Producer: Martech
Retail Price: £8.95

The Universe is nearing destruction - a minor calamity you may avert by reaching the Interstellar Lake of Protozoic Slime at its centre. But your CZ Neutrozapper has just failed its MOT!

En route screensful of creatures are out for your blood, and the number you must destroy on each to progress is shown screen left. The Neutrozapper has a defensive shield. and a photon canon with limited reserves (and unreliability after prolonged use), energy reserves for both, and weapon temperature, being indicated at the top.

As your Neutrozapper's systems are likely to go kaput, malfunctions are indicated in a panel on the screen's right-hand side. To continue, the craft's circuit board must be punched up and repairs made, but as there's no maintenance manual and you can't tell a hyper warp grommet thruster and a hephalump's rear end apart, you've only got your wits and skill to complete repairs. Burnt-out circuitry is replaced by spare parts with the correct colour coding, which can be chosen from the onscreen display and placed in position in the circuit. A countdown indicates how much time there is to make repairs. If it runs out you and your craft explode and the hopes of the Universe die with you.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q-T/A-G up/down, Y-P right, H-Enter left, bottom row to fire
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2, Cursor
Use of colour lots of colour clashes
Graphics: generally small and unimaginative with UDGs
Sound: simple 'blip' FX
Skill levels: one
Screens: repair screen and vector graphics levels

You won't have seen the film... There is no book... Now find out why! (It's 3D blasting fun!!!)' announces the inlay. I'm sure any publisher or film producer worth their salt would instantly recognise this for the piece of unpolished trite that it is, and promptly sling it through the nearest window. The uninteresting gameplay is further marred by slow, messy vector graphics, and on the later levels attribute problems make an appearance. The sub-game has the feel of an O level teaching aid - again colour is poor and UDG characters are used to represent the components. Definitely not a Cosmic release from Martech.
BEN

Battle Of The Planets all over again. Except this time it's much, much worse. Cosmic Shock Absorber's controls are very unresponsive, and I had great problems with the cursors - they just didn't seem to do anything. The graphics are tolerable if you don't want to see what's happening - The circuit mending is about as addictive as its party game basis.
PAUL

I needed an absorber to get over the shock of Cosmic. It's a pitifully basic shoot 'em up with a few add-ons. The keyboard response is appalling, making play near impossible.
GARETH

Martech
£8.95

Holy smoke! Great Krypton! Is it a bird? Is it a superhero? No! It's the Cosmic Shock Absorber! (Who he? Ed).

Yep folks, it's superhero time and as all heroes have already been licensed, here's a superhero we haven't yet heard about. You're the Cosmic Shock Absorber, a second rate superduper hero. In fact, so second rate that your megascoring space craft is only one step above a C5. Mind you, 'cos you're second rate, you've forgotten the instructions and you've no idea what to do when it all goes wrong.

The Universe is in dire peril (again), and as the resident superhero, you have to make a journey to the interstellar lake of protozoic slime to save it. This is where the game really starts. You sit in the cockpit and blast the bad guys until a circuit board goes phut! Then, before you can blast any more, you have to fix it. Sounds a dead cinch, dunnit? You are so right!

Bung the joystick on autofire and you're free to make a cup of tea, it's that easy. You see, you can't lose. The baddies are such good sports that they even die when they're not in your sights. Mind you, when a malfunction occurs (about once every eight seconds), you enter stage two.

Here you're given a picture of the manky circuit board and you've got five measly seconds to memorise the position, shape and colour of every component. After your five seconds are up, two components go snap, crackle and pop and you've got fifty seconds to put 'em light. Once you've got it right (if you get it right) you carry on with the game.

The graphics are well animated and based on vectors, though tending more towards Starglider than Elite. And with games like Star Raiders II for a couple of quid more, I think it's slightly overpriced. I reckon it's like the ship in the game - it attempts more than it's capable of, and falls apart.

Label: Martech
Price: £7.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

"You are Cosmic Shock Absorber, Saviour of the Universe." At least, that's who you are according to Martech.

Not another alien-zapping, running-out of time, against all odds mission? Well, almost. There is a slight twist to Cosmic Shock Absorber, but more of that in a sec.

Although you might not think so from the way the screen fails to move, you are moving through time and space. And as the aliens appear on your screen, hold them on your horizon and Fire continually. Not easy, since one laser beam seems to take about half a dozen blasts to get it on its way. It seemed to be more a matter of luck rather than judgement.

So there you are, in the trusty ol' space-craft, keeping the aliens on the horizon and massacring them as they come, progressing on to the next level to massacre some more, making your way towards the source of life itself - the interstellar Lake of Protozoic Slime (and why not?) when all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, your screen goes blank or your guns fail!

What is this? Well, it's to be expected really, since the trusty ol' CZ Neutrozapper (oh please) is not as trusty as you thought, and is in dire need of servicing. So off you go, into the Repair Mode, to carry out the necessary replacements before you get destroyed.

But (and here come the twist folks) guess who's forgotten to bring the instruction Manual with them, guess who can't remember how to operate the Phasering iron? Personally I'd have thought that when asked to pop out and save the Universe, if you know your ship is a bit on the dodgy side, the first thing that you're going to reach for is the Repair Instruction Manual.

Once in Repair Mode, you're given five seconds to study the complete circuit board before it blows up and holes appear in it. It's a kind of memory test - now you see it, now you don't. You have a further fifty seconds to fix it and you don't know how to get the right coloured symbol in the board and it's not too long before you've blown yourself to Kingdom Come.

The graphics generally are nothing to write home about. Level 1's aliens take the form of pretty uninspiring UDG blobs. Level 2 treats you to some almost convincing X-Wing fighters. But Level 3 had me slightly puzzled. I am told that the strange flapping, floating, flying things are, in fact, gliders, but they looked more like inter-galactic bats.

Cosmic Shock Absorber doesn't impress greatly. I'm afraid. It's all strictly Mickey Mouse graphics and dull game play.

The real test is working out how to fix the components board, and after that, actually managing it in the time allowed. But I couldn't get too excited about that.