Nerd Mentality

Classic Plastic #01 - Abadox (NES)

Posted June 30th 2005 by Adam Caporello.

So here begins my journey to chronicle the entirety of my Nintendo collection. I admit, I was having a bit of trouble deciding which game to review first. My personal favorites? The earliest games, chronologically? Well, after whining to Jared about it we decided it would probably be best (for some reason) to just go in alphabetical order straight through all the NES games. If I get bored I may throw in a random N64 or SNES game, since I've only very recently begun extensive collecting for those two.

So this naturally led me to the very first game on the NES shelf in my game cabinet, Abadox, and I immediately started to reconsider our decision. To be honest, I hadn't touched the game for probably close to a year up until yesterday, since it's pretty much a rip-off of another shmup (that's shoot'em-up to the layman) called Life Force from Konami... which is basically little more than a dumbed-down version of Gradius in the first place.

It didn't start out pretty. It took me close to fifteen minutes to get the game to play, since the cartridge is nasty and old, and it's been about three years since I replaced the contact pins. I'm hoping that's the only problem, because I'm still using the same NES I bought with my own savings in 1988. So the title screen finally loaded up without the stupid verticle lines or garbled text, and to my surprise... apparently the game was developed by Natsume (of Harvest Moon fame). This intrigued me, since I didn't remember that from when I first tried the game the day I saved it from a crappy GameStop location in El Paso, Texas, with some very rude employees. Oddly enough it gave me the inspiration to go on and spend close to three hours with the game, a time period even most current-generation gems can't drag out of me.

Now as I mentioned, the game is very likely meant to look like Life Force, and even the plotlines are strikingly similar. Some disgusting virus/creature has infected the very planet itself, and you, the lone survivor, must bring an end to this organic reign of terror and save the entire universe!!! Oh, except in Abadox your real mission is to save "Princess Maria." Yep.

Unlike Gradius and Life Force (and the vast majority of other shmups) you don't save the universe with a well-armed spacecraft. In Abadox you're out there with nothing more than a marginally powerful space suit. This is kind of a cool change of pace, and gives a bit of an Air Fortress feel to the game. Until you beat the giant zombie-dog boss and move on to the next stage, which has changed to verticle shooting with downward movement. I can't think of any other shmup that has you shooting downward... it seems to go against the very laws of video game nature. So it's a little awkward at first.

Abadox seems like it's a lot harder than games like Gradius, mainly because the upgrade system is minimal and flawed. You can't choose your upgrades like in Gradius, and you can't see what your main weapon will be upgrading to before you grab it, unlike... say, Contra. So you don't know if that weapon upgrade hurtling towards you should be avoided like an enemy or sought after despite great personal risk.

At its nasty, intestinal core, the game is still pure shoot'em-up goodness. The bosses are quite fun, even if the first few are a little too easy. One plus (or minus, depending on your view) is that you are given an infinite amount of continues, so you can restart a level as many times as you need to. There are a few other aspects of the game that don't seem very well thought out. The fifth boss is a giant robot, taking a side-tour from the disgusting, ghoulish eyeball-ridden creatures found in the rest of the game. At the end of the game, destroying the viral infection results in you inadvertently blowing up the entire planet, which is a slight bummer.

So hey, it's not a bad shooter, especially coming from a developer who's crowning achievement is a heavily addictive farming simulator. Even the music is pretty respectable, although nothing any of our favorite nostalgic game music bands would likely cover. It does get rather difficult, even with the infinite continues, and should keep fans of the genre busy for at least a few days. It was well worth the five dollars I spent on it, but if I had to choose, it would be Gradius or Life Force any day of the week. Also, I'd stay away if you have an aversion to eyeballs.

This game is recommended for: Any action or shmup fans, but not for the easily frustrated, or anyone with high expectations.

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