The three games from my collection I will be covering in this post are all games I had never played prior to owning a Colecovision. All 3 were arcade titles first but they weren’t exactly the most popular during their releases, with the exception of Gorf which was a minor success. The Colecovision did a great job of popularizing these games by bringing the arcade excitement home and breathing new life into titles that may have been forgotten on lesser consoles.
Cosmic Avenger and Gorf are both space shooters with similarities to other titles. Cosmic Avenger takes a horizontal approach similar to Scramble, where you shoot at UFO’s while bombing alien turrets and tanks below you. It’s a fun and colorful game but honestly nothing super groundbreaking, which maybe explains why it wasn’t a runaway smash. As for Gorf, it is a multi-platform space shooter which sends your ship on various missions against your galactic enemies. On the surface, Gorf feels like a mash-up of other popular space shooters of the era like Space Invaders, Galaxian, Phoenix & Tempest. All of this makes Gorf quite fun, if not terribly original.
Pepper 2 is a maze game where you must use your angelic character, Pepper, to zip up smaller mazes within the larger maze while avoiding the enemies attempting to thwart his efforts. Zipping up a section of maze with a pitchfork in it will turn Pepper into a devil and he can turn the tables on his enemies. Pepper 2 is my favorite of these titles and I believe it was only available for home consoles on the Colecovision which makes it an exclusive. All 3 of these games are solid and while I understand why they weren’t massive successes in the arcades, I also understand why they are often cited as some of the best for the console.
Currently in my collection:
Cosmic Avenger – game only B
Gorf – game only B+
Pepper 2 – game only A-
Cartridge Corner 