Cosmic Storm (Commodore 64)

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Cosmic Storm was made in 1990 by Software Creations for the Commodore 64. It was released by Virgin Mastertronic bundled together with the Magnum Light Phaser and other games.

The game's story takes place in space. The player was forced to escape from a freighter because of a reactor meltdown. Sadly the escape pod flies right into a hostile swarm of mutant aliens.

The aim of the game is to survive waves of enemies. A damage meter shows the health state of the player. It is replenished after every level. The player uses a semi automatic weapon with unlimited capacity but limited supply of ammunition. Ammunition can be restocked during the level by shooting letters. Furthermore Ammunition is replenished at the beginning of every level. Between ordinary levels a bonus game takes place. There the player has to memorize the positions and shapes of objects and shoot them pairwise after they turned invisible.

If the player manages to achieve a precision of 100 % cheerful music is played and a point bonus is gained. Sadly I can't tell whether the game has an ending, because it keeps crashing at the higher levels. The game reminds me strongly of Orbital Destroyer for Atari ST and Amiga. A reason for this, apart from the similar game play and art style could be that both games were bundled with virtually the same gun. While Orbital Destroyer might be a tad bit underwhelming for the 16 bit generation, Cosmic Storm is a decent 8 bit generation game.

Personally I like the game. I think the music is amongst the best I have heard from the Commodore 64 so far. The graphics are simple but show well made animations. Personally I strongly appreciate the huge variety in enemy types.