Welcome to another edition of Playing With Power. The review article that looks at all things Nintendo Entertainment System. To end 2012, I looked at an NES game that I consider to be one of the worst games on the console. So, to even things out, and open 2013 with a bang, I figured I’d look at one of the games that most people consider to be one of the worst, most horrible, most unplayable, most broken hard games to ever grace the NES. Do I agree? Well, find out as Playing With Power returns to the creepy and kooky Addams Family as we review Fester’s Quest.
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1989
PUBLISHER: Sunsoft
GENRE: Run-and-Gun
As stated back in the review of the Addams Family Movie NES game:
The Addams Family started off as a New Yorker comic strip in the 1930′s from American cartoonist Charles Addams about a bizarre family who enjoy all things macabre and morbid, blissfully unaware of how other people perceive them as scary and weird. The success of the strips would warrant a sitcom on CBS in the 1960′s to compete with ABC’s successful show The Munsters. Despite the two season run, the show became a cult hit, and the Addams would remain prominent with specials, and animated adaptations throughout the 70′s. And with the evolution of television and the boom of syndication in the 80′s, The Addams Family became popular once more to a new audience ready to embrace it.
So naturally Sunsoft saw the popularity of that Addams Family, and figured that it would be perfect for an NES game. And Fester’s Quest was released in 1989. It was probably a rare occasion that the game’s commercial was actually brutally honest, simply telling gamers that this is one tough video game. The game sold quite well, but has often been given a negative light to it, mainly for the game’s infamous difficulty, and one of the biggest screwover aspects ever devised in a video game. But is the negativity really deserving?
COVER STORY
It does the job intended of it. Fester and the Addams house in plain view, and that great title font with the spider hanging off it. Doesn’t tell you a lick about what the game is actually about, but for those who were fond of the Addams Family, it worked well enough.
STORY
While going about his nightly moonbathing, Uncle Fester notices a giant UFO in the sky. With the UFO attacking the town, and Patriarch Gomez missing, it’s up to Fester to put a stop to these pesky aliens and save the day.
Yes, this is a story about Uncle Fester fighting aliens. It’s already hard to tell if this is either extremely awesome, or just random and dumb.
GAMEPLAY
Fester’s Quest is a one player action shooter. You control Uncle Fester as he must go through the town defeating aliens. You move Fester with the D-Pad. He can only move in four directions, and not diagonally. You shoot your gun or use your whip with the B button (when you find it later in the game), as well as use certain other obtained weapons with the A button. Shooting requires multiple tappings of the B button, which can burn your thumb down quickly. This is one of those games where a turbo button or NES Advantage is a godsend.
The game is broken into four different major “levels”. First is above ground, where you’ll have to survive the giant maze-like area to find your way into the next part, the sewers. You’ll have to travel and survive the monsters dwelling inside, and make it back out, where you’ll enter giant buildings. These execute a first-person style of gameplay. No enemies to fight in these, but they are easy to get lost in as well. They usually take you to the boss. And finally there’s the UFO at the end of the game, where you’ll have to survive as you make it to the boss of the game.
Throughout the massive town, there are plenty of aliens that Fester has to destroy. Once destroyed, they often leave items that can be collected. These include money that can be used at hot dog vendors to restore Fester’s health, light bulbs which can light the sewers, and keys that open houses. There are also gun and whip icons. The blue versions of these will upgrade your weapon multiple times, giving you a better shot (for the most part), while pink ones downgrade the gun by 1.
As you go through the town, you’ll find brown houses, when you enter the door by using one of the keys you collected, you’ll be greeted by a different member of the Addams Family, who will give you a certain item. These include TNT that will destroy enemies near it, vice grips that will fix your speed if you get slowed down by pesky bugs, Health potions that restore any missing health you may have, invisible potions that offer a short term invincibility, missiles that will lock on to enemies and destroy them, and finally nooses that will summon the Addams butler Lurch, who will give his famous “You Rang” catchphrase, and destroy all enemies on screen.
So, with all that on paper, some decent controls, and even some great music (we’ll get into that shortly), what’s with all of the flack that this game gets? Well, strap down, because there’s a lot.
Let’s start with the first major issue with the game, that being the guns. When you upgrade your gun in the game, you hope for it to be extremely powerful. In Fester’s Quest, it doesn’t ever feel any stronger. You get more shots, and better range, but for the most part, the upgraded shots move in weird patterns, making it easy to miss most enemies. Then there’s the case of shooting in a far more closed area. The gun often won’t work, as it will hit a corner and just stop. And when cornered by enemies, you really don’t need that.
Next are the enemies themselves. They are a pain for so many reasons. First, it takes a butt load of a shots to take them out, even on the most upgraded weapon. They’re mostly pretty stock creatures, but the main ones are frog creatures lifted right out of another Sunsoft game, Blaster Master. Not only is that annoying, but the respawn in this game is unbearable. You can’t move more than a couple inches without another enemy popping up. And they can soon be overwhelming, and that leads to a cheap death.
Speaking of death, you start the game with one life, and two hit points. TWO. Which means you have to be pretty good on your feet, or used to everything in the game to ensure that those two hit points don’t go away. You do get help later on with two extra hit points you’ll find as you progress, as well as health potions, but with a lot of the crap this game puts in front of you, it’s definitely not worth it. Especially that considering if you die at any time in the game, no matter if it’s the final boss of the game, you will continue AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE GAME!
I had to bold that just to nail it in. You start at the first of the game. Still with all items collected, and all bosses felled, but you have to make the journey back to regain your lost progress. And honestly, that’s where the game suffers the most, and is often the one thing that gives this game the hatred it seemingly deserves. For a game with a map as large as Fester’s Quest, checkpoints are crucial in hopes of survival. Starting at the beginning is an unfair punishment for the player. I spent an hour or so making progress in the game. Why do I have to kill another hour to get back to where I left off before dying? It’s just silly.
Despite those qualms, the game does control decently, and there’s really no hit detection issues. The game, as you can tell, is hard, but that all really depends on how well you are at these types of shooter games. It is beatable, just be ready to suffer as you try to endure.
GRAPHICS
Graphics are pretty solid. The levels all look well detailed, Sprites have personality to them, Fester looks great, the pictures of the different Addams members all look like their TV counterparts, and the cut scene in the beginning is nicely animated for an NES game from that era. Nothing is too offensive, and makes for a good game to look at.
MUSIC
While you could say the gameplay was flawed in Fester’s Quest, the soundtrack sure wasn’t. All of the songs in the game are amazing, giving off some great action and energy. Even the Addams Family theme used in the title screen is a faithful rendition given a more upbeat and energetic retooling. It all makes for some of the finest tracks on the NES.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Oh Fester’s Quest. I really am mixed about you. On one hand, you have great control and fun gameplay. On the other hand, you have annoying difficulty, and one of the most unfair punishments in any game. In the end, I think this game suffers from too many flaws to make it a great game, or even a tolerable one. Which is such a shame because if certain things would have been polished, the guns, the enemy respawning, the guns being useless in tight spaces, you could almost call this a good game.
And as much as I have my qualms about it, I still do like it. There is fun to be had if you’re looking for a tough game, and even being so weird for a licensed game, you can still buy it because it’s the Addams Family. Nothing really makes much sense with them to begin with. But so many flaws with the game are enough to turn off most gamers who aren’t looking for a challenge that comes at the price of major annoyance. So in the end, I say give it a try if you don’t mind some flaws and difficulty. If not, just move on.
RATING: Thumbs Down