Space Sheriff who?
Hamster is taking us back, way back, for this week’s Arcade Archives release. Available now on Nintendo Switch, it’s everyone’s favorite cyborg officer and the future of law enforcement… you guessed it… Cosmo Police Galivan.
Released in arcades in 1985 by Nichibutsu, before receiving ports on NES and various home computers, Cosmo Police Galivan is a thinly veiled take on the popular Japanese TV show Space Sheriff Sharivan. Much like Toei’s interstellar lawmaker, our boy Galivan is a cybernetic cop who battles aliens and robots with the aid of a beam sword and a sharpshooting laser pistol.
Galivan fights their way through two stages, collecting power-ups and blasting criminal scum into oblivion, before facing off against a boss character at the end of each stage. Once the two stages are complete, they simply repeat themselves ad infinitum. Tough shift, Galivan. While most definitely a curious oddity for arcade fans, Cosmo Police Galivan has an unsurprisingly limited life-span to the modern video game player, though I dig its colorful spritework and chaotic nature.
