Fester's Fools There are games in this world that are created with creativity, love, and skill. Then, there are the franchise games. And then there franchise games based on situation comedies that ended in 1966. On a cold day in ’89, the Addams Family made a come back, two years before their big screen debut, two years before anyone with a NES knew who or what The Addams Family was, there was Fester’s Quest. And it was the greatest April Fool’s joke ever. Even if it came out in September, I don’t care, records from that era are sketchy at best. The plot is very simple, aliens have kidnapped Gomez, and it’s up to Uncle Fester Addams to rescue his brother. If you’re slapping your forehead and shouting, “Of course, that’s the perfect plot to an Addams Family game!” then you’re obviously completely insane, or a Sunsoft employee, and in either situation, you should get off the internet and back to your cage. The warden will see you. For those of you who have never played this abomination, imagine Blaster Master, but without the tank, picture the dismal part, the time you’re just a little boy trying desperately not to get hit, because every blow will deplete your life and weapon abilities. That’s the entire game. Well, except for the really, really horrible parts, but we’ll cover that later. So you’re just a bald guy wearing a blue cloak tromping along with your… gun. I have to admit, I was born in ’83, so I have not seen many episodes of the Addams Family, but I must have missed the episode where Uncle Fester repels a booger-based alien invasion with his trusty lamp-gun that shoots boomerangs. But that’s not Fester’s last line of defense! He’s got a leather whip that gradually upgrades to a morning star, and then a flaming morning star, which is so not like Castlevania II that I can’t imagine why I would even bring it up. Oh, and he can shoot missiles, too, presumably out of his personal rocket launcher. Fester is one versatile not-at-all-like-other-video-game-characters dude, which is exactly how he was created in 1932. And Fester’s got a whole inventory of items, too, like: Money, which is used to restore health through hotdog purchases. This is practically the only way Fester can recover his miniscule health bar, which I suppose is to simulate the creepy, morbid feeling of The Addams Family. Also makes the game absolute hell to play, which I suppose is to simulate the creepy, morbid feeling of being hit in the eye with a hammer. Vice Grips, which restore Fester from “slow” status. Yes, in addition to having next to no life energy, Fester can be made to move even slower via contact with certain enemies. Vice grips stop the slow-down, which makes perfect sense when you think about it, if you’re high. The Invisible Potion, which will make you invincible, but still very visible. When I was in second grade, this confused the living hell out of me, and permanently destroyed my vocabulary. I never went to Harvard because of this game. Missiles, which Fester uses to open red, sealed doors. Without these missiles, defeating Mother Brain is completely impossible. And The Noose, which at least has a series connection. As opposed to simply suiciding Fester up, the noose summons Lurch the butler to kill every non-Fester thing on the screen. Why can’t Lurch assist Fester the entire journey, hm? Is he busy scrubbing the sink while Fester faces certain death at the hands of a generally gooey evil? My guess is Ted Cassidy, the actor who portrayed Lurch, wanted as little to do with this game as possible, and used his other-worldly, post-death powers to be the most powerful/rarely seen thing in the game. And then there’s the one part of the game that was ahead of its time/horrible. Most of the game takes place in a faux neighborhood, some sort of suburbia with an oddly high number of gaping holes in various structures. And the boss of the stage is always hiding in one of the little neighborhood houses. Once entering the boss’s home, you enter 3-D hell. This game is the childhood trauma that caused me to dislike first person shooters until this very day. There’s a maze leading up to each boss, and it’s a “3-D” maze made up of roughly four or five different graphics. Hallway, hallway, hallway, door, whoops, you went out the wrong door, now you’re outside. Hallway, hallway, hallway, left, hallway, door, well how’d that happen, you’re outside again. Repeat forever and ever. No, I told you already, the noose isn’t used for that, put it down. And should you ever reach the end, congratulations, you’ve found one of five bosses rejected from Blaster Master for being too generic. There’s an ugly guy with long arms, a Triceraton, a hell-themed knight, a knight-gunner, and, finally, a mother-computer thingy. There are simple patterns to the bosses, so life would be easy if Fester could move faster than a sloth on valium, or if his gun didn’t become completely useless after a hit or two, or if the items in your inventory remotely affected your enemies, or if Sunsoft didn’t want to destroy countless hours of your life. Oh, and the BM pause trick doesn’t work, so welcome to pain world, population: the sap with a controller. Oh, and the common enemies are piles of (constantly reproducing) slime, mutated frogs (spawn of pet of Jason?), and bald heads that spew flies. There’s really nothing I can add to that. And this is what makes up an Addams Family game. The Addams Family had an episode that began with Fester lighting the family’s polar bear on fire with Morticia’s new flamethrower, and Sunsoft gave us Fester vs. Aliens with a flashlight gun. The Addams had a great-great-grandfather named Pegleg. Does this mean nothing to you people!? Wednesday and Pugsley, they wrestled an alligator in quicksand to pass a boring afternoon. There are literally millions of ways this game could have actually tied into the 20 years dated source material and still have been enjoyable, but, nope, we get a bald guy that needs hot dogs to survive fly-related injuries. So was this whole game an April Fool’s joke? There were some pretty bad licensed games out in the late 80’s. The Three Stooges, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Blues Brothers, just to name a few, all horrible in their own right. But Friday the 13th had campers and Jason, the Three Stooges had pie fights, even the Blues Brothers at least had a detestable two player mode that preserved some of the feel of the movie. But the Addams Family, they get a few items and characters that practically boil down to name-dropping, and a quest against aliens championed by a peripheral character. Gomez, the character who is a known for his excellent swordsmanship, is kidnapped within the first five seconds. There is nothing redeemable here, it’s all just a Blaster Master rehash that happens to have a few Addams Family cameos. Heck, change maybe two sprites and you could have Barney Fife battling space aliens, or why not Darrin going on a quest with a magic gun to rescue a kidnapped Samantha. Sure… your witchy wife is kidnapped, she left a magic gun and magic whip, and you can eat hot dogs to restore your health… it all makes perfect sense, hand me the phone we use to call 1989, I’ve got an idea here. Anyway, yes, this game is a joke, obviously created by someone who so very badly wanted their severance package. According to the renegade lawn gnomes known as “Laszlo” that created that game database on 1up.com, the value of Fester’s Quest is $4.99. However, that number isn’t nearly arbitrary enough, so I give Fester’s Quest a rating of 40% of a really cute picture of a welsh corgi. Hope that helps! Look out! Slimes! Back to Game'in!

All non-copyrighted material is copyright 2005 Robert Pollack. Reproduction of most anything without Robert's express permission in whole or in part is prohibited by law. Ain't that a kick in the pants?