Cosmic Spacehead (Genesis)

Cosmic Spacehead
Developer: Codemasters Publisher: Codemasters Platform: Genesis Released in US: 1993 Released in EU: 1993 This game has hidden developer credits. This game has revisional differences.

Cosmic Spacehead on Genesis is one of the fancier-looking ports of Linus Spacehead's Cosmic Crusade and easily has the most sound effects of any of them.

Audio Driver Credits

At 0x222F9:

Audio Driver (C)Copyright 1993 Codemasters Software Company Limited. 
All rights reserved.  
68000/Z80 Driver Software Programmed by Ash Hogg. 
Audio Compression (TrakPak) by Jon Menzies.  
***** Project Title: 'LINUS/Cosmic Spacehead ***** Date: 30-07-93, @ 14:19:39 *****

Revisional Differences

Cosmic Spacehead was available both as its own cartridge and on a 2-in-1 cartridge with Fantastic Dizzy, where the choice of game was switched by pressing the console's reset button. According to No-Intro's sorting of trusted dumps, the Fantastic Dizzy board matches the contents of its standalone counterpart exactly, but Cosmic Spacehead is a new version.

The chief differences in the 2-in-1 version are difficulty adjustments to the extra lives and save system that bring them in line with the PC and Amiga ports of the game:

• The number of Cosmic Candy bars required to earn an extra life was raised from 10 to 15.
• Five Password items were removed, leaving only the three at The Border, The Caves, and the Staff Room at which to save progress. Passwords generated at the other 5 locations in other versions will still allow Cosmic to start in those places in this revision, however.
• The passwords now store the number of extra lives the player left off with instead of resetting them to 4. This change could thus be helpful or harmful depending on how high or low the life count was by the time the player used a Password item. The number in the password takes the place of five of the "cleared stage" bits for a world Cosmic is not currently on, and it can store up to 31 lives in those 5 bits, even though there are only enough candy items to achieve a total of 15 lives at the new 15-per-life rate.