Fester's Quest (NES) Playthrough
425A playthrough of Sunsoft's 1989 license-based action game for the NES, Fester's Quest.
Uncle Fester is sitting out in the yard late one night, relaxing in his jammies and dunce cap as he quaffs an adult beverage, when a UFO suddenly appears over the city and begins abducting people. The Addams family is spared, but Fester inexplicably decides that this is his moment to carpe diem or whatever and trundles off after the alien invaders. Good luck, Fester!
This was the first of three NES games to be based on The Addams Family, and it was the only one made by Sunsoft. In fact, Fester's Quest was the game that kicked off their famous line-up of 8-bit media tie-ins! Batman showed up a scant three months later, and Journey to Silius and Gremlins 2 both released the following year. I believe it was also the first Sunsoft NES game to make heavy use of non-drum sample-based instruments. Naoki Kodaka sure loved his fat DPCM basslines, and those bitcrushed orchestra hits sound awesome.
Fester's Quest hasn't seen much love over the years - AVGN was quite successful at turning it into punching bag - but I don't think it deserves the hate it gets. It doesn't play in the same league as Sunsoft's biggest NES classics, but it's a solid effort, and it's easily the best of the Addams' trio of NES adventures.
Sunsoft made an honest effort to create something unique and interesting here. Fester's Quest is a top-down shooter at heart, but it borrows several ideas from adventure games. The expansive overworld acts as a hub that funnels you toward the combat-focused sewer dungeons and the Golgo 13-like 3D building interiors, family members will provide you with all sorts of useful items and weapons, and your health and weapons can be leveled up. It's nothing as complex as you'd find in an RPG - I'd peg it somewhere between Konami's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Sega's Sword of Vermilion - but these extra touches make it feel much more substantial than you might expect from an NES action game based on a black-and-white TV show.
Fester's Quest is infamous for its level of difficulty, but most of the challenge stems from figuring out how to play it. If you try to play it like Contra or Heavy Barrel, it'll flatten you, but if you focus your efforts on how to best use the tools you're given, things become much easier.
Sure, it's annoying when the walls block your gunfire, but there's an easy fix - stop trying to use your gun in tight quarters! The whip can hit enemies through walls, and when fully upgraded, it hits much harder than the maxxed out gun does. And if the whip isn't cutting it, why not light some dynamite, fire off a few missiles, or chug an invisibility potion? Your stock of special items is automagically refilled after each boss battle, so there's no need to worry about using them up. Hoarding them will make the game way, way harder than it needs to be.
Your choice of controller is important, too. The manual recommends a turbo-fire pad, and that's great advice. The game is so much more fun when your thumb doesn't feel like it's about to fall off, and it's not cheating when the game tells you to play it that way, right?
So there's my case for Fester's Quest. It has its quirks and it throws up a tough facade, but once everything clicks, there's a lot of fun lurking just beneath the surface.
What do you guys think? Anyone out there considering giving it a(nother) try?
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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