1982 · Cinematronics · Arcade · Shooter

Cosmic Chasm

With the beginning of a new game, a map screen is shown with the player's position, as they control a ship set in a series of interconnected caverns. They must first plan out the best route in order to get to the central area in each Mission.

Released: 1982
Platforms: Vectrex
Genres: Arcade Shooter
Developers: Cinematronics
Publishers: Cinematronics
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Action Science fiction
Country: United States
Languages: English

About

Cosmic Chasm is a 1983 vector game originally created by GCE for the Vectrex home game system. It became the first game developed for a home system to be turned into an arcade game after Cinematronics, which was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy at the time, released it as their last color vector game.

Keywords

action-adventure
screen overlay

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The player controls a spaceship armed with lasers and shields on a mission to destroy the Cosmic Chasm space station from the inside out. Each room of the space station has protector ships that attack the player directly and a center that slowly expands, forcing the player not to linger in the room for too long after defeating the protector ships. The player must shoot away forcefields that protect the exits in order to traverse the corridors that lead to other rooms. Each exit corresponds to a different direction on the map, and the player must choose the shortest route.

The player must fight their way to the station's reactor room, destroy it and escape the station before it explodes. Touching the walls of the rooms is just as fatal as touching a protector ship or the expanding center. The screen has a map portion on top so that the player can keep track of which room of the station they are in and plan their escape. The home game is basically the same in terms of gameplay, but has some noticeable differences from the arcade version.