''Abuse'' is a

run and gun video game Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs) are a Video game genre, subgenre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain typ ...

developed by Crack dot Com and published by

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...

in North America and

Origin Systems Origin Systems, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Austin, Texas. It was founded on March 3, 1983, by Richard Garriott and his brother Robert. Origin is best known for their groundbreaking work in multiple genres of video games ...

in Europe. It was released on February 29, 1996 for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

. A

Mac OS Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. in a succession of two major series. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the classic Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system ...

port of the game was published by

Bungie Bungie, Inc. is an American video game company based in Bellevue, Washington, and a subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment. The company was established in May 1991 by Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones (programme ...

and released on March 5, 1997. The game's

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

, along with some of the

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. ...

content, has been in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

since the late 1990s and has been ported to

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and many other platforms.

Plot

The protagonist of the game, Nick Vrenna, has been unjustly incarcerated in a prison where the staff are performing unethical medical experiments upon the inmates. A prison riot occurs and an experiment goes horribly wrong. The people inside the prison - except for Nick, who seems to be immune - are infected with a substance called Abuse that transforms them into monsters. With the water supply in danger of being infected, Nick arms himself and fights through the horde to prevent this, and then escapes from the prison complex.

Gameplay

''Abuse'' resembles a side-scrolling

platform game A platformer (also called a platform game, and sometimes a jump 'n' run game) is a subgenre of action game in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are characterized by levels wi ...

. The keyboard is used to move Nick, while the mouse is used for aiming the weapons. The gameplay consists of fighting various enemies (mostly the various forms of mutants, who prefer to attack in huge swarms) and solving simple puzzles, usually involving switches. Networked play, through

IPX/SPX IPX/SPX stands for Internetwork Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packet Exchange. IPX and SPX are networking protocols used initially on networks using the (since discontinued) Novell NetWare operating systems. They also became widely used on networks ...

, is supported.

Development

''Abuse'' had a very different storyline coming out of production. The update for it replaced the original introduction with the current storyline. The original involved an invasion by an alien species called "ants". The player was a special ops agent, sent into their 'hive' to covertly destroy the aliens by shutting down the cooling system. This story was alluded to in a hidden section towards the end of level 14, where a large area, full of maroon tiles, can be found. The game was in development for 6 months by three people with a budget of $150,000.

Release

''Abuse'' was originally released on February 29, 1996, for

and

, as an incomplete

version by

in North America, and

in Europe. The game was ported to

by Oliver Yu of Crack dot Com and published by

on March 5, 1997. The port was largely reworked for Mac, with the graphics partially redone to work better in 640x480 resolution. An AIX port published by IBM on September 26, 1996, is distributed via FTP.

Source code release

Approximately two years after the release of the game, Crack dot Com decided to release the game's

. Also the shareware release's game data (excluding the sound effects) was handed into the

Community development

Based on the source release the game's community worked initially on maintenance work, e.g. making the game work over

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

. In 2001 ''Abuse'' was adapted to SDL multimedia library,Abuse-SDL
on labyrinth.net.au (2001) with other technical refinements such as more than the 8-bit

color depth Color depth, also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, or the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel. When referring to a pixel, the concept can be defined as bit ...

the original version was limited to. The SDL version allowed easy

porting In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desig ...

to modern platforms, for instance

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

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and also the Mac version has been updated to run on

OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. Over the years, the game became available for many more platforms, for instance

BeOS BeOS is a discontinued operating system for personal computers that was developed by Be Inc. It was conceived for the company's BeBox personal computer which was released in 1995. BeOS was designed for multitasking, multithreading, and a graph ...

, Nintendo

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

via Wii homebrew,

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, and in 2009

AmigaOS 4 AmigaOS 4 (abbreviated as OS4 or AOS4) is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code developed by Commodore International, Commodore, and partially on version 3.9 develop ...

. The game has also been ported to the mobile devices, to

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

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under the name Abuse Classic. Until 2011 the game was maintained by Sam Hocevar on his webpage. In 2014 the game was ported to SDL2 and transferred to a

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

repository. In 2016, on the 20th birthday of the game, a community developer released a "20th anniversary

source port A source port is a software project based on the source code of a game engine that allows the game to be played on operating systems or computing platforms with which the game was not originally compatible. Description Source ports are often ...

" on base of the previous works which enabled custom resolutions,

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

rendering, and

Xbox 360 controller The Xbox 360 controller is the primary game controller for Microsoft's Xbox 360 home video game console that was introduced at E3 2005. The Xbox 360 controller comes in both wired and wireless versions. The Xbox controller is not compatible wit ...

support, and fixed the music.

Reception

Reviewing the DOS original, a '' Next Generation'' critic said the game "has everything it needs to be a great arcade classic – intuitive play control, a variety of weapons, creatures, devices, and traps ... scores of secrets to be ferreted out". He also praised the inclusion of an accessible level editor, and said the game's strongest point is the depth of its challenging puzzles, though he criticized the lack of story. He scored the game 4 out of 5 stars. The game was also reviewed in ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...

''. Due to its futuristic yet spooky atmosphere, '' Home of the Underdogs'' regarded ''Abuse'' as a 2D platform equivalent of the first person shooter ''

Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (1934–2020), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitche ...

''. ''Abuse'' in its open-source version was selected in August 2011 as "HotPick" by Linux Format.''Linux Format'' 147, August 2011, p. 72

References

External links

*
Abuse-SDL 0.9a
current home page
Abuse-SDL v0.8
home until 2011 by Sam Hocevar
abuse2.com
official homepage until 2003 (archived) {{DEFAULTSORT:Abuse (Video Game) 1996 video games Acorn Archimedes games Amiga games AmigaOS 4 games BeOS games Bungie games Classic Mac OS games Commercial video games with freely available source code DOS games Electronic Arts games Exakt Entertainment games IOS games Linux games Multiplayer and single-player video games Origin Systems games Public-domain software with source code Run and gun games Science fiction video games Shareware games Video games about genetic engineering Video games developed in the United States Video games scored by Bobby Prince Video games set in prison