Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure

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. ****