Cosmic Conflict/ 2076 Star Command (Magnavox)
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Entry posted by DoctorSpuds
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The Odyssey 2 was unfortunately lacking in many key genres its competitors dominated in, in today’s case the ‘F.P.S.S’ or the First-Person Space Shooter. As far as I know the odyssey 2 only had one (please correct me if I’m wrong) and that game is Cosmic Conflict, or 2076 STAR COMMAND as the cartridge states boldly. Sadly this game emphasizes why the Odyssey 2 struggled, in my opinion, it’s not a bad game but I would hesitate to call it a ‘good’ game. Almost all of the Odyssey 2’s competitors had FAR more and some FAR superior games of the same genre, I know I’ve listed them off before but the 2600 had: Star Ship, Starmaster, Star Raiders, Star Voyager, Phaser Patrol, and Space Attack (that’s a lot of stars). All but two in my opinion are far better to play that Cosmic Conflict, even Intellivision wins out with Space Battle and Space Spartans.
The graphics look fine, very basic, but very clean. Your HUD is the bare basics with an enemy count on the left and an energy counter on the right, and occasionally “ALERT” will flash in the center top indicate an incoming enemy, and you have an overly large crosshair that isn’t really necessary to aim. There are three different types of enemy ship to blast; there is a classic rocket ship, a ship that looks rather naughty, and a TIE fighter from Star Wars, basic stuff. The game itself runs quite smoothly the movement of enemy ships; whether scrolling across the screen or scaling in from a distance do so with minimal choppiness. Smooth as well is the movement of the –rather standard looking- starfield, as well as the scaling of your shots as they travel towards your enemies. The explosion also looks nice, now that I think about it; I’m out of graphics to talk about (except one) so let’s move briskly along to the sounds.
They’re alright I guess… No they’re pretty crappy. There are three sounds, the sound of the ALARM which is just a beeping noise, the sound of your ship firing which is a high pitched *ping* sound, and the explosion, you or them it doesn’t matter it’s the same either way. It could be worse though, the programmers could have added obnoxious rocket sound effects that play constantly in the background so I won’t complain too much. A distinct lack of sound effects is something that I take away from most Odyssey 2 games, from my experience the Odyssey 2 is at least par with the 2600 when it comes to sound capabilities and the 2600 was able to do some pretty neat stuff. I running out of meaningful things to say at this point so let us move on to the gameplay.
Simple, simple, simple, is the word I’d use to describe this game, and I have. You move your crosshair around the screen and shoot enemies that either scroll past you or scale in from the background; enemies like to move at angles to make blasting them a bit more difficult but all it means is that you’ll miss a couple shots. Unlike many games from the era this game has an ending, when you destroy 15 enemies you get a MESSAGE FROM STAR COMMAND, that says something along the lines of “you did it have a cookie” that’s it… reset the game and start again. Oh I forgot to mention, none of the enemies fire back at you, the only time you might get hit is when one of those TIE fighters gets too close and the screen flashes red and when you blast all five of them the game basically turns into a shooting gallery of unarmed, unprotected spacecraft, as a result the game is quite easy.
This game has no other difficulty settings, it’s just the same thing over and over again with little to no variation. It’s good for a couple rounds every now and again but there is almost no replay value to this game at all. So I must unfortunately relegate this game to the Collector’s Zone, but thankfully this game is fairly cheap from the right outlets, beware Ebay, people like to over-charge for this game in particular.
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