"Worst Ending Ever!"

This was really almost to the point of being hilariously bad. It's like when you watch a bad horror flick, enjoy every moment of it, and realize that, "Hey, this could have been something really good if there was any real time put into it's development!". That's how this "game" plays out.

Story Score (2): The game is very loosely based on the movie and characters of the same name. I didn't take the time to look through the manual to officially find out what the story was (barely a story anyway). Apparently The Addams have been kidnapped and hidden throughout the estate. You control a stupidly-smiling Gomez Addams and your quest is to search for the family members while avoiding just about everything, ranging from spiders to inanimate objects.

Well, the storyline is not exactly how the movie played out and the ending made little sense as well as you face off against (from what I can tell) an evil version of Fester and Gomez. And there is very little dialog so a lot of what happens makes very little sense. I wonder why, especially when the game features the cover of the film version, why the game bares little to no resemblance to it's film counterpart. Pretty hilarious but not typical for NES games of the era. Just look at Total Recall or Robocop. Hilariously bad games as well.

Graphics Score (6): Surprisingly the graphics aren't as horrible as you might think. The main character sprites were something to be desired as Gomez walks around little actual animation and the stupidest looking grin on his face throughout the entire game. The other family members have no animation, except for Pugsley as you see him at the beginning with his legs flaring about out of the chimney (it says it's a chimney but it just looks like the side of the house). Actually though, Morticia does have a couple of frames at the end of the game but that's it. Everything else was not that horrible though. Most of the enemies work and add something unique to the graphics as there are a lot of different kinds of enemies. Estate design also was fairly in-depth and well designed. In a way, it sort of reminded me of Maniac Mansion.

Gameplay Score (3): Gomez has almost no moves on him. Matter of fact, he only has a few things he can do. He can jump, walk, duck, and open doors. That's it. It plays off a lot like a Mario game. Having said that the controls are awful. Gomez moves at a snails pace and cannot run. He jumps quite high but it's still very difficult to jump on certain enemies to get rid of them. Also you have to place your jumps just right or you will either die or have to start all over again in some situations. It is really frustrating. One of the few positive things about the gameplay is how nonlinear the game is. If controlling Gomez was easier the game may be somewhat fun. I found that exploring around the estate and finding all the secrets was actually sort of fun. But I had to put codes in because I was really losing my patience with everything. It just comes down to incredibly lazy game-making.

Sound/Music Score (1): Mute the TV immediately. Otherwise you will be subjecting yourself to torments you couldn't even dream of. Sounds are bleeps and bloops and the horrible rendition of the Addams Family theme will play over and over again. It was something really bad.

Overall this was a fairly horrible game but the fact that it is fairly nonlinear makes it somewhat playable. Just make sure to put codes in to avoid max annoyance. If you want to play a challenging, yet fun Addams Family game, play the one released for the SNES. Very hard but I found it to be light years better than this.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/27/11

Game Release: The Addams Family (US, January 1992)