Abadox: The Deadly Inner War

"Milton Bradley presents Abadox = strange title screen."

This is a standard side-scrolling flying shooting game along the lines of R-Type and Life-Force. However, this is the first one I played as a child, so this is my favorite of its kind. You seem to be a space marine who goes destroying aliens and stuff. You start out on the planet's surface and then go underground, deeper and deeper into the alien's lair. Strikes me as sort of strange that the title screen says ''Milton Bradley presents Abadox.'' I thought that Milton Bradley was usually knows for doing board games such as Monopoly. Perhaps they should have made more games of this style. Oh well...on with the review.

Gameplay/Control:8/10
The play control is responsive and the space marine does what you tell him to do. I also like how fast you can shoot bullets in this game, so if you push the fire button at a faster pace it will actually fire faster up to a point. None of this shoot-one-bullet-at-a-time-until-you-get-swarmed-and-die nonsense.
The gameplay is solid and I enjoy shooting games of this nature. The hit detection is good and you should be able to see if you are hitting things and vice versa. You basically just scroll sideways through the game shooting stuff until you get to a boss, which you also shoot. Along the way you can destroy capsules and enemies for items which will upgrade your gun. Obviously, the better the gun, the better the chance of you living.

Graphics/Sound: 7/10
The graphics are good. The artists formed some pretty good aliens and surroundings. It actually seems like you are playing the game on an alien planet instead of a slightly deformed Earth. Some of the bosses are huge and look very menacing.
The sound is ok. The music is kind of annoying and gets old fast. The sound effects are pretty good. When you shoot your gun it makes a little ''pff pff'' sound and when you hit something it also makes the appropriate sound.

Replayability: 7/10
I prefer to vertical scrolling shooters to side scrolling shooters, so I would rather play 1943, Legendary Wings, or Gun-Nac than play Abadox, but it is still a pretty good game. There will be no changes each time you play through the games, but for some reason games like these are fun no matter how many times I play them. Perhaps it is the senseless carnage. It is definitely worth a download and worth buying the actual cartridge if you can find it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/31/02, Updated 08/31/02