Abadox: Gross Out Shoot em’ Up
In most NES collections worth your time, there should always be at least two handfuls of shoot em’ ups. Be it of the vertical or horizontal scrolling variety ,most will be in outer space fighting hoards of mindless kamikaze aliens coming at you in several different patterns trying to mess up your day of scrolling through infinite blackness. I grew tired of this scenario last night as I began my routine shuffling of Q-Tips , rubbing alcohol and NES cartridges. .I dug through my collection searching for something to break the shooter monotony. I got my paws on Abadox: the deadly inner war, an awesome side scrolling shooter in the vain of Gradius. This one (hold on to your hats) takes place inside a gargantuan space entity that has swallowed your home planet whole, so you must battle your way through the aliens small intestine destroying it from the inside.Because of this your enemies look like eyeballs or various other body parts just floating about trying to mess your shit up. You will be maneuvering through teeth,tongues, eyes and rampant veins. Unlike the minions in this alien thingy , the boss battles have no business being inside a living organism, most notably the have decayed unicorn dog at the end of the first level and the Freddy Kruger looking disembodied face that lives in the aliens butt.
Abadox(published by Natsume) is like most shoot em’ ups of the era, besides the whole shooting you way through an alien butt to save the world thing, it is difficult as all bloody hell, skill depends mostly on level and pattern memorizing , power ups= bad ass and it is difficult as all bloody hell. Most of the time you will be dying so get ready to see that ”continue” screen, you have endless of these by the way, the only bone the game designers throw your way. Patterns are key, you have to know where the next tooth or vein is going to pop up to avoid or to dispense death from above or the to avoid dying during the awesome boss battles. My only complaint is the at time wonky shooting, every 3 to 5 shot fired , the character skips a beat, when enemies are flying at you in a constant cadence any missed beat(bullet) means death. It was hard for me to put a finger on whether Abadox was difficult because that was how the game was designed or because of the mis-fire, mostly I noticed how the misfire was to blame and I had a few choice words to give my television screen. In spite of this glitch(?), the game kept bringing me back and I learned how to work around this. The awesome action tunes composed by Kyouhei Sada, the same dude that composed the awesome Contra sound track.
This game comes recommended to those looking for a change in scenery in shooters or those shooter veterans looking for a true challenge. This game brought back memories of the first time I played a difficult shooter, how in spite of difficulty and constant death, I would keep coming back for more time and time again.
