After my month of NieR, I decided I wanted to play something short and sweet recommended by my good friend @Ptcremisi. I'm glad I did, because this was a fun time.

This game is pretty simple, it's basically wall tennis but it has this really awesome minimalistic Y2K aesthetic. It was originally an arcade game, so it can be beaten really quickly but there's multiple routes you can go through and so it has a decent amount of replayability to it. I decided to go through every level and yeah it was pretty rad. I will say though, it can get somewhat tedious going through the exact same 7 or so levels if you're trying to play them all.

The default time setting I found kinda brutal so I set it to max this time around, just so I could at least experience every level. If I replayed it again, I'd lower the time to add some stakes to my playthrough. I'd try to get a much higher score than I did this time around because clearly there's strats to do so. I got like 660,000 something points as my top score but you can do things like timing your charge attacks (which cant be spammed if you want a good score because they drastically reduce time) correctly so you beat stages fast and without losing your ball.

Anyways, Cosmic Smash is a real good time and my 2nd Dreamcast I've played... I'm definitely enjoying the game selection it has so far.

We Love Cosmic Smash

7.5/10

cosmic smash sets the tone.

sonic adventure was a system seller, a response to nintendo's own 3D platformer which was sm64. however, games like Rez, L.O.L., Roommania and most importantly Cosmic Smash were political statements. it was a response not to one game but to the industry as a whole. that was sega saying "we are not afraid to experiment, and look at what that sentiment birthed".

sega gave their geniuses the platform and opportunity to shine. without worrying about money and profit, they allowed for odd and questionable ideas to become fully fletched experiences and the result was one of the best libraries of any videogame console ever. more importantly to this review is that this push of unadulterared >art< resulted in a strong and firm sense of style.

when people think of Y2K aesthetics, they're thinking of the dreamcast. they're thinking of Space Channel 5. they're thinking of Tomoko Sasaki's Serani Poji. they're thinking of Rez. but moreover, they're thinking exactly of Cosmic Smash.

a game that would give the guy who created VIDEOBALL a field day, a simple and finite one-player digital sport that gives the player set challenges that they can choose to overcome with whatever moviments they like. there's a time limit, but you don't need to worry about that when you already know how to control your character. it's ok, you'll make it. the challenges get trickier, but you get stronger, you create muscle memory and your own strategies to each stage. eventually you get a game over -- or you win, who knows -- and then, you think, "i'm gonna do it again".

all of that, of course, coated under the most clear cut and transparent display of what people would later call "Y2K aesthetics". so much in fact that it seems weird to think of cosmic smash as a part of the era and not the trend setter itself. the music, the textures, the lines, the minimalism, even the game design itself, all reek of the turn of the century. it's a more contained and quiet version of what Rez was doing, so it ends up being less eye catching but still beautiful. its minimalism also contrasts Rez's intricate design and artistic execution, being the exact opposite extreme, so it's sort of the anti-rez.

cosmic smash is an era defining statement, a tone-setter that feels like the cherry on top of the dreamcast library. anyone could play this, and everyone should.

honestly a testament to the vastness and sheer quality of the dreamcast that a virtually-unadorned arcade port of this dropped in japan months after the announcement of the console's discontinuation. reports from this era reveal a sega so heavily creator-driven that it financially threatened the company. this may explain why the racing-focused sega rosso (who would go on to kick off the beloved initial d arcade stage series) plopped this into arcades at the turn of the millenium.

the game is coolly minimalist with its series of abstract corridors and translucent blocks, all of which melt to black at the end of each level within the veneer of an endless interstellar subway tunnel. the hud is equally minimal, containing only a timer in skewed perspective placed within the right side of the floor behind the player character. each hallway level features a series of blocks of varying sizes at the opposite end of the hall from the player that must be hit with a small, springy ball a la squash. comparisons to breakout come to mind here.

comparatively however, the input depth of cosmic smash is quite remarkable. much like the also-excellent virtua tennis, the dreamcast's stiff, snappy joystick lends itself well to keying in specific shot angles. this is assisted by the game's rich character contextual state space, which allows the player to stretch for balls well above their head with the same inputs that allow shots from close to the chest or at a horizontal length apart from the player (this results in a satisfying dive). this also solves the issue of the game's behind-the-back perspective, as the character will subtly alter its input time in order to hit the ball accurately even within a range of distances the ball might be at. this adds a level of intuition that satisfies the game's strict demands on accurate positioning in order to line up particular shots. after all, compared to breakout which only features a static bar to bounce the ball back on, using a racket requires much more nuanced swings to achieve the same range of angles.

level design is as solid as one would expect across the board. every aspect of the game's limited kit is tested, from lining up specific small shots to clearing as many bricks as possible in a short period of time to more puzzle-focused rooms with moving/reactive obstacles in your path. shot routing, aim, and timing are all tested in equal measure. sega rosso's racing background becomes more apparent with the timer system, which uses a familiar style of having a base time to work with (around 90 seconds on arcade settings) increased at "checkpoints" at the end of each level (anywhere from 10 to 50 extra seconds per level completed). since the game allows you to choose level routes within a map reminiscent of a sprawling metro, carefully watching your time spent per-level and evaluating how soon you need to tackle one of the ending rooms is key as a heuristic for increasing score.

there are other elements to scoring high as well. there is a trick shot that grants the ability to quickly chew through a series of blocks that otherwise would bounce the ball back with careful aim; the downside to this is that it sucks up time on the clock at an expedited rate. use of this technique is vital since it allows for marginally different angle setups (the manual claims 28 variations depending on the player's prior state) and for fast clears in levels with many stacked or multi-hit bricks. clearing the level with one of these trick shots yields further points, and clearing all stages with a trick finish provides a gigantic score bonus on top of that accrued from all prior levels. the same goes for using a variety of different styles of trick finish (using the contextual state space mentioned prior) and keeping up perfect rallies where the ball is never dropped. although reaching one of the easy endpoints does not take much practice, combining this with the extra scoring requirements and the ability to choose different stage routes yields much more complexity than may be clear.

some extra thoughts:
play this with a high timer to begin with via the options menu. this will allow you to adjust to the controls and level design before attempting to play with the regular timer as intended.
the game's biggest flaw in its console form is that there are absolutely no bells and whistles. even having played hotd2 recently that game featured a mission mode, an "original" mode (however slight it is in actuality), and a boss rush. this game could've at least used a level select, or perhaps an alternate starting set of levels after the initial seven or so have been played to tedium.
if you've gotten at least eight trick clears throughout a run, you can attempt to clear a stage with a "goalie" of sorts taking shots back at you. what surprises me is that the game tells you "Silence Your Cell Phones" before this level starts... isn't this game from 2000? I never thought that phrase went back so far.
there's a wealth of different costumes to obtain via cheat codes on the main menu. some of them are surprisingly cool...

as the manual boasts: "A return to the essence of gaming produces... the perfect blend of skill and strategy."

cosmic smash

your score is

cosmic bus. 747.

Times up. Have a blast.