What is there to say about this game? Well first and foremost, most levels are tough, like unfair tough at times. You have to inch by inch your way across the screen only to be greeted by a blue rolling ball or a deadly floor spike that shoves right up your tail. This game could be a top contender as the king of cheap shots, so memorization is critical. So be ready to start over and over again on some levels. The game character(Cosmo) main defense is bombs and suction cup hands, however there is a large chunk of the games walls that can not be suctioned to. This game is full of colors and lots of items to grab. The downside is, sometimes it is hard tell what is background and what is foreground. Only until you run into said deadly plant or jump on a platform that was a foreground item, only to now be only background and you fall to your death. Save often and make sure you conserve your health as nothing regenerates from level to level. Which at times makes levels (like episode 2 's final level) to be next to impossible if you don't have at least half to full health to begin with. Now all that negativity aside......this game still pisses me off and made me remember exactly how frustrated with it I was when I downloaded the shareware version back in my 386mhz days. I love most side scrollers (Agent, Keen,Bio Menace, Duke etc). Those can be frustrating, but I have never had to inch my way through a side scroller like I have with this one. Maybe my patience is shorter with my advancing age, so your mileage may vary. On to some good points though. It is a very colorful game. The framerate is slow, but there is a lot going on. The sound is standard PC speaker affair, but very spot on and not too annoying. The music ranges from very cool(intro music) to damned annoying. Its as if Apogee payed Bobby Prince to only do half a page of music and then set it to repeat which can get old seeing how often you will have to repeat a level. It can be fun, but better is out there.
I remember modifying firing up my 386DX/33 CPU with a double speed CD-rom and sound blaster 1.0. and modifying my Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files like crazy to get the first Rebel Assualt to work on my system. I remember seeing the looping demo(no playable levels) for it at a friends house which I went home and with paper route money, ordered it though the LucasArts catalog. Three impatient shipping weeks later, I finally had my game! I used a CH Flightstick, which was pretty good for X-Wing series/F117A Flight Sims and such. I loaded up the game, awesome title intro, loved the sound and onto the first level where i am informed that beggars canyon is a simple run. Then I took control.....right into the canyon wall, then the next wall and over and over into death explosion....awesome. This game kicked my butt and after multiple tries, I went into the options menu to see if I had inadvertently turned on the "Your Ship is a Rubber Band" option. Nope, none to be found. This game is hard. Overtime I learned to not steer so hard, still it was a tough game. Today I tried it again for the first time in decades, still Holy krap is this game hard, especially Rebel Assault 1. The first Rebel Assault game was something ahead of its time when it came out and showed just WHY it was important to own a CD-ROM. The game did so well as to spawn a sequel (Rebel Assault II) in which i also enjoyed years later on my upgraded Pentium 90mhz machine. Are these games for you? If you are looking for a sim that is something just like X-Wing/Tie Fighter series then this isn't it. But if you like Star Wars and can forgive the pixel heavy/rubberband bouncing pre-rendered levels. Then you will have fun with this. A Joystick is a must, as the mouse can be tough to control. As for me, Nostalgia has been satisfied, and I now have the opportunity to pass it to my sons, so they can cuss in anger as they smack against the canyon wall time and time again, just as i did all those years ago.
