Publisher: Hudson Soft
Developer: Buichi Terasawa
Size: 1 CD
Memory Usage: 3 blocks
No. of players: 1
Official Ad: Yes
Playing as Cobra, a legendary space bandit who was thought to have been killed, you start the game off looking to meet back up with your fellow pirate, and partner known as "The Armored Lady". Along the way you encounter a bounty hunter named Jane, who has been looking for you in an attempt to save her two twin sisters. Turns out that these three are the key to a fortune in gold, which everyone is after. You must save Jane's sisters, and find the treasure before the space mafia finds you...
Uh, I think you're doing just fine on your own there ya' perv...
 What's it all about?
Essentially, it's a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book in digital form. You are put in a scenario, given a series of things to interact with and then walked through the pre-determined actions it will let you make. It’s kind of a "do what we think you should do, then you can move forward" sort of game. Unfortunately, this leads to an endless amount of attempting the correct actions, in the proper order, until you finally get it right. To make matters worse, they'll often times make you repeat the same actions two to three times before it begins to repeat itself, and thus lets you move onto a new action.
The basic flow of the game is this: Watch cool anime cut scene, click on every possible action until the text begins to repeat itself, then move on to the next until your finally get to the right one. It’s like they wanted to create a linear based graphic-adventure, where you’d see all the possible scenery and read all possible text, but along the way they decided to put in “paths” that give the illusion that you’re actually guiding yourself though the adventure...

Graphics - Slick, with loads of style. Every scene is done with that cooler-than-words anime style, and some hip graphics to match it. There's not a whole lot of animation, but what's there isn't bad at all and the style seems to fit perfectly. Finally, the 64 on-screen colors the Genesis/Sega CD is cable of seem to do just fine for all the various flesh tones the women keep displaying...{girlish snicker}
Sound - Mixed bag. The music is pretty cool, nice and ambient most of the time and a bit quirky at others. Sound effects are excellent, with some nice recordings of various actions(walking across gravel, gun shots, etc). The voice acting, on the other hand, is about what you’d expect from a low budget game like this: Basically, the same people doing 13 or 14 voices, and badly. Thankfully, it’s not fully voiced but rather just bits of speech here and there during important situations. Seems like the voice is too low though, making it hard to hear at times...and with no subtitles, you can really miss out on a lot of stuff.
Control - For what little, actual control you have in the game, it's not bad I guess. There's a few points where you can move in a pre-determined direction, and Cobra will walk there(in the ship, the graveyard, the ruins of the first planet, etc). You press, he goes...that's it.
AI - Nonexistent. There's nothing really working against you in this game....not enemy AI, not your bad decisions, nothing. You are pretty much walked through the game, then slightly curbed when making the "wrong" decision....they then remove that as an option, and you are then forced to pick the right one.
Replay value - Low. Though it's really not a bad experience the first time you go through it, there's very little you're bound to miss as the game basically *makes* you explore every possible path(thus, dropping the replay value through the floor).
Tips for better gaming experiences:
You can save at almost *any* point in the game...be sure to take advantage of that. Also, do yourself a favor and give the anime or manga a try...
My rating: 70(out of 100) - Though this is nothing but a point and click adventure disguised as a "playable" game, it's still not a bad ride. Filled with loads of juvenile humor, a little bit of nudity and a whole lot of style, this is one that can be enjoyed by most fans of the graphic-adventure genre.
GamePro gave it: 2.0(graphics), 1.5(sound), 2.0(control), 1.5(funfactor) (out of 5)

Spaced-out cat's review: Damn does this "game" suck. There's little-to-no challenge in it, it's dull, repetitive and just all out boring. If you want to piss away your time reading, do it with a proper book...

Monkey wants a drink!
Look or Talk, what's it gonna be!?
A typical example of the various, main choices you are presented with. After selecting one, you then move onto a sub-category to narrow down what you want to look at/check/talk to/etc.
You'll love this: According to the storyline, her tattoo only shows up when she gets "excited" or her body temperature rises to a certain degree...
For more pics of from The Space Adventure, click here for the gallery.
Gameplay Videos:
Attract Mode - 1:29, 9.1 megs

Immediate Streaming - YouTube
Description: Sadly, the intro is just made up of various clips used in the game, but hell it's always fun to watch Cobra break out the Psychogun. That thing kicks ass...
Note: You'll need the most recent Divx codec to watch these videos. Also, slowdown and jumps in the playback may not necessarily be the fault of the game so much as the method I am using to record them. If you are having problems watching the videos in your browser, just right-click and download them to your hard drive...
Abandoned Space:
This game is considered abandonware and can now be downloaded, free of charge, at The Underdogs. For the collectors out there, not content with a copy(I know I wasn't) you've got quite a challenge ahead of you. Even on ebay this one is particularly rare, and typically goes for $60+...which is *far* from what it's actually worth...