Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure

aka: Cosmo: Kid From Space, The Adventures of Zonk
Moby ID: 910
DOS Specs
Buy on Windows
$4.99 new on Steam

Description official descriptions

On a trip with his parents to every kid's favorite place in the universe (Disney World, of course), Cosmo becomes stranded on a planet, his parents vanished. You direct him as he runs and jumps through different lands, such as alien tropics, haunted forest, ice cave, and future world, to find his parents. Along the way he encounters the various platform baddies that he must either jump to death in the classic style or destroy with bombs. Bombs are also useful for finding secrets. Cosmo is also armed with suction cup arms which he can use to climb up tall walls.

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Credits (DOS version)

5 People

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 77% (based on 4 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 33 ratings with 7 reviews)

Join Cosmo as he searches the "Forbidden Planet" for his parents

The Good
I consider Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure one of the best games Apogee has done since Duke Nukem. Cosmo is a standard platformer, much like Duke 1 & 2. The graphics are cartoonish, and when I first played this game, I thought that Cosmo had 256-color VGA graphics. Actually, the graphics are in EGA. As well as this, the game features Adlib support used for the music, which by the way, is quite sensational. However, like Apogee's early platform games, the sound effects still come out through the PC Speaker.

On his birthday, Cosmo's parents promise Cosmo that they would take him to Disney World by ship. But during their flight, a huge comet makes the ship crash land on the "Forbidden Planet". There, his parents attempt to fix the ship, and while they're at it, Cosmo decides to explore the planet himself, and comes back later, only to find both his parents missing. Will Cosmo find his parents so that he can get to Disney World?

Find out by helping Cosmo get through the planet's exotic locations such as alien tropics, haunted forests, ice caves, and even the insides of a giant bird. Each location has Cosmo jumping from tree to tree and on top of enemies, collecting fruit and gems along the way to score points. Some of these items are hidden either in drums or crates, and Cosmo can only collect them, if he jumps on drums or crates.

Cosmo starts off with three health units, but sometimes throughout the game, the units will be upgraded to five. If the planet's living things touch Cosmo, or shoot at him, or if he touches a set of spikes, fire, or 10-ton weights, he will lose a health unit. If all health units are lost as a result of touching a living thing, Cosmo will turn into an angel and fly up to heaven. However, instant death occurs if Cosmo falls down to nowhere. Then he will have to restart the section from the beginning. Fortunately, Cosmo will likely find power-up modules that increases his health units by one.

Just because Cosmo is friendly doesn't mean that he wouldn't have any weapons that will also help him during his quest. Chances are that Cosmo will find bombs, and use them to kill enemies, and blow up walls. He can enter bonus levels if he collects enough stars that are scattered throughout the level.

Cosmo can get to hard-to-reach places by using his suction hands to scale walls, or if there's one available, use a spring to catapult him into the air. Cosmo also has the opportunity to look up and down to see platforms that are off screen, but if he gets near the top of the screen,and Cosmo looks up, chances are that several items may fall down including stars and power-up modules. Cosmo may come across one or more hint globes in his journey, which gives him hints on completing a section.

There are three episodes to Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, and each one consists of about ten levels. The high scores in all three episodes suggest that Apogee were fans of "The Simpsons". In Episodes 2 and 3, Duke Nukem makes a cameo appearance.

The Bad
Episode one of Cosmo is pretty easy to complete, the rest of the episodes get difficult after every level completed, particularly Episode 2 Level 10.

There is a cheat code that gives you maximum health and nine bombs. This code is useless as it only works once per game. Even it doesn't work when you save and restore games.



The Bottom Line
This is the best game, slightly better than Duke Nukem. If you see it in the bargain bins or at swap meets, I suggest that you buy it then have a go at completing it. ****

DOS · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2002

All fun and great tunes make Cosmo a good game.

The Good
This game was a favorite of mine growing up. I loved it so much, I always wanted to order the non-Shareware sequels. This is among the best DOS games I've ever played. It has a lot of fun play. Basically, an alien boy is on a mission to save his folks on the "Forbidden Planet." To get to the end, he has to kill all sorts of evil creatures by jumping on them. It's tricky at times, but not frustrating. The graphics are cheery and splendid, and the music is incredibly catchy. I loved this game.

The Bad
There were very few things wrong with Cosmo. First, it's a little monotonous. There are like ten levels, and you really only face like five different creatures over and over again. You can also only kill them by jumping on them or bombs. It would have been cool if he found a ray gun and got to shoot sometimes, or something. But, all in all, the pros outweigh the cons.

The Bottom Line
A fun, cheery nostalgia trip that brings you back to a time when video games had silly synth music and graphics were not 3D but still looked good.

DOS · by Stephen Kozak (2) · 2001

The cutest, funniest and weirdest game on planet earth.

The Good
What can I say? The sound is impossible for 1992, the EGA graphics are amazing (probably because not many EGA games came out after 1992), the gameplay couldn't be better, there are extremely few controls, some even hardly used.



The Bad
Like most people the small variety of monsters, no, the extremely small variety of monsters. Every level you're like um... are there any more opponents to jump on! There's that red monster (the most common), the blue ball with the parachute, and the rest hardly appear.

The Bottom Line
This cute action-adventure is well-worth playing, I shouldn't be surprised because the creator of this game did make the award-winning Duke Nukem that held onto it's "best shareware" award for 2 straight years, and the wonderful Duke Nukem 2 that also won 3 or 4 awards (well it wasn't as good as the original). I am a huge Apogee fan, and this game just made me a bigger fan, a well deserved 5/5 for this game.

DOS · by Jim Fun (207) · 2001

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

References

  • Several references to Duke Nukem are made in this game.
  • The high score list is stocked by default with names of Simpsons characters.

Shareware

Like most Apogee platformers Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure is actually a trilogy. The first part of the trilogy is shareware, the two other parts are not. The names of the three episodes are:1. Forbidden Planet: Adventure 1 of 3 2. Forbidden Planet: Adventure 2 of 3 3. Forbidden Planet: Adventure 3 of 3

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz and Roedie

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Derrick 'Knight' Steele.

Macintosh, Windows, Linux added by lights out party.

Additional contributors: Kate Jones, Xantheous, Adam Baratz, Jeanne, Frenkel, Patrick Bregger.

Game added February 26, 2000. Last modified January 25, 2024.