Cosmic Alien

Cosmic Alien is a vertical shooter arcade game developed by Universal. This game title was published in 1979 and was cloned from a well-known space arcade game called Galaxian, also released in 1979. Galaxian arcade game was developed based on the original idea of the first action game called Space invaders, however, a lot of features in Galaxian are far more advanced and challenging.

Universal entertainment corporations is a video game company formally known as Universal limited. It was established in 1969 and it majorly sold video games and slot machines to operators. In 2005, a company named Aruze, which is owned by a Japanese pachinko manufacturer acquired Universal, and it became Universal Entertainment Corporations. The company owns licenses to produce and distribute arcade video games and casino slots in Mississippi, Nevada, and New Jersey. Famous game releases from this company include Space Panic, Lady Bug, Do Run Run, and Mr Do’s Castle.

In Cosmic Alien, you are engaged in a battle where you are required to protect a fictitious planet from aliens in four formations, ready to invade and destroy everything that gets in their way. The alien formation consists of soldiers, commanders, guards, and chiefs and all of them come in different numbers. The soldier aliens take the first rows in the formation, followed by them are the commanders, then the guards, and chiefs. The chief aliens are always accompanied by the guards when assaulting your ship. All aliens have their own mode of assault and points scored when they are taken down also varies. They fire a wide range of ammunition, which includes bombs and missiles. You do not have any form of a shield in this game, and you are required to change position constantly to avoid enemy fire. On the first few screens, the aliens take their normal forms but as the game progresses, they start to have wings which enable them to attack faster. The more difficult screens come with more fierce aliens to increase the challenge.

The first group to attack your ship at the start of the game are the soldier aliens, they advance towards the bottom of the screen where the ship is stationed and try to attack it. The ship is only equipped with 3 guns and it can be lost when it sustains a hit from the alien. When all the 3 guns are lost, the game ends and your score is displayed. The goal of each level in this game is to clear out the formation of aliens, without losing all the available guns or being eaten by the flying monsters. You can earn an extra ship when a total of 5000 points is scored. When you have successfully cleared out the aliens on the screen without losing your guns, you advance to the next screen, which is slightly more difficult than the previous one.

Cosmic Alien can be played by two players alternatively, each player’s score will be recorded after each round is completed and the winning player is determined by who sailed through the most number of screens. On the game screen, the screen number, score, number of guns left, and the recent high score are displayed.

The game characters are in 8 palette colours with each character constantly changing colours, however, the colour of your ship remains the same. The background of this game is simulated to give an illusion of objects moving in space with tiny coloured particles constantly falling from the screen. All these features make the game’s graphic excellent for a 70’s arcade game. Sound effects are also good, the sound is made by flying creatures and the shots fired by all characters in the game without any background tune. In all Cosmic Alien is a fun and challenging shooter arcade to play.