Cosmic Avenger

The Good
Everything about Cosmic Avenger was cool; graphics, game play, music and sound effects. As a kid, it was just so amazing to fly over the futuristic looking city, while blowing up stuff. Of all the early video games that took place in a space ship, this has got to be one of the best.

The Bad
I cannot recall much of the actual storyline, which was a problem with many of these early video games. Granted, it did not really matter too much in terms of the game play, but one of the reasons for the video game crash was that many games did not have anything good to fall back on, when the storyline or characters were easily forgotten about. As a final complaint, I have to say that the early video game controllers were poorly designed and sometimes made precise movements difficult.

The Bottom Line
I cannot recall its storyline or characters, but Cosmic Avenger was incredibly fun to play. Flying around in a space ship and blowing stuff up was just plain fun and the city, with its bright colors and search lights, looked cool.

The Good
At first glance, Cosmic Avenger from Universal reminds me of Defender; it is a horizontally-scrolling shooter where you fly over a futuristic city shooting at both airborne enemies and ground-based installations, then making your way through an undersea passage dealing with mines and depth-charges. I don’t believe the game was that popular, otherwise we would have saw more ports besides one for ColecoVision. Even the Atari 2600 and Intellivision versions were canned.

The small radar at the top of the screen tracks any ships approaching you, and you have to keep an eye on it to make sure you don’t bump into one. Unlike Defender, there aren’t any humans to save. Four skill levels affect how many enemies there are and how aggressive. I was able to complete the game on the first three. The graphics are quite colorful, especially those in the first and second sections. The sound is excellent. I enjoyed listening to the music when you start a new game, as well as the launch of projectiles emerging from ground enemies.

The Bad
When you lose all your lives and the game ends, there is no way you can start a new one, and you are forced to do a reset.

The Bottom Line
This is an excellent shooter from Universal, where you negotiate a futuristic city and then some underwater caverns. A game that reminds me of Defender minus the humans, it has beautiful graphics and excellent sound. Anyone who enjoys Eugene Jarvis's game should feel right at home here.