The Good
- Power-up potions transform you into some of History’s Greatest Monsters.
- Great retro classic video game music.
The Bad
- Frustrating gameplay causes even battling baddies a chore instead of fun.
- No saves or continues.
- Poor graphics and boring level design take away any of the fun or feeling of The Addams Family world.
- Bugs allow enemies to hurt you by just coming close, yet sometimes when you hit them you go right through and get injured yourself.
- If an enemy hits you it is impossible to fire back until you’ve recovered.
Features
- Six boss battles leading up to a final confrontation with Uncle Fester.
- Play as Gomez Addams, the head of The Addams Family.
- Potions power-ups transform Gomez into Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man and a Sea Monster.
The Game
Just like the Addams Family themselves, their first video game release was an odd one. In 1989, Sunsoft released Fester’s Quest, staring the electrified Uncle Fester, for the Nintendo Entertainment System. With no movie tie-in, DVD premiere or even resurgence in popularity, it was an unusual choice, but even odder is that they chose not use the Addams Family name in the title. This lack of “branding” aside, the game was a moderate success, because just two years later when the big budget Addams Family movie hit theaters the floodgate opened and we had Addams Family games for every major system. Since then there have been a total of 20 video games staring the creepy clan, three of which are available on the various Game Boy systems.
The Addams Family for the Game Boy Classic takes place after the brainwashed and amnesiac Uncle Fester, along with the evil Abigail Craven and the Addams’ crooked lawyer Tully Alford, have evicted the Addams Family from their mansion and stolen their fortune. With their signature naiveté of the normal world, Morticia, Wednesday, Pugsley, Granny and Lurch return to the mansion to try and reason with the band of crooks, and wind up getting kidnapped. Now it’s up to Gomez to find his clan, free them and reclaim their home and wealth.
A side-scrolling platformer, you play as Gomez seeking out your kin on the grounds of the Addams Mansion. From the graveyard, boiler room, attic, cellar…and ice box(?)…you jump and run through sparse environments, battling and outrunning creepy critters such as bats, ghosts, giant spiders and rats as you search for the entrances to the boss battles. There are six bosses, the first four being generic ghouls (including an obviously phallic devil creature) leading to a confrontation with Uncle Fester himself, followed by the sinister lawyer Tully.
With the outrageous world of The Addams Family this game should be a exciting and fun experience, however not only does the personality of the movie or show not translate to the game, it is extraordinarily frustrating to play. Battling baddies should be one of the most fun aspects , but here you dread having to deal with them. When hit by an enemy you have to wait until recovered before returning fire, causing you to lose most opportunities to get in a good shot or defeat the creep. For some reason Ghosts don’t even have to actually hit you to cause damage, they need only fly close by, which comes off like a bug in the game. Speaking of bugs, when you stop on a spider, sometimes you squash them, but other times you go right through them and get injured in the process.
The key to completing the game is to hit the boss battles in the right order. You can have an arsenal full of swords, but it won’t be enough to defeat the Toy Box boss, unless you’ve first gotten the Hot Coals weapon, a reward for beating the Boiler Room boss. As there are no continues, saves or clues as to which boss to hit first, you won’t find out if your properly equipped until after reaching the enemy, and lose all progress by running out of ammo and having to start your game from scratch.
Although it is difficult, I recommend to not shooting the cannon-fodder enemies, just run like heck until you reach a Monster Potion, the only fun part of the game. Once you gulp down a Monster Potions you transform into one of the classic Universal Monsters, each of which gives you extra strengths; Dracula turns you into a flying vampire, Frankenstein gives you 10 extra hits, Wolf Man lets you run faster and The Creature from the Black Lagoon (called Sea Monster here due to rights issues) has you swimming better.
Even with the frustrating gameplay, the lack of direction and no way to save or continue your game, things could remain fun if it even came close to capturing the wacky world of the Addams household. Unfortunately the environments are sparse, the baddies and decor are generic and none of has an Addams Family feel. The best thing that can be said about The Addams Family for the Game Boy Classic is that the publishers, Ocean, learned from their mistakes and fixed most of these problems in the sequel The Addams Family: Pugsley’s Scavenger Hunt.