Rockett's New School

The Good
First off, The game plays fine on my PowerBook G4 (15-inch Aluminum, Early 2005) running Mac OS X Tiger with Classic Environment installed. Unlike the recent visual novels based on Japanese anime series from the 2010s, this one features American-style animation and gameplay with a slideshow-like format and some simple choices of Rockett's emotions.

While visual novels from the 2010s feature choices with some detailed text, Rockett's New School kept it simple by displaying pictures of Rockett Movado expressing her emotions, no matter if she's happy, sad, or angry, and the decision can be made by the player, based on their preferences.

Visual novels from the 2010s usually contain digitally-drawn anime characters that are still images and are pasted onto a background, but with Rockett's New School, it features the backgrounds, characters, and props that are not pasted in, but just more like an original masterpiece of watercolour artwork! The artists were so creative when it comes to the Purple Moon games!

There's a couple of things that you can't find in a lot of visual novels from the 2010s: Peeking in Rockett's backpack and inside the kids' lockers are exclusive features of the Rockett's Adventure Series of visual novels for girls from the 90s. Purple Moon also expanded that feature starting with Rockett's Tricky Decision as the Hidden Hallway! Neat!

Both the acting and the sound quality are pretty impressive I must say, especially with the voice of Lindsey Andersen as Rockett Movado before being replaced by Lauren Staffa after the Rockett's Tricky Decision entry in the series.

The Bad
The story is a little short. When the player finishes making a decision in the washroom scene, that's it, there are no more choices to be made! Rockett's New School is more like a half-hour television show episode to me!

The Bottom Line
Rockett's New School is the quintessential of all Purple Moon games from the 90s! It works fine on Classic Environment on PowerPC-based computers with Mac OS X versions up to Tiger! Although the story plays like a half-hour television show episode, it features impressive voice acting and sound quality, amazing and colourful traditionally-painted animation and graphics, and easier gameplay than the visual novels from the 2010s that are inspired by Japanese anime shows.

I highly recommend this game to girls ages 8 to 14 who want to get a kick out of visual novels from the 90s as a starting point. I also recommend grabbing Rockett's Tricky Decision to complete your Rockett's Adventure collection! Since Purple Moon closed down in 1999, it's still a great piece of history in that genre, and I chose that because it fits perfectly for my review!