"The Space Adventure", also known as "The Space Adventure - Cobra: The Legendary Bandit", is a somewhat mediocre adventure game (labeled as a "visual comic" here) and one of the last games released for the Sega CD and Mega CD, released by Hudson Soft in 1995 (and one of the only Cobra games ever released in English). The game is also quite uncommon, being one of the rarest commercial releases for the system and typically goes for roughly $100 complete in good condition. Interestingly, this game is actually a port of a sequel to a game originally released four years prior in 1991 for the PC-Engine CD (titled Cobra II: Densetsu no Otoko), which partially explains the game's simple visuals and bland interface , as most PC-Engine titles didn't really take advantage of the CD add-on until 1992 and 1993, and the Sega CD game has minor modifications from the PCE-CD game (some different music, more frames of animation, minor scene differences). To its credit, the game does support many simple and subtle animations, making it "more animated" than many other Japanese-style adventure games of the time that had a heavy emphasis on using primarily stills. Before I talk about the specifics of the game, allow me to enlighten some with a little history about what Cobra is. Cobra is one of the most popular and masterful works of the famed mangaka, Buichi Terasawa, who once studied under the critically acclaimed Osamu Tezuka. First serialized from 1977-1984 in Japan's "Weekly Shounen Jump", the story takes place in "the far future" and deals with an ordinary office worker named Johnson, who, by request of his robotic servant named "Ben", takes a visit to the "Trip Movie Corporation" which enables its customers to experience "lucid dreams that are lifelike and surreal". Johnson wants to dream about being the king of a harem, surrounded by beautiful women, and commanding a battlestar. Instead, he dreams that he becomes "Cobra", an adventurous, semi-noble space pirate who goes against his own Pirate Guild for becoming scum of the universe. While successfully overthrowing the Guild, he fails to defeat their leader, who later posts his picture throughout the universe, making him a wanted man. Cobra takes drastic steps to evade them by altering his face, surgically attaching a one-of-a-kind Psychic Gun (Psycho-Gun) hidden in his arm, and erasing his memories to live a normal life. When Johnson awakes, he explains what happens to the attendant, who can't explain why he saw what he saw. After a series of events, Johnson realizes that the last few years of his life were a lie and regains his memories as "Cobra". "Ben" reveals "himself" as Cobra's old partner, "Armaroid Lady", and convinces Cobra to give up his boring life and resume amazing adventures. "The Space Adventure" revolves around one of Cobra's earlier adventures in the series. Summarized on Wikipedia, "...Cobra, who after walking into a bar, learns that a bounty has been placed on his head by the Galaxy Patrol and that he is being hunted by a female bounty hunter named Jane Royal. After it is discovered that Cobra's archenemy Crystal Boy is after a treasure hidden by Jane's father, the location of which he encoded in the form of tattoos on his triplet daughters, Cobra and Jane agree to join forces to locate her sisters and defeat Crystal Boy." The game features commands typical to games in this genre (Talk, Think, Use, etc.) and is of a decent length, but progressing through the game is often not clear or obvious through the game's narrative and it isn't always obvious who's talking at certain points because the character's names aren't identified before the beginning of statements, so you have to pay extra attention to the context of statements and take a character's personality into account. The game has some spoken dialogue and personality for a game of this type, but is a little boring and rough around the edges when compared to some other adventure titles on the system ("Rise of the Dragon", "Snatcher", "Psychic Detective Series", etc.). Still, Cobra is so awesome that you may want to try it anyway. This is a video showing the first few scenes. Enjoy.
