Re(?)Considered: Cosmic Spacehead
Finding the candyfloss amidst the, uh, candydross.
With the Re(?)Considered column, Stuart Gipp — friend to unpopular games that are in all honesty a bit crap — looks back at the games no one else cares about and tries to find the joy in much-hated (or just plain ignored) critical duds. You can enjoy his rehabilitative efforts every other Tuesday.
The recent release of God of War, the less recent release of DOOM, and most importantly the Netflix reboot of Reboot (heaven forfend) has cemented one thing very firmly in my mind: Reboots are big news. In a fit of topicality, I have decided to cop a squint at an early ’90s reboot, released in 1993 for the Sega Mega Dr—sorry. Sega Genesis.
In 1992, a game was released for Codemasters' revolutionary and litigation-tastic Aladdin Deck Enhancer peripheral for the NES. This device allowed Codemasters to produce NES cartridges on the cheap, as well as offer enhanced graphics and sound. All of this potential was absolutely wasted on Linus Spacehead's Cosmic Crusade (an extremely ugly follow-up to Linus Spacehead, which cropped up on 1993's multi-cart Quattro Adventure). Yes, the sequel was released first, then rebooted the following year. This is some Wonder Boy/Monster World-caliber b.s.
The retitled, rebooted Cosmic Spacehead is, for the most part, a point-and-click adventure. Yes, on console. The absolute madmen. It has an interface fairly similar to the traditional LucasArts SCUMM system, but it's streamlined, with options to Look, Pick Up, Talk, Give, Use and Mansplain. (I made one of those up.)
The puzzles on offer are best described as gently inadequate. There's a moment early on where your path is blocked by a giant one-eyed monster (settle down) who can only be bypassed by giving him a helium balloon. This, of course, causes him to float away. This doesn't make much sense, but anyone could figure it out, simply because it's rare that you have many more items in your inventory than you actually need. It's firmly in "baby's first point-and-click" territory, alongside Putt-Putt Goes to the Soup Kitchen, et al.
Thankfully, to temper all this excellent adventuring there is some quite poor platforming action to be had. To navigate the excellently-named Planet Linoleum, Linus must traverse alien landscapes, avoiding hostiles in a very floaty ZX Spectrum manner. The player has no form of offense (besides switching the game off) and so must master Cosmic's athleticism, grabbing Cosmic Candy along the way. Consuming 10 of these yields an extra life, the opposite outcome of eating 10 candies in reality. There are moments of creativity, with pitch-black stage utilising lightning strikes to illuminate twisted branches to clamber upon. However, these inspired moments come few and far between.
Visually, it’s a treat, with gorgeous stylised graphics that call to mind Chuck Jones’ landscapes from the original Duck Dodgers cartoons, as well as a general pop-art space adventure feel that holds up well. The music is catchy, with some nicely soulful tunes crooning out of the Mega Drive's wrongly-maligned synthesiser.
It should be obvious from this overview that Cosmic Spacehead is the perfect video game. It even has a great gag where you go to a staffed information booth, select "Pick Up" then click the "Attendant" only to be told "This is a family game!" Reader, I nearly wept.
