Cosmic Spacehead

Cosmic Spacehead is a platform adventure released in 1993 for Amiga, MS-DOS, Game Gear, Sega Master System, and Genesis/Mega Drive. It's a remake of the NES title Linus Spacehead's Cosmic Crusade.

Cosmic Spacehead is a game full of contradictions. First, it sells itself as a family game, but it has names of porn industry figures, and the character searches for fake driver's licenses. It gives the impression that it is trying to be a comedy game, but it is not funny. But of all these contradictions, the one that bothers me the most is that a game as redundant and bad as this one has such good graphics and music. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Cosmic Spacehead, the game of contradictions.

The story is about Linus, a being who, by chance, discovers a legendary planet while traveling through space. What planet, you may ask? The planet Earth. Yes, we are space beings. Upon returning to his planet and reporting the discovery, no one believes his words, so the alien must get money and buy a camera to prove his finding. So, the alien wants to get the money by winning a car race, but he needs a fake driver's license. And with that said, a story with very little sense and development begins.

The gameplay tries to be special and innovative, but it does everything wrong to no one's surprise. It's a combination of an adventure and a platformer, somehow similar to Fantasy World Dizzy, still published by Codemasters, but the Dizzy series is much better.

Cosmic Spacehead is divided into two parts. First, an uninteresting graphic adventure that, when played on a joystick, feels weird and clunky. Then, the player can advance to a platforming section. Here, Linus, a being from another planet who can travel all over the universe, has the awesome power to... jump, jump. Furthermore, it's not that he can jump very high or crush his enemies, but he jumps, and very low. Moreover, in some versions, the player can't even change the direction of the jump. The gameplay is a big "no" for me.

And here comes what bothers me. When people talk about this game, they usually omit the audiovisual part, which in my confusion, is quite good. The atmosphere is like something out of an LSD dream combined with vaporwave nuances and a super colorful and intense palette, but with colors in perfect harmony. The platformer mode is enclosed in an oval-shaped camera, which gives the adventure quite an identity. The sound is not the best I've heard, but it fulfills its purpose very well. The music is calm and fits perfectly with the colors the player sees. Some sound effects, such as the alarms, are quite annoying, but nothing detracts from this well-done job.

In summary, Cosmic Spacehead is not my kind of game, even if I think the audiovisual part is excellent. On the other hand, the humor is subjective, and the adventure is not unplayable; if you have a few hours to spare and want to give it a try, be my guest. Although you may never play it again, you will probably have a good time.