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Fester's Quest was a weird game, wasn't it?

This game predates the movies by several years. That's the weird part.

Exactly. At the time Fester's Quest came out, The Addams Family wasn't exactly a hot property. In fact, I'm pretty sure Fester's Quest was the first Addams Family game ever made. It based its character designs on the 60's TV show, which had been off the air for well over two decades by the time the game came out. The last Addams Family related thing to come out prior to Fester's Quest was Halloween with the New Addams Family in 1977, 12 years before the game. So yeah, that makes the usage of the license all the more weird.
 
The NES use to get a lot of licensed properties if they were still around or not, I mean we got a Three Stooges game. If there was a license to exploit that mine was tapped. Again as one person pointed out there was a Gilligans Island NES game.
 
Nostalgia glasses are firmly on my face when I think about this game. When I was a kid, the game was strange, and difficult as hell. I'm PRETTY sure I didn't like it at the time. Now it's kind of a warm fuzzy memory of the type of game that the era was full of. I haven't played it since then, I should give it a whirl and see how I feel about it, now.
 
Exactly. At the time Fester's Quest came out, The Addams Family wasn't exactly a hot property. In fact, I'm pretty sure Fester's Quest was the first Addams Family game ever made. It based its character designs on the 60's TV show, which had been off the air for well over two decades by the time the game came out. The last Addams Family related thing to come out prior to Fester's Quest was Halloween with the New Addams Family in 1977, 12 years before the game. So yeah, that makes the usage of the license all the more weird.

I know that Ocean of America took over the license in the SNES era.
 
The NES use to get a lot of licensed properties if they were still around or not, I mean we got a Three Stooges game. If there was a license to exploit that mine was tapped. Again as one person pointed out there was a Gilligans Island NES game.

Yeah, the NES did have a lot of games based on odd properties.

Gilligan's Island, The Three Stooges, Fester's Quest, Yo! Noid, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Gremlins II, Goonies II (I wonder how many kids were confused as to why there was a Goonies II game when there was no Goonies II movie, or even a first Goonies game in the US), The Hunt for Red October...lots of stuff that either hadn't been in the public eye for a long time, or just seemed like odd properties to make video games of at a time when video games were still mainly considered "for kids".

Nostalgia glasses are firmly on my face when I think about this game. When I was a kid, the game was strange, and difficult as hell. I'm PRETTY sure I didn't like it at the time. Now it's kind of a warm fuzzy memory of the type of game that the era was full of. I haven't played it since then, I should give it a whirl and see how I feel about it, now.

You'll get to the sewer then curse the day video games were invented, most likely. :lol
 
Exactly. At the time Fester's Quest came out, The Addams Family wasn't exactly a hot property. In fact, I'm pretty sure Fester's Quest was the first Addams Family game ever made. It based its character designs on the 60's TV show, which had been off the air for well over two decades by the time the game came out. The last Addams Family related thing to come out prior to Fester's Quest was Halloween with the New Addams Family in 1977, 12 years before the game. So yeah, that makes the usage of the license all the more weird.

Yep. And I remember that at the time, my tv network decided to re-roll the old, black & white Addams Family series at the time. I remember that I taped a few shows, just to see some of the characters. But I guess that the oldness of the black/white series, put this game in a better light.

This was about 6-7 years before the new 'Addams Family-boom' with new movies and so on. So the Addams family license did not make any sense marketing wise. :)
 
I have this cart somewhere. Me and my friend tried to beat it many times as kids but never got very far. Most parts of the game just felt broken and unfair.
 
This was about 6-7 years before the new 'Addams Family-boom' with new movies and so on. So the Addams family license did not make any sense marketing wise. :)

Tell that to the Gilligan's Island game, the Three Stooges game...
 
Was there an Addam's Family cartoon or something around that was exposing this IP or something?

As for the game - was it a JP game that was reskinned for Western audiences/IP exposure?
 
Was there an Addam's Family cartoon or something around that was exposing this IP or something?

As for the game - was it a JP game that was reskinned for Western audiences/IP exposure?

Nope and nope.

There was an Addams Family cartoon that came out around 1992, right after the movie came out, though.

Honestly, in the 1980's, an Addams Family game didn't seem too out of place. Keep in mind, that throughout the decade 60's and 70's sitcoms stayed pretty firmly in broadcast and in the public conscious. Even before Fester's Quest came out, as a young kid I knew who the Addams Family were. Same with Gilligan's Island, The Three Stooges, etc. Heck, that's the reason Bugs Bunny stuck around so long. They just never took it off the air because people just never stopped watching.
 
I can remember being on holiday in France and was soo tempted to get this but didn't know what the gist was due to the box being in French. Fast forwards a lot of years later and seeing the AVGN episode I'm glad I dodged that bullet. Might have to pick a copy up some day down the line but can imagine the PAL copy with all that 50hz goodness would be even worse.
 
One of my childhood games that I only beat once back then.

I bought the cart again on my 2011 New York trip from VGNY. When I got back home, I plowed through it in 3 hours.

The game was actually a lot easier than I remembered. I got the energy upgrades and grinded a bit for money; then i bought all the missiles that i could carry and just steamrolled the last 2 bosses. Even though I died a few times, walking back from the start took about 5-10 minutes. The bosses don't respawn when you die, so you just have to trek for a while to get back to the place where you died. You don't lose your stuff either.
 
