Alright, truth time... I didn't actually play through "Abadox" in its entirety. I know, I know... HERESY. Before I'm pelted with verbal stones, hear me out. When any horizontal shooter has lag, it should be in order for you to slow down, breathe, and shoot some of the swarms of enemies that are suffocating the screen. A shooter should not have lag between shots fired! If I'm tapping the B button rapidly, the amount of times my thumb hits the button should be relative to the number of shots fired on the screen. When there's great (and I mean great) discrepancy between the two, we have problems; especially when other shooters on the NES do not have this issue.
The lag is a shame because otherwise, Abadox is a fairly decent, if not straightforward, shooter for your NES. Like any other standard horizontal shmup, this game is shoot and move, shoot and move. Eyeballs, gaping mouths, and flying skeletons are par for the course, as you guide your space hero through mile after mile of intestinal space. I'm actually a little surprised that Nintendo let this bad boy slide through their, at the time, Gestapo screening process for games. Though no explicit blood spatter is shown (the title screen excepted), entrails and pulsating red intestines don't exactly scream innocent.
Like many ridiculously challenging Nintendo games, I only recommend this if you have some time on your hands because you will die a lot. Judging by the levels I played through, the game is made for you to constantly add new powers to your repertoire. Unlike many shmups, when you gain different powers, you keep them all instead of simply having one. It's definitely a nice change. Should you die, though, you lose all your powers and if you're in a later level, you need those powers. "Game over" will probably be your road well-traveled. Happy trails.
C+
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