With a little help from the originals.
This is an independent fan resource for Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, originally published by Apogee Software in 1992. The original characters and artwork remain the property of their respective rights holders. This site does not claim ownership of them.
Original game graphics
Cosmo poses, creature animation frames, items, story illustrations, title artwork, scenery tiles, and Episode 1 backdrops were decoded from an intact copy of the original Episode 1 v1.20 shareware. No generated approximations or CSS screenshot crops are used as sprites. Individual graphics are stored as local PNGs with their original EGA colors and transparency masks.
- Internet Archive: Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure — the intact shareware archive, cosmo.ZIP. MD5:
c469226644324b32df8c3e081ebc9c4b. PLAYERS.MNIandPLYRINFO.MNI— 48 player frames. Standing east is frame 27; running east is frame 24; jumping east is frame 30; clinging east is frame 32; looking up while clinging is frame 34. “Hanging” on this site means wall-clinging, not ceiling traversal.ACTORS.MNIandACTRINFO.MNI— individual actor graphics and original animation frames.TILES.MNI,MASKTILE.MNI, and the original level maps — scenery used for ground strips and environments.BD*.MNI— original Episode 1 backdrops;PRETITLE.MNI,TITLE1.MNI, andCREDIT.MNI— title and credits graphics.CARTOON.MNIandCARTINFO.MNI— original story artwork.
Extraction follows the formats documented by Cosmodoc and ModdingWiki. Thanks to Scott Smitelli, Malvineous, Szevvy, Levellass, and the communities preserving the technical details. The reproducible extractor is included in this site's source as scripts/extract-assets.py.
Cover and screenshots
The original illustrated Apogee cover and gameplay screenshots were downloaded from the LaunchBox Games Database gallery. Their precise image URLs are recorded in the image source manifest.
The Episode 2 cave image is an authentic original-game screenshot preserved inside Cosmodoc's documentation. It is labelled as gameplay, rather than presented as an extracted sprite or an isolated backdrop. Further environment sources are recorded in the environment source manifest.
The Episode 2 mushroom and Episode 3 city backdrops were extracted as individual native-resolution images from Dolphman’s original background sheet at The Spriters Resource. See the background source manifest for crop coordinates and verified level assignments.
Research
- Archived Apogee / 3D Realms product page — publication, platform, shareware, and game features.
- Original story and instructions — the birthday trip, comet, missing parents, and movement basics.
- Player movement — wall-clinging and jumping.
- Map database — episode-specific environments and platform counts. The descriptive chapter subtitles on this site are fan-written, not official episode names.
- Items and hazards — hamburgers, food prizes, and obstacles.
- Actor sprite database and Cosmore's reconstructed original game code — creature identification and behavior. Several creature names are descriptive community labels; the game does not provide a complete official bestiary.
- VGMaps and The Spriters Resource — further fan reference resources.
Type
IBM Plex Mono by IBM and VT323 by Peter Hull. Both are distributed under the SIL Open Font License and served locally. The original Cosmo logo is game artwork, not a replacement type treatment.