Commodore User


Cosmic Bounce
By Cable
Commodore 64

 
Published in Commodore User #11

Cosmic Bounce

Both the title and cassette illustration strongly imply a space game, but without the aid of a vivid imagination to most it would appear as a 'bouncing ball' derivative - a sophisticated super-version of the familiar C64 handbook example program.

The notion is good: a power source is shuttling (bouncing) back and forth between two bases and, yet again, aliens are out to claim it for their own. Defend it you must! Taking note of the two auxiliary rebound posts near the centre stage and the far corner springboards, you unleash a plasma bolt. Now, this projectile destroys everything in its wake (except of course the pins): so once an invader has been crushed the best policy is to recapture it before it zings all over the place and obliterates your 13amps socket. Different alien types engage your attention and the deflection become mobile. Just to make things more interesting, the latter are show-stoppingly lethal to touch - though you may use some of your nine lives in ramming the intruders.

Enjoyable to play; and you'll agree it is different. But how much better it could have been, say with really outrageous multi-colour nasties and a plausible space-ship. The only sonics I can recall are rebounds and pulses, which is fair enough. Not so acceptable however is the erratic collision detection: several times I was penalised just for catching the plasma ball. There's a bug in there somewhere.