Microcosm

Woz75 2017-01-09
(6/10)
Far too hard, I end up just blasting at anything that moves. That said, good graphics and great video scenes. Very good for it's day, game play could have just been a bit more 'user-friendly'.
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tripper 2014-11-07
(7/10)
Very uninspiring and random shooting. Otherwise has a special atmosphere. Music and animations are super.
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Tpod 2011-08-03
(10/10)
The only game for the CD32 that really made excellent use of its abilities. Its a pretty good game with amazing graphics for an Amiga in 1994.
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ReTroViRuS 2011-07-24
(4/10)
The marketing campaing claimed Rick Wakeman had composed the soundtrack. As far as I know, he only contributed some tracks to a soundtrack CD that shipped with some versions of Microcosm. The ingame music was composed by Kevin Collier. Another example of how deceptive the marketing for this product was.
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radioman970 2010-11-10
(7/10)
I forced myself to like this since it was the most expensive game I'd bought up to that time. After all this time I can say I was always impressed with the video portions but the actual gameplay, okay at first, and increasingly disappointing later on. A really good idea that should have been done way better to help the platform survive. Still...I'm happy to say I still have this game, and my CD32, laying around somewhere...

There's a way to get an alternate cut of the opening film. I forgot what it is... Hopefully it's already posted. Someday when I find it again I'll post it. I probably found it in one of the euromags.

Oh...looking at some of the other comments... Novastorm! Now there is the game this should have been. Was happy to get that one free with a $10 set of empty jewel cases. Hee!

7/10 overall. (haven't played it in 10+ years)
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Delta 2008-02-08
(8/10)
Microcosm looks very great! Very cool cutscenes and atmospheric music. But its very, very hard! Give it a chance!
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Yure 2007-05-07
Wow. Too difficult to play, boring, but hey, I couldn't stop playing it, I had to see the wonderful gfx and the cutscenes. Like when you crossed a vein junction and so on. Wow.
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elend 2007-04-05
(5/10)
Should have been THE CD32 game and ended up being one of the worst CD32 games. A real pity, since the intro was really cool. A bit too small, tho.
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amigabill 2007-04-02
How does this thing load on WinUAE? Any ideas people?
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auryn 2006-12-15
(9/10)
Basically it indeed is space harrier with knobs on, but I do believe this game is being judged a little harshly. I enjoyed it a lot as a gaming experience. Stunning presentation, basic but functional gameplay. The lamest thing was the crappy manual that (if I remember correctly) didn't mention some of the controls (like the ability to teleport on the map screen). I don't think the in game music was by rick wakeman though. The music he made was on the CD (play it in a normal CD player and you'll hear it, it's like an hour-long atmospheric ambient piece) but it's nothing like the pumping techno/trance music heard ingame, which was also great.
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Chain 2006-11-05
(1/10)
Pure crap! Boooring
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superturbo 2006-10-26
(8/10)
@ chromax: Yes, I´ve seen the ending without cheating. The end scenes looks better in colour than in black & white imo

It´s actually not all about shooting down viruses, you have to take the right way through the veins to avoid to get lost in there I think it's a pretty decent shoot em up, like it better than the over-hyped Project X for example, which was just too damn difficult to be fun... But they´re quite different games anyway.
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chromax 2006-10-01
(8/10)
The only game that used the multimedia potentials of the cd32. But the gameplay was not existing.
The fly around in front of a movie and the shooting on never ending viruses is really boring. Has anybody seen the ending without cheat?
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Guybrush Threepwood 2006-01-15
(7/10)
This game was good at the time, hard but still got me to play it. The concept is that of the previous "Fantastic Voyage" on the Amiga before this came out. Its similiar to the film Inner Space. Anyway back onto the game, graphically it is excellent & pushed the CD32 to its limits & FMV intro was really good start to the game. Soundwise well it was OK but the music was tops! All by the marvellous Rick Wakeman, how they managed to get him to do the music was beyond me but hey great stuff from Psygnosis. Playability however was limited & fairly shortl lived
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Scarface 2005-12-15
This was really a groundbreaking game at the time, took the CD32 to its full potential. However I don't think it deserves as much praise as it seems to get. The gamplay was fairly standed and boring after while (shoot bad things quick) and it got failry boring. That leads me onto my second point, it was way to hard, and the boring standed gameplay just stopped you from wanting you to go back and trying to complete it. Saying that though the graphics really were exceptional and for that I think it deserves a place in the records book.
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Steveriley 2005-12-11
(5/10)
I recently bought a CD32 of ebay. One of the games I got with it was this. The FMV footage for this game is great. Unfortunately the actual gameplay is like a sub standard space harrier clone. It also reminds me a lot of the tunnel sections in stardust, only not as good.
Wherever you are in the game the background graphics tend to look the same!
Who wants to shoot blobs inside someones body rather than spacehips out in space or on some other plannet anyway?
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amigakid1 2005-10-10
I still play it on my cd32. The graphics are top notch and even though its hard as hell the bosses arejust too damn cool. I especially like the metallic spider. This game was way ahead of anything at the time
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Maff Rignall 2005-09-27
I never actually got a chance to play it, so I can't comment of the quality of the game, but surely this deserves some credit for actually being a *CD32* game... And not a three-year-old A500 game cynically dumped to CD then sold at an inflated price...
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Karpow 2005-09-26
(7/10)
Haplo, Myst didn't really exploited CD-Rom format fully. Microcosm did.
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onky 2005-08-08
Like many I was blown away by the intro of this game, which was unparalelled at the time. The gameplay however, was a major disappointment. It was merely a video playing with sprites on top of them to shoot at... Pretty silly really.
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Puzzle Rattrap 2005-07-14
(1/10)
I'd be lying if I described this as a "game". It was a graphics demo to fleece people and persuade 'em to spend their hard-earned cash on the white elephant known as the CD32.
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Selectanovel 2005-06-16
(8/10)
Still a mindblowing production, great to let other people on a meeting know that I have a CD32 with me. Never finished it without cheat, so I only know the endsequence in black and white. However, the endbosses are the most impressive models ever realised on any Amiga. Awesome!
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Haplo 2005-06-14
(6/10)
Wasn't MYST the first CD-only game?
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Karpow 2005-06-10
(7/10)
Incredible graphics. First REAL CD-Rom game on any machine which uses CD-Rom technology fully. Too bad that the sequel, Novastorm, never made it to Amiga.
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ReTroViRuS 2005-06-10
(4/10)
The FMV sequences and the rendered animations were incredible. The music was fairly good on the Amiga version too. But the then-advanced visuals disguise a simplistic, monotonous and unfair shooter. You could pop in any module into your old Atari 2600 and the gameplay would be about on the same level.
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DeAdLy_cOoKiE 2005-06-09
(7/10)
Commodore CD32's flagship title. Impressive stuff if you ask me.
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Trantor 2005-06-08
(7/10)
It's hard to judge this game without seeing it in the historical context. This was the first big CD only game to be released on home computers (correct me if there was another before this) and the sheer fact that you had FMV intros, and detailed background graphics really just blew me a way. It didn't take long for everyone to realize that the game was a fairly shallow shoot 'em up, that felt a lot like Gyruss, but still, it showed a lot of promise for the future, and for that should be given some serious props.
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