Abadox: The Deadly Inner War

Overview

Abadox: The Deadly Inner War is a traditional space shooter for the Nintendo Entertainment System released in March 1990. Developed by Natsume, Abadox was published by Milton Bradley. Abadox had an extensive TV commercial campaign, advertising the level of difficulty as a primary feature. The game received minimal press and mediocre reviews upon release, although the soundtrack was praised, mostly due to the involvement of Kyouhei Sada, a composer known for his work on Konami games, such as the Contra franchise.

Abadox takes place in 5012, where the galaxy faces a threat known as the Parasitis. Originally devouring and taking the form of the planet known as Abadox, the Parasitis creatures continue to seek more planets to consume. It is up to Nazal, a famed galactic fighter, to end the Parasitis threat, and to save the Princess Maria.

Gameplay

A traditional scrolling shooter, Abadox contains both vertical and horizontal scrolling levels. Players fight across six stages, destroying grotesque aliens resembling internal organs. Levels vary from side-scrolling missions, and downwards scrolling missions, while the final level after defeating the boss of the game is more of an obstacle course than any level before it. Players have three initial lives, and after these are depleted the player must restart the level. Due to this, as well as the bullet-hell nature of some of the game's later levels, Abadox was infamous for its difficulty.

Like many other space shooters of its day, Abadox features a power-up system similar to Gradius or R-Type.

There are five weapons, as well as a shield upgrade (which causes several spheres to rotate around the player, destroying anything they touch). Beginning with a standard laser, this can be upgraded to a three-way spread gun, a more conventional spread gun, a more powerful laser, and finally a large, circular laser. After death, however, all power-ups are lost.