Abuse

Abuse. Not the most fortunate name for a video game, but hey, it was 1995 and nineties edginess was in full swing. According to developer Crack dot Com (another very nineties name!), it's the player who's being abused here, knowing full well that pressing the buttons in all those levels is going to bring down hordes of howlers on you, and doing it anyway. It also went well with Crack, they said. Okay...

What you get is a dark and grimy run and gun platformer with something that was almost unheard of on DOS at the time: you move with the keyboard and aim freely with the mouse. Throw in gorgeous lighting effects, a whole arsenal of weapons, a jetpack, a built-in level editor and hordes of very alien-looking mutants dropping from the ceiling, and you've got a game that was made in just six months on a dare.

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") we have no less than four guests. Lukasz ("Red Hexapus") is back on the show, after previously joining us for Earthworm Jim. On for the first time are Zack ("Zacktorial"), who hosts the official OverClocked ReMix podcast, and Åke ("forslund"), who found us through our Mastodon. We're also joined by Metin ("metinc"), who is working on his own fork of Abuse and brought plenty of fun findings from the original source code.

We also received a voice message from Watchful, who is still going strong with the Windows Game Club. Thanks Watchful! If you also want to send in a voice message for a future episode, please e-mail it to [email protected]

https://www.dosgameclub.com/podcast/2026/11/ep122.mp3

[ download mp3 ] (117 mins, 134 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping with organising the podcast and for digging up the old magazine reviews, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

RELEVANT LINKS:

* Metin's fork of Abuse for modern platforms, which removes the 15 FPS limit, supports WASD and adds online co-op, among many other improvements.

* OverClocked ReMix is a community for video game music arrangements, with thousands of remixes from games of all eras and platforms, including over 50 DOS games.

* Crack dot Com's old About page from 1997 explains why "Crack" and "Abuse" go well together.

* Abuse's plot changed during development. The original, much darker story had you infiltrating an alien hive instead of a prison. Both plots are archived, along with some notes on the traces of the original plot that can still be found in level 14.

* An interview with Dave Taylor and Jonathan Clark in which they talk about how they made Abuse on a dare and set out to sell 50,000 copies.

* When Crack Dot Com closed down in 1998 they open sourced Abuse. A copy of the original source release is on GitHub.

* Dave Taylor's blog post about a possible Abuse 2 and the unauthorized iPhone port that ended up on the App Store in 2009.

* It's not quite clear who composed the music for Abuse, as sources disagree on this. Either way, the entire soundtrack can be found on YouTube.

* Abuse is one of the games on the Worthwhile DOS Games poster.