try out the new characters and play with a friend. I hope a sequel is released that will continue the story of these two adorable characters and will be more accessible, difficulty-wise, to more players.