Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure

Did You Know?

• The game was reviewed in 1993 in Dragon #197 by Sandy Petersen in the first "Eye of the Monitor" column, receiving 2 out of 5 stars.
• Computer Gaming World stated that the game was "especially playable and extremely addicting".
• The planet is called Zonk in WIP.

Plot

A little alien boy named Cosmo is on his way to Walt Disney World for his birthday with his parents when a comet damages their ship, forcing them to land on an unknown planet for repairs. While Cosmo explores, his parents vanish. Spotting large footprints, he assumes they have been captured and sets off to rescue them before they get eaten. The game is split into three episodes, each with ten alien-themed levels. In the first episode's finale, Cosmo is swallowed by a huge creature. The second episode takes place inside that creature, where Cosmo must find a way out. At its end, he reaches a city where he suspects his parents were taken. In the final episode, Cosmo discovers his parents were never in danger at all, and he happily celebrates his birthday at Disney World.

Development

The game's working titles were "The Adventures of Zonk" and "Cosmo Kid from Space", with the final name given by Stephen Hornback. It was developed by two people over seven months. Cosmo uses 16-color EGA graphics at 320×200 screen resolution, with three-layer horizontal parallax scrolling. The shareware version included a file urging people not to download it if their computers could not handle it. The game was written with 24,500 lines of code and supports AdLib music, while sound effects come from the PC speaker.