Cosmonaut On Mars

Melbourne House

Status: No Download, Findability: 3/5

From what began as a simple Vic 20 game called Cosmonaut (A scrolling shooter), a sequel was born from the Ramshaw brothers who did a lot of work in the early days for the likes of Melbourne House.

Cosmonaut on Mars was to be an action packed sequel with the hero traversing horizontally scrolling landscapes and cave systems. Aliens bounced aroundthe the planet surface, while tentacled creatures would reach up from the lava in the lower levels.
The game was progressing ok, but was not much fun to play according to Mark Ramshaw, who also informs that Melbourne began asking for changes, such as to the pacing of the game.

Also at this time, Cliff Ramshaw was about to start college, and drifted away from coding in assembly when he started to enjoy the life of a student. The game was then put away to one side and never returned to. Cliff lost interest in programming, and that was that.

Software Projects apparently took an interest in the game, but nothing materialized from this and so the game remains unreleased to this day.

It is thanks to Mark that we know about this game in the first place. The question is if the game actually still exsists!…. Well, it could well be possible that one of the brothers have a disk somewhere with the remains of the game, though its unlikely these days. We will endevor to try and find out more though and bring this lost title back to life.

More research needed, including a chat with Cliff himself to find out more…

Contributions: Mark Ramshaw

Supporting content

Creator speaks

Mark Ramshaw speaks to GTW about work on Cosmonaut On Mars...

"The first of these was Cosmonaut On Mars. It was a sequel to a VIC-20 scrolling shooter (Cosmonaut), this time with the hero traversing horizontally scrolling landscapes and cave systems.

Aliens bounced around the planet surface, while tentacled creatures would reach up from the lava
in the lower levels. Unfortunately it was never that enjoyable to play, and by the time the publisher Melbourne House began to ask for changes, primarily to the pacing, Cliff - who was about to start college and realised girls were far more interesting than assembly language - had started to lose interest in the project and programming in general.

As I recall that game was put to one side (eventually Software Projects looked like they might
release it, but nothing ever came of it)."

Mark Ramshaw.

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