Space Adventure Cobra is a side-scrolling game based of anime series from long ago - and a really good and influential one at that. This game seeks to encapsulate the series into a light metroidvania/side-scroller/spectacle runner (I'll explain that in a second). The game has you going around and firing at baddies, taking down bosses, and navigating around death traps out to stop Cobra. Controls are a little loose and take some getting used to but its not perfect with some being floaty and others sometimes not working as intended. You will die, A LOT in this game because of the structure of some of the platforming - whether it's missing a ledge, a grapple shot, enemy encounters that take WAY too long like the bigger baddies who to be honest wear out their welcome after 2nd appearance are just there to pad the time, and so on. The checkpoint system in the game is very generous as others have noted but it makes the game feel like the developers said "We NEED it done this way" versus improvising on the spot as Cobra would do in the anime. Some fights and bosses are re-used 2-3 times and others can be frustrating until you figure the patterns out. Cobra's weapons in the game consist of his trust psycho-gun, magnum and explosive cigars. He can punch and melee but all of these have their uses - sadly that's about it. The charged up shots during boss fights to little no damage compared to standard blasts so that's unfortunate and makes that useless, even when powered up. You can level up Cobra's health, manual psycho shots and psycho-gun strength via tokens found in the levels. The light metroid vania part of the game is that at the start, there are inaccessible areas until you get specific abilities, like the grapple shot I mentioned so there is some level of replayability if you want to be the strongest cobra out there. I did enjoy my time with the game BUT I can tell you that I don't disagree with the people who note only fans of the anime/series/author in question should check this game out. The games reliance on perfection in certain areas and constant deaths will probably annoy and outright cause people to abandon the game, which is a shame because the series is something many should check out, and a video game is a good entry point to learning about Cobra and his space adventures. 7/10 for me.