''Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure: Forbidden Planet'' is a video game programmed by Todd Replogle and published by

Apogee Software 3D Realms Entertainment ApS is a video game publisher based in Aalborg, Denmark. Scott Miller founded the company in his parents' home in Garland, Texas, in 1987 as Apogee Software Productions to release his game '' Kingdom of Kroz''. In the ...

. It is a two-dimensional side-scrolling

platform game A platform game (often simplified as platformer and sometimes called a jump 'n' run game) is a sub-genre of action video games in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are charac ...

. The game was released in mid March 1992 for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

compatible systems.Apogee Software December 1991 Catalog

Plot

The storyline is about a little alien boy named "Cosmo". Cosmo's parents are taking him to

Walt Disney World The Walt Disney World Resort, also called Walt Disney World or Disney World, is an entertainment resort complex in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida, United States, near the cities of Orlando and Kissimmee. Opened on October 1, 1971, ...

for his birthday. A

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...

hits their ship, forcing them to land on an unknown planet (called Zonk in WIP) and repair the ship. Cosmo goes exploring, and when he returns, his parents are missing. Seeing large footprints, Cosmo thinks that his parents have been captured and sets off to rescue them before they are eaten. There are three episodes in the game series in which Cosmo must navigate through 10 alien-themed levels for each episode. At the end of the first episode, Cosmo unexpectedly gets swallowed by a large creature. The story continues in the second episode, where Cosmo ends up in the creature's body and has to find a way out. At the end of the second episode, Cosmo finds the city where he thinks his parents might have been taken. In the final episode, Cosmo finds his parents (who were in no danger of being eaten the whole time) and has a great time at Disney World for his birthday.

Gameplay

The player controls Cosmo, and the objective is to reach the exit of each level. Cosmo can walk and jump, and can hang onto most walls with his suction-cup hands. Combining the hanging and jumps allows Cosmo to climb to higher places. There are some interactive objects, including pushable ceiling buttons, teleporters, and springs that make Cosmo jump higher. There are also hovercraft (floating pads that allow Cosmo to fly) and hint globes (which cause a message to be displayed if Cosmo runs into one; destroying one with a bomb earns 12,800 points). The player has access to bonus levels after each level if enough stars are collected. Cosmo has a health meter with three units. Each time an enemy or hazard damages Cosmo, he loses one unit of health. If he takes further damage after losing all health units, or falls off a chasm, the player restarts the level. Cosmo has unlimited lives. There are power-up modules that restore one health unit each. There are also two hidden cheeseburgers in each episode. Picking one up earns Cosmo an additional empty health unit, allowing Cosmo's health meter to reach a maximum of five units. Enemies hurt Cosmo by touching him or firing projectiles at him. Cosmo can kill many of them by jumping on them. Bombs can also be collected and used to destroy enemies. Cosmo can carry at most 9 bombs at a time. After Cosmo drops a bomb, it takes a few seconds to explode, and it can hurt Cosmo if he is too close. Bombs can also be used to destroy other objects and hazards. Shield cubes, once collected, provide a temporary invincibility shield for Cosmo.

Development

The game's working titles were "The Adventures of Zonk" and "Cosmo Kid from Space", but Stephen Hornback ultimately gave it the final name. ''Cosmo'' uses 16-color EGA graphics at 320×200

screen resolution The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution i ...

. The game uses three-layer, horizontal, parallax

scrolling In computer displays, filmmaking, television production, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display, vertically or horizontally. "Scrolling," as such, does not change the layout of the text ...

. A file contained with the shareware version of the game urged people not to download it if their computers could not handle it. The game was written with 24,500 lines of code. The game supports

AdLib Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval. The company's best known product, the ''Ad ...

music, but sound effects are generated by the

PC speaker A PC speaker is a loudspeaker built into some IBM PC compatible computers. The first IBM Personal Computer, model 5150, employed a standard 2.25 inch magnetic driven (dynamic) speaker. More recent computers use a tiny moving-iron or pie ...

Reception

'' Computer Gaming World'' stated that ''Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure'' was "especially playable and extremely addicting", and that fans of ''

Commander Keen ''Commander Keen'' is a series of side-scrolling platform video games developed primarily by id Software. The series consists of six main episodes, a "lost" episode, and a final game; all but the final game were originally released for MS-DOS in ...

'' and side-scrolling platform games "will find ''Cosmo'' much to their liking ... hours of pleasure without excessive destruction". The game was reviewed in 1993 in '' Dragon'' #197 by

Sandy Petersen Carl Sanford Joslyn "Sandy" Petersen (born September 16, 1955) is an American game designer. He worked at Chaosium, contributing to the development of ''RuneQuest'' and later creating the acclaimed and influential horror role-playing game ''Call ...

in the first "Eye of the Monitor" column. Petersen gave the game 2 out of 5 stars.

References

External links

*
Episode 1
of ''Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure'' can be played for free in the browser at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

{{Apogee Games 1992 video games Apogee games DOS games Games commercially released with DOSBox Linux games MacOS games Platform games Side-scrolling platform games Video games about extraterrestrial life Video games developed in the United States Video games scored by Bobby Prince Video games set on fictional planets Windows games