Reviews

1984 Micromania (UK)
by Dominic Wood and JPW

Kosmic Kanga is a side scrolling game with a fun look, involving bouncing around while avoiding the usual bunch of nasties.
There's not much violence in here, thankfully, in fact if you discount the bombs and your eventual disastrous playing, this may be considered a peaceful game.
Well, not exactly. You see, KK can be a very nerve wrecking game, even after you had enough practice with jumping. I almost needed to take a course on how to land on the clouds!!
If only we could move while on the air, well, that would help a lot.
But hey, that's part of the challenge of the game...
On a whole it is an average game, but stil very cute and enjoyable.

3,5 points

Retro-charming piece of early software full of spark and color .

The bouncing kangaroo is quite friendly and amusing .

This game reminds me of the early days of my youth so much because I really wanted to play this back then and I never could , so for this only Kosmic Kanga is quite especial for me .

In spite of that , I must say that Kosmic Kanga is almost uncontrollable , really , just because the key disposition is not clear and the movements are a bit wild , so you lose control of the situation quite easily .

Nice and childish melody as a main tune ... this may prove Kosmic Kanga was aimed at kids mainly .


2,5 out of 5 .

an original shoot'em up for sure, because of your jumping movement, that makes it weird to strike the enemies. you can't place/fly yourself at their height, and so you must target them while going up and down. although i don't think this is particularly good for playability. it's surely different. even though it seems to play on the space zoo craze of the jeff minter's imagery [was it already there?]. anyway you can control the height and lenght of your leaps, but once you send those inputs, you land where you land. [on some enemy or bomb probably]. there are cloudy platforms to help you, objects to pick up [only to increase your score, i think] while you [automatically] scroll to the right. i don't know if there are final baddies or variations, because i didn't advance much.
anyway it's an ok game.
programmed by dominic wood [1942, tutankhamun]

I'm not quite sure how this game got a Crash Smash. My first suggestion might be to point at the four months of advertising revenue that Micromania paid for. Similarly with Big K, another four months of advertising and 100% scores across the board. But hey, that'd just be cynical, right?

Anyway, the game's premise is on the whole OK - you control a kangaroo leaping from platform to platform across a scrolling landscape, picking up objects that increase your score and avoiding moving enemies. Graphics are fairly colourful and it's got the look of a well-presented early 80s simple but playable arcade game.

The issue I have is that the game's challenge, and its unique selling point (USP) is based around the fact that your marsupial is horribly uncontrollable. The programmer is obviously competent - I'm sure they could have changed the controls so that you could change either your lateral movement or the height of the jump while you're in the air. Or at very (very) least, have some sort of indicator to see how high your next bounce is going to be.

But hey, perhaps they did that and thought the game was too easy. As a result, you end up watching on as your erratic Kanga slowly and painfully leaps towards an enemy that has just emerged on the screen, knowing that because you're in the air and mid-jump you have no chance to avoid it.

How the hell this got a Crash Smash I'll never know.

Yeah I'm with Morkin, something dodgy went on to inflate the review scores. I mean it's not a terrible game but it's definitely far from "Crash Smash" material. It's just a bland, boring game and not a lot of fun, you certainly got little in return for your £5.95.

This is truly a love-hate game. I'm firmly in the "love" camp and I can totally see why it got a Crash Smash. To me, it's a classic and one of my favourite Speccy games ever.

The concept is novel, and a bit bizarre in a way only Spectrum games can be; and the graphics are sweet with a nice variety in the themes between levels. The controversy comes down to the controls I think. It's clear some people find Kanga quite uncontrollable and therefore think it's a game of luck.

That is absolutely not true - it's just a matter of practice. The controls are immensely precise and it's very rare that I lose a life through something that wasn't completely my fault. It's all about mastering your jumps, building up to bigger jumps and cutting jumps short to land in precisely the right place. As you can't control Kanga mid-jump there's a little bit of planning ahead which, for me is a little bit of strategy that adds to the playability.

Once you've mastered it, it's a little like Chuckie Egg in that the game will tempt you into taking risks - like trying to collect every time and shoot every place - and then it'll punish you if you get too cocky.

The second type of level in the game is a sort of '80s precursor of Doodle Jump, where you have to bounce in platforms to get to the top of the screen avoiding the ball that continually bounces around. It's another nice concept but I have to admit, it's pretty hard. You can shoot the ball to reset its position, but I tend only to do that in an emergency. It'll take a lot longer to master these sections but it can be done.

I loved this game as a kid and whereas other games have aged badly, this has retained all its charm and playability. If you loved it then, you'll probably love it now. If you hated it back then, well you get the idea...