Hands on with C-Smash VRS

You may recall a recent post here at the Junkyard in which I was somewhat apathetic towards Cosmic Smash, the painfully stylish retro-futuristic squash-cum-Breakout NAOMI port that graced the Dreamcast during its final days as a living, breathing platform. The point of that post wasn't to bash Cosmic Smash though; it was to point out that a reimagining of Sega Rosso's quirky, super-niche bat-and-ball 'em up was being worked on for the impending Sony PlayStation VR2. Since then I have been lucky enough to be invited to sample this title - C-Smash VRS - for myself. 

While my lukewarm opinion of the inspiration for C-Smash VRS hasn't really changed (indeed even contemporary reviews - of which there are precious few - weren't overly gushing), I would now like to explain why this pseudo sequel to Cosmic Smash is probably about as close to a next-gen Dreamcast game as we're likely to see for some time.

The fridge had backup.

In order to sample C-Smash VRS, I travelled to the fair city of London and to a rather nice venue called Icetank in the trendy Covent Garden district. In retrospect, the venue couldn't have been more appropriate, with its minimalist whitewashed rooms and open spaces plastered with the familiar lurid orange concentric 'C' motif. 

If a venue was ever going to be perfect for showing off a game like C-Smash VRS, Icetank is surely it. Well, unless there's a retro-futuristic space station available for hire somewhere. The open plan nature of the venue lent itself well the multiple PS VR2 systems set up; I can only imagine the carnage which could have ensued if there had been tables full of drinks and food dotted about the place as idiots like me jumped and waved their arms and hands around while wearing a VR headset. 

Her Converse are better than mine.

Fittingly, an original Cosmic Smash arcade cabinet was positioned out of harm's way in a corner - a cabinet I naturally had to play on and which belongs to C-Smash VRS game director Jörg Tittel. I understand this particular cabinet was originally housed at Sega World in London's long lost Trocadero entertainment centre, and the story goes that if you listen closely to the speaker grill at night you can still hear the frantic pulse rifle fire and screams of the colonial marines from Alien War, trapped forever like tormented, ethereal echos of the past. Actually, I just made that up. Hudson, run a bypass. What? Where am I?

A Cosmic Smash arcade cabinet sat quietly in the corner, minding its own business...

So I played on it. Note my inferior Converse.

Props must go the PR agency 4media group for their running of the C-Smash VRS preview event, and also to Lost in Cult for their production of the rather nice Cosmic Smash themed press kits that were handed to attendees. Full disclosure here though - I was invited to the event by my Dreamcast Junkyard colleague Andrew Dickinson, who also heads up the gaming periodical [Lock-On]...which is produced by Lost in Cult. So yeah, now that little disclaimer is out of the way, let's get down to business: C-Smash VRS is a fucking disaster of a game. What were they thinking?! Of course, I jest.

I can't believe Edge is £6.50 now. It was 75p last time I bought it. Inflation in action, folks.

No, from the small snippet I played of RapidEyeMovers and Wolf & Wood's reimagining of Toshiaki Miida et al's original vision, I can honestly say I was left thoroughly impressed by the experience. This is in no small part due to the fact that the Sony PlayStation VR2 is undoubtedly one of the most impressive pieces of consumer hardware I've ever had the pleasure of sampling; but then that's probably to be expected considering the price of the thing. I've already moaned about that though, so I'll spare you the sob story again here.

Why won't they...play with me?

As this was a preview event, only two modes (three if you count the two player versus mode) were available from the C-Smash VRS main menu - a tutorial and a practice mode. Both in theory make sense in the modern era, especially since VR controls do take a bit of getting used to if you're unfamiliar with how they generally work. After a fairly intuitive calibration (where you're invited to reach out and grasp a small cuboid doodad), you get into the game. 

Cosmic Smash in VR or something

Cosmic Smash is set to 'return' to consoles in February 2023. I emphasise 'return' because Cosmic Smash is a game few people outside Japan ever really got to play; and the usual (predictable) swarm of attention is now in full swing. Sega knows what it is doing with this type of release. It can't have gone unnoticed that anything even remotely connected to the Dreamcast gets vast swathes of gushing real estate on pretty much every gaming or tech blog now; and this latest Cosmic Smash related news will no doubt have people foaming into their cornflakes. 

There is a whole new generation of gamers (spenders) out there who want to know more about these enigmatic Dreamcast games which are - in the main - really poorly documented outside of fan blogs and forums. Luckily, this fan blog is still going.

Back in 2015 we covered Cosmic Smash, and I also wrote about it in issue 179 of the physical magazine Retro Gamer. Ultimately though, what you need to know is that it is a take on Pong or Breakout, where you control a humanoid player with a racquet, smashing a ball against a wall and various blocks that form ahead of you. It also looks like Rez. A bit. Using the parameters of the court, you can fling your character into multiple impossible shapes, hitting the ball back and advancing though the stages via the Passageway as a passenger on the Cosmic Bus. I've used this piss-poor 'joke' before but I'll be damned if I'm not using it again: you wait for one Cosmic Bus, and then two turn up at once. Literally just after you've received the Call of Chuthlu and realise it's a wrong number. I refuse to be stopped.

Right then, Cosmic Smash is apparently coming back as a VR game, titled C-Smash VRS. As an exclusive for the PlayStation VR 2. Sony or Sega or someone tweeted a countdown timer a few weeks ago but we already knew what it was after glancing at it for about 3 milliseconds. And now there's been some sort of official announcement. If I'm honest, I don't really care. Cosmic Smash on the Dreamcast was/is alright, but only in a sort of 'Virtua Tennis against a wall' type way. I don't really know what else to say about it to be honest. It's certainly not a game worth all the hype it is currently (at the time of writing) getting.

I find Cosmic Smash to be a pretty boring experience personally. Once you get over the fact that you're controlling a transulcent person who appears to have no small intestine or anus (would have been way more interesting if he did - I'd love to know what he had for his tea), then you mainly spend your time trying to hit a ball back and forth against a wall and jumping round experimenting with ways you can hit a ball back and forth. People only play squash for a finite amount of time because it isn't that interesting. But this is purely my opinion, and I am wrong on many occasions.

That said: Cosmic Smash in VR could be very cool. The virtual reality tennis games I have had the pleasure of waving a paddle/shoe around in have been enjoyable. Leaping from couch to wall and then onto the ceiling while wearing a VR headset; and being generally athletic could be just the thing needed to give the VR scene the kick up the arse it needs. Oh, and C-Smash VRS looks to include a multiplayer option too (Cosmic Smash on Dreamcast is a single player affair). C-Smash VRS might be the very title VR needs to put a fire under it.

It's nice that Sega is finally looking to games in its back catalogue that aren't Sonic or Mega Drive titles; but can we be honest here? Yes lets. Sega needs to license/resurrect Sega GT, Daytona USA, Fighting Vipers, Jet Set Radio, Spirit of Speed 1937, NiGHTS, Burning Rangers, Skies of Arcadia, Virtua Cop, Golden Axe...before looking to Cosmic Smash. Even the most diehard Dreamcast fans don't really consider Cosmic Smash a Dreamcast classic. Might as well revive Soul Fighter or Hoyle Casino.

Go and get hyped over at Polygon or Eurogamer or Reddit if you're that bothered. I'm not, because I can barely afford my electricity bill, let alone a PlayStation VR 2. That said, do feel free to check out our previous article on Cosmic Smash and the multiple hidden characters only revealed 16 years later by Jeremy Hobbs.

The C-Smash VRS website is here.