VOGONS


First post, by antrad

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While browsing through archive.org for some information about Abuse (Crack dot Com, 1996) I found about a game built on the same engine called Genocide. It was made by KaosKontrol and released in 1998, then re-released in 1999 as "Genocide: Remixed Version".

You basically play as a Borg soldier shooting Strogg in some Quake 2 facility, so on paper it should be the best 2D shooter ever made, but in reality it is not a good game. It is supposed to be a fast paced side-scrolling shooter, but then you shoot a bad guy and he falls to the ground and you can't shoot him until he stands up again. This basically ruins the whole game, and it is mind-blowing someone thought that was a good idea.

Speaking of Quake 2, in the Remixed Version there are several textures taken directly from Quake 2 and also some sound effects. The developer seems to have been very sketchy. On their official website they later announced 3-4 games (BlockWar,Trouble, Blowout,Kadaver), and in an interview mentioned how they are rapidly expanding and have offices all over the world like Yokohama(Japan), San Francisco(USA) and Nice(France)... pretty expensive locations for a developer that took Abuse and changed few textures. I bet it was never more than one guy. They actually did release a completely different game on Steam few years ago called Versus Squad under name DieselPower.

Genocide_-_version_comparison.png

The Abuse Engine was stripped from some of the best parts. Game still has a built-in editor, but it was greatly simplified. The Lisp based scripting system that controlled all the Abuse logic was completely scrapped. Textures also use different format and it is all encrypted and not moddable like Abuse was.

There is almost no info about Genocide online, but you can find the actual full games with a simple search, unless you end up on websites and videos about WW2 and stuff. There are only a few videos of it on YouTube. "Genocide" is really not the best name for a game, because it is very hard to search for online. I did my best to bring the game and some info about it back from the dead by uploading the demos on ModDB, posting some screenshots there and creating PCGamingWiki pages for both versions and listing the differences.

https://www.moddb.com/games/genocide
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Genocide
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Genocide:_Remixed_Version

It would be great if someone has the full boxed version and if they could share the photos, because even MobyGames doesn't have covers for it. Also the ReadMe file mentions that owners of the full game can download the development kit from their website (ftp://ftp.kaoskontrol.com/genodev.zip) and use it to mod the game, so it would be mind-blowing if anyone still has those files.

https://antonior-software.blogspot.com

Reply 1 of 5, by leileilol

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There's also confusion with another, earlier, frankly more original (and likely better) mecha platformer series called Genocide for the Sharp x68000. that's worth playing at least

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 2 of 5, by antrad

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leileilol wrote on 2020-03-12, 08:24:

There's also confusion with another, earlier, frankly more original (and likely better) mecha platformer series called Genocide for the Sharp x68000. that's worth playing at least

There is also Genocide for DOS released in 1996, but it is a completely different type of game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=302O7HXMC34

https://antonior-software.blogspot.com

Reply 4 of 5, by Dukefazon

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I've played the demo of this game back in around 1998. I remembered it was dark and gritty, mostly black and the aim was controlled by the mouse and you were moving with the keyboard. And the last thing I remembered is that when you are in the main menu the character runs around the level in the background. Soon I came accross Abuse and I was like "hey, this game totally looks like that game I played at a friend's place but the graphics are different..." I liked Abuse and it's superior in every sense but I wanted to find THAT game. I looked high and low, tried mobygames's "if you like this game, here are similar ones" and I couldn't find this game for 24 years. A couple of days ago I tried my luck with igdb.com and searched platform=PC, release 1996-1999, perspective: side view, game type: shooter. And there it was. I was so happy I could finally find this game! It's so niche, nobody knows about it, it's not a particularly good game but I wanted to confirm that the game I'm remembering from 24 ago really exists. I thought my memories were faint and I was afraid that they morphed into something that's not even real. Turns out every key component I remembered was real it was just hard to find it because nobody talks about this clone of the video game Abuse.

Reply 5 of 5, by necros2k7

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Anyone had luck to run on Win11? Strange but with Dgvoodoo 0.93 demo runs fine but not with 0.97 and release ver,
Give error right after run:
genocide.exe - App error
(0xc0000022). Press OK to Exit