Reviews

Demented conquest of the universe by toads, built around some shooting mini-games, and a cosmic grid. Well drawn and animated.

An Emperor's New Clothes game, the extraordinary plot and characters and the game board to cross serve to dress up action consisting of 3 unexceptional minigame shooters. These 3 minigames are further protected by the ungainly manoeuvres of the Wartoad. Wartoad is large and easy target with a bad gun and limited ammo operating in a confined space vs quite random but nimble opponents.
Denton Designs came up with some unusual games, and deserve some praise for the outlandish premise and scenario, and somehow having a board to cross within 90 minutes does give the game an addictive pull, but blink away the spell and you'll find that you have been lured into playing a fairly crappy game trio for too long.

1985 Ocean Software (UK)
by Simon Butler, John Gibson Roy Gibson & Steve Cain

This game got a lot of good critic attention back in the day, but I never could see what all the fuss was about!
Denton Designs is known for their use of mini games, Frankie Goes To Hollywood being the best example, but in Cosmic Wartoad the idea becomes both repetitive and boring, besides that none of the mini games are all that interesting, they are mainly shoot 'em ups. You start the game by moving your little tadpole like in a board game, the green toad being your current position and the yellow square the target (?). Other squares take you to these mini games where you try to rescue your toad Queen by wartoading.
The graphics and animations are generally big, colourful and very detailed and together with the windows presentation you get a make believe quest stitched together from parts to give it dept which in the end is just a boring shoot 'em up with pretty icons and windows.