Wasn't there an Adams Family cartoon out around the time? Or was that after the movie?

After the movie. The cartoon series aired in 1992, I think.

As for Fester's Quest, the game kicked you square in the nuts and shat in your mouth while laughing at you. It was hard as fuck, and the gameplay being clunky didn't help much.
 
God I reviewed this some time last year and it was just as frustrating now as it was back then. I remember me and a friend of mine walking over an hour to the store to pick up a new game back in the day and this is what we settled on. Felt completely hosed after walking 2 hours for some entertainment.

http://www.retrogameage.com/?p=6515
 
After the movie. The cartoon series aired in 1992, I think.

As for Fester's Quest, the game kicked you square in the nuts and shat in your mouth while laughing at you. It was hard as fuck, and the gameplay being clunky didn't help much.

That one movie game on the SNES was great, where you jump around as Gomez. Loved how interconnected the world was, blew my mind as a kid when I came back to the starting area outside the house, except the enemies had changed.

Or randomly going up that tree to find a boss. Good times!
 
That one movie game on the SNES was great, where you jump around as Gomez. Loved how interconnected the world was, blew my mind as a kid when I came back to the starting area outside the house, except the enemies had changed.

Or randomly going up that tree to find a boss. Good times!
I've played and beaten Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt, which apparently is the same design as the SNES game, but they removed some content and changed the main character from Gomez to Pugsley.
 
I remember this game being really hard but at the same time enjoying the hell out of it. I recall my mom playing it a lot as well when I younger too. This had to be one of the most rent edgames for us as well back then. I'm surprised it wasn't bought as well since it was played so much. I don't remember when we played it though. Perhaps after or around the time the film came out. Or right before it.

Recall playing the SNES game as well a lot too. Man. License games were good back in the day. At least they t felt that way. I remember putting a lot of hours in the Star Wars SNES games as well as Hook and the Disney games. I also remember putting a LOT of time for some reason into the Who Framed Roger Rabbit game. I sucked at it but kept renting it and made more and more progress as I played it. Wish that was on the virtual console along with many other games.
 
I've played and beaten Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt, which apparently is the same design as the SNES game, but they removed some content and changed the main character from Gomez to Pugsley.
Oh what? That's not the Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt I remember. The SNES version of Pugsley is very different. Apparently the version you played has no music. You should play the Gomez one on SNES, it has kickass music :)
 
Like many NES games, I rented this first and was immediately turned off by how hard it was. It wasn't the good kind of hard (like Battletoads) but more of the stupid hard (like Towers of Darkness).
 
What is this new GAF trend of hating on classic games for random reasons? FQ was hard but fun. You felt like you were progressing even when you were dying. That's what good NES games often felt like.
 
Game was hard as hell. I remember renting it after seeing a Nintendo Power feature on it. NES games were brutal. Limited continues. No battery back up and brutal arcade style game design.
 
What is this new GAF trend of hating on classic games for random reasons? FQ was hard but fun. You felt like you were progressing even when you were dying. That's what good NES games often felt like.
I don't remember it being as hard as people are describing. I wonder if the PAL version was modified or something?
 
The boss levels/ bosses in this game TERRIFIED me when I was little. I recently was going through my old Nintendo Powers and saw pictures of them, and I still had that creepy as fuck vibe coming from them. I was also like 3 years old, so yeah. I remember really enjoying it though for it's weird theme and brutal difficulty.
 
The game had a certain charm to me as a kid that kept me playing and playing until I finally beat it. The excellent music also kept me going.
 
Like the game or not, I think all of us can agree that the music is kick ass.

Is the Addams Family theme in the game? That music sounds like... anything but suited for an Addams Family game (classic heavy Sunsoft though). Further suggests the license was just slapped on there. That's how Sunsoft's Batman felt to me... nothing from the iconic movie soundtrack, random sci-fi robot enemies, Batman using guns...

Wasn't the music in the Batman game a weird case of not having the license to use the Danny Elfman theme? That game felt pretty Batman-ish to me, including the great music.
 
I found it pretty odd that Blaster Master is easily one of the best games on the NES, and Fester's Quest, which is oddly similar to Blaster Master, is just awful. And Fester's Quest came after Blaster Master.
 
I was able to get to the last guy when I was a kid. I don't think I ever beat him, but I think I remember the ending? I wonder if I Game Genie'd it... lol

I should go back and beat it.
 
I've owned this game since a kid but I've only just realized the box art is a rip off Rodney Dangerfield. I have no idea how it took me so long to realize that...

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That fucking 'boomerang wave gun' thingy fucking sucked. You would get in the sewer and it would just hit the damn wall beside you :(

I also hated that everything would respawn if it barely got off screen!

I spent a ton of time with this game back then, but never beat it.
 
Blaster Master was incredible. Fester's Quest and Gremlins 2, not as much.

Out of these two games they tried to basically carbon copy the out-of-vehicle design from Blaster Master, G2 was the only one I could beat.
 
I found it pretty odd that Blaster Master is easily one of the best games on the NES, and Fester's Quest, which is oddly similar to Blaster Master, is just awful. And Fester's Quest came after Blaster Master.

Well if you want to think of it as a spiritual sequel to Blaster Master, you can compare it pretty directly with Return of the Joker, which also kinda sucked.
 
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