Arcade Game: Cosmic Chasm (1983 Cinematronics / GCE)
26A shooting 'em up field type game. Strap on your vector spacesuit, and hop into your vector spaceship. It is a good old ship, and it has seen a lot of action. From navigating the asteroid belt and blasting aliens around the sun, to attacking evil space cannons, your little vector ship has done it all, and this time it has been upgraded with twin blasters. You see the ship in Cosmic Chasm seems to be the same spaceship that is in every vector game. You control it using rotation buttons and a thruster button, with a laser and a shield button thrown in for good measure, just like almost every other vector game around. Now here is what you have to do. You guide your ship through a space fortress room by room. Each room contains a center section that slowly grows and will eventually trap you if you are not fast enough. You can shoot the center section to slow its growth. Each room also contains several exits. One of the exits will always spew forth a bunch of bad guys, shoot them, then exit to go to a different room. Between rooms you get to see an excellent tunnel animation. The idea is to make your way to the center of the fortress, blast the power core, and then leave. There is a map at the top of the screen to keep you from getting lost. This is a pretty decent game. It has a lot more to offer than the one screen of bad guys that most vector games have. This game was the last color vector game released by Cinematronics. Approximately 400 units were produced (based on serial numbers). This title used a 68000 processor and a color X-Y monitor, which allowed for some very nice graphical effects that most early 80s hardware was simply not capable of.
Note: Invincibility cheat was used in the game after down to last life. The game is endless. Sources says there are 256 levels. But I'm not wasting time playing that many levels. As many levels start repeating with different color designs.