Hey, look, I did another one of these. I probably ought to try not to let a month pass between each entry of the NES ABC. In my defense, I’ve been a bit occupied with certain other projects lately.
ToastyFrog’s NES ABC: Abadox
Natsume | Semi-horizontal Shooter | 1990
TOASTY: You know how these days Natsume is pretty much “the company that coasts along on endless Animal Crossing games”?
YUKI: That’s Harvest Moon. There’s a big difference, and anyway Harvest Moon came first.
TOASTY: Eh, whatever. Where I was headed with this is that unless you’re a 12-year-old girl, Natsume is pretty much worthless to you, because all they make is the same worthless cutey-cute farm simulation over and over again.
YUKI: You’re a jerk.
TOASTY: I’m a…? Er, anyway, my point is that it could be worse. Natsume could be the company they were in the NES days. Back then, instead of endlessly rehashing their own creation to the point of stupidity, they were much less ambitious. Instead, they rehashed everyone else’s ideas. You know how Shadow of the Ninja was such a convincing Ninja Gaiden ripoff that Tecmo went ahead and published the Game Boy Shadow of the Ninja as a Ninja Gaiden game? Well, after playing Abadox, it’s clear to me that this was Natsume’s primary tactic at the time: swipe a game from someone else, do the absolute minimum necessary to avoid a lawsuit, and wait for the money to pour in.
YUKI: Abadox? That’s just a generic shooting game, right? I don’t see how that’s such a ripoff. It’s just trite.
TOASTY: Well, then, clearly you have never played Abadox. Or maybe you’ve never played Life Force? Because that’s what Abadox is, you know. It’s Life Force. Totally and completely. OK, sure, you control a guy in a suit instead of a spaceship, but that just means Natsume ripped off Section-Z a little bit, too. Other than that, the two games are embarrassingly similar: you scroll automatically left to right through grotesque biomatter as naggingly familiar waves of enemies attack. Spiky protuberances emerge from the ceiling and floor. At one point, you have to shoot through weak bits in a wall to advance. And then you meet the boss, a sort of lumpy brain-like thing that has to be shot in the eye. And this is just the first stage!
YUKI: Wasn’t Life Force the one that switched between horizontal and vertical shooting? So it’s just a coincidence. The similarities obviously end once you reach the second level.
TOASTY: Oh, you think so? What if I told you the second stage of Abadox is also a vertically-scrolling level?
YUKI: Come on, it can’t really be that shameless.
TOASTY: You’re right, Abadox isn’t completely the same as Life Force. The vertical stages scroll downward instead of up. As this is possibly the only shooter in the world to play like this, it’s bafflingly confusing. Like playing Mario right-to-left.
YUKI: But still… I mean, it doesn’t have the same power-up system as Life Force, right? That’s kind of a trademark.
TOASTY: No, you’re right: Abadox has a strictly linear power-up system. But Life Force on NES is a weird mash-up of the arcade games Salamander and Life Force, and the Gradius-style upgrades were added somewhere along the way. Back in the earliest chunks of its DNA is a linear power-up system startlingly similar to Abadox’s. The whole thing is some sort of proto-Life Force.
YUKI: Wow. Is it like this all the way through the game?
TOASTY: Beats me. All I could think about the entire time I was playing is how much better Life Force is, so I bailed midway through the second level and destroyed the Bacterions a few times instead.
YUKI: And you call yourself a reviewer? Where’s the due diligence? I bet the game probably gets a lot better after the first few stages.
TOASTY: Yeah… maybe not. But, here’s some actual research for you: If you happen to notice the music sounds a lot like the tunes from Life Force’s Konami cousin Contra, that’s because Natsume actually employed one of the sound programmers for the NES version of Contra as the composer for this game.
YUKI: Wow, that’s impressively brazen. My respect for this game has just increased dramatically.
Nice. I’m stuck trying to think of another shooter that scrolls downward for the length of a stage, but I can think of a few that use downward-scrolling at times – Gradius V, Einhander, Border Down, Shattered Soldier & Gunstar Heroes if run’n’shooters count. I can’t help but think there’s an obvious one I’m forgetting, though. It’ll probably hit me at work or something.
On another note, isn’t Natsume bringing that PS3 photo-safari game over in September? Kind of looking forward to that.
oh wow, I just realized you drew Konamiman lol
ripping off konamiman is worse than punching konamiman
looks like Natsume ain’t gettin free heals no more
also, I’ve read there’s a Freudian trend with Japanese developers where when feeling unoriginal they base shooters like this off of sex.
Given the shape and location of the players weapon combined with the sprite jerking its legs back and forth every time it shoots and the fact the final boss is a vagina, this Abadox game being approved for NES in America at all is almost as good as the time Capcom snuck a bloody exploding Hitler face past Nintendo’s screeners.
You’re comparing this game to Life Force, but Life Force ends with you shooting a giant alien ovum with a snake slithering all around it (huh huh). Abadox actually has you shooting a monster vagina in the ovaries to kill it and then you steal and escape with a fertilized egg. =S Awkward. Its almost like Abadox is about divorce and child custody. Or its secretly ripping off Aliens too.
But, damn, man. Secret pervert game right here.
If you think that’s bad, look at the Dante’s Inferno gameplay video.
Wow, that was in relation to the article, not Moran’s comments. >_
Dude. Just watched a Youtube vid of the first stage, and it totally has the “Konami Sound”.
Yeah, basically the Konami NES sound guy who worked with Hidenori Maezawa defected to Natsume. I get the impression Natsume was one of those companies full of defectors, but it’s really hard to find info on the company’s early years.
http://www.vgmpf.com/Game.php?Id=Abadox-NES
It still messes with my head to see her called Yuki instead of Rorita.
The only way this could have been a better clone of a Konami game would be if the immortal “Konami Code” worked.
Abadox was about abortion.
No, really. Think about the entire premise. You enter into a giant internal universe through a mouth, and make your way down its convulsing insides. At the end, you find a body in a womb-like state and blast the shit out of the uterine boss. The parasite becomes free and in the last stage you’re carrying it out, and when you watch the ending, it becomes ever more clear that the planet was a giant vagina. With teeth, given, but that was much like a recent horror film.
Just sayin’.
Hey, maybe he’s fleeing for his life and the little blue smudge where his gun was isn’t a parasite egg, but from the upside down devil vagina with teeth final boss having bit his junk off. You do defeat it by shooting it until a fully formed adult baby pops out.
This sex thing is a Japanese shmup cliche. Every R-Type ends with an extra strange sex themed final stage. But Abadox is extra strange. Even for Japan.
I think I prefer the way out there Japanese Biblical interpretations leading to stuff like Crystalis. Single handedly fighting off an entire fleet of spaceships and shooting your way through a giant intergalactic monster just to have space sex is a really silly premise.
Playing Mario right to left sounds inexplicably appealing, now that you mention it.
Also, delightfully, this turned into as much an entry about Life Force as one about Abadox.
I still don’t understand the differences between Life Force and Salamander and the other Life Force, though I think you’ve actually explained it here before. One of these days I’ll import Salamander Portable, maybe.
I’ve never played Abadox but looking at the screen shots, the game sort of resembles Legendary Wings (which I did play a lot when I was younger). I remember those gross meaty stages when you get swallowed by the faces and the bosses where you shoot the brains… good times