Abuse
Producer: Crack dot Com
Published: Electronic Arts, Red Hat
Game description
The year is 2009, and Nick Vrenna has just been sent to a secret underground prison where horrible and illegal genetic experiments have been taking place, a la Alan Blake. Blake has just found the human gene, known as Abuse, which causes aggression and hostility. You assume the role of Vrenna, and must escape. That is the easy part. Bad news: the prisoners have turned into freakazoid alien monsters, so of course, you will have to blast your way out. Sound exciting? It is. In the grand tradition of 2D action platformers, Abuse has it all. Everything from dark, side scrolling prison levels filled with perplex puzzles, switches, and alien monsters, to a massive assortment of special items and weapons. Throw on your thinking cap and grab a flamethrower, because you are going to need them! ~ Michael L. House, All Game Guide
Screenshots
more Abuse screenshots here
Distribution methods and later developments
The game was originally released as shareware, though in modern terms, a "beta-version demo" would be a more appropriate description. The free release was done based on incomplete game and final version was published through major software publishing house and distributed through ordinary retail channels.
The shareware versions were released for MS-DOS and Linux. Abuse was distributed with many GNU/Linux distributions at the time. Regrettably, the Lisp API in shareware releases (1.x) was not compatible with the final retail version (2.0), making modifications not work. Also, the retail version was only available for MS-DOS (thought the source code for 2.0 can be built to produce a Linux binary).
Abuse was also ported to Mac OS by Bungie Studios. This port was an unusual port in that it was largely reworked for Mac. Graphics were largely redone to work better in the 640x480 resolution. (The PC version runs in 320x200 VGA resolution, and can be made to run in higher resolutions, but the graphics will not be scaled.)
Approximately two years after the release of the game, Crack dot Com decided to release the game source code, as well as the shareware release game data (excluding the sound effects), to public domain. There has been little development based on this source release, though it did allow up-to-date GNU/Linux builds and making the game work over TCP/IP. A SDL port of the game is now available, allowing the game to run in Microsoft Windows and also in X11 systems in displays with more than 256 colors. The Mac version has been updated to run on OS X.
Where to find it
Related links
abuse32 (windows port by Jeremy Scott)
abuse - the half life of 2D games!
Comment by kv9 / RUNEZ — August 31, 2006 @ 2:09 pm