Last Updated on: 16th February 2026, 12:14 pm
Web site: abuse2.com (not active)
Category: Games
Sub-Category: Action
Platform: MS DOS, OS X, Acorn Archimedes, AmigaOS, iOS, Android, Linux, BSD, AIX
License: Proprietary
Interface: GUI
Wikipedia: Abuse (video game)
First release: 1996
Abuse – a computer game developed by Crack dot Com and published by Origin Systems and Electronic Arts in 1996 for DOS and Linux. An improved port for Mac OS was created by Bungie Studios. After the game’s source code was released in 1998, an Amiga port was also created.
The game’s protagonist, Nick Vrenna, has been wrongly imprisoned. Unfortunately, an accident occurs while the prison is undergoing experiments, and all the humans—excluding Nick, who appears immune to the toxic fumes—are transformed into monsters.
The game was initially released as shareware, but in today’s terminology, it could be called a “beta demo.” The free version was created based on an incomplete game.
Shareware versions were released for MS-DOS and Linux. Abuse was shipped with many GNU/Linux distributions at the time. However, due to the use of old versions of the Lisp API (1.x) in the shareware releases, modifications made to it were incompatible with the full version (which used Lisp 2.0), and the full version itself was only available for MS-DOS.
Abuse was ported to Mac OS by Olivier Yu of Crack dot.com and published by Bungie Studios. This version was extensively rewritten. The graphics were partially improved at 640×480 resolution. (The PC version ran at 320×200 VGA resolution, and although it could be run at higher resolutions, the graphics were still not scaled.)
About two years after the game’s release, Crack dot Com decided to release the game’s source code and the shareware version’s content (excluding game sounds) into the public domain. The game saw little development even after the code was released. Despite this, updated editions were created for GNU/Linux, and multiplayer was enabled via TCP/IP. A port of the game was created for SDL, allowing it to run on Microsoft Windows and X11 with screens with more than 256 colors. The Macintosh version was updated to work with OS X.
The Abuse screenshot source: Wikipedia; License: Public domain.
