Make sure to grab a PAL version of this one, in which Sunsoft seemed to notice the game was kind of fucked and made two changes that allowed for a far better experience. 1) enemies take less hits to kill than the NTSC release, where even basic mooks would take rather obscene amounts, and 2) you can actually shoot through walls now, because whatever reason you couldn't before. Fester is still slow as shit and he's weak but it ultimately becomes a playable and passable experience for the time. Not something I'd return to, but in this state not something I dislike.

The original NTSC release is hell though and undoubtedly responsible for the game's reputation lol

man, this could've been a pretty good old nes game, and i do have a bit of a soft spot for it despite all its terrible flaws. the core gameplay is pretty good and of course, there's the fucking amazing sunsoft music. but not utlizing checkpoints, forcing you to start over from the beginning in such a maze-like world is just unforgivable, and uncle fester strolling around town at a snail's pace certainly doesn't help. while the game at least lets you start over with all progress and inventory intact, the fact that there's no way to get back any items you've used means you might as well just restart if you reach the later stage of the game having gulped down too many potions. it would be a game that could have a lot of gain from a good romhack, but from those i managed to find they don't really change it up enough. so save state abuse might be the way to go for anyone who dares to give it a try! (just make sure it's the "fixed" european version)

Fester’s Quest is considered to be up there as one of the worse games the NES has to offer, with it’s god awful controls to it’s amazing “Where the fuck do I go” level design, and it’s ever ending amount of enemies that will drain your heath in less then 2 hits. Now don’t get me wrong this is 100% a BAD GAME, but compared to other NES games I’ve played in the past this is far from the worst thing ever; and this game doesn't even come close to the likes of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or TMNT. All and all it’s more so a basic NES game with pretty linear levels you can’t even get lost in, and some stupidly cryptic game mechanics that’d you only know about if you had Nintendo Power or (like me) you cheated and looked it up online. Yes the game is hard as fuck; enemies will never stop responing and your starting gun goes in a weird arch so it’s you have to line yourself in a weird way just to hit them. (Yes Fester has a gun in this game, don’t fuck with Uncle Fester) The enemies will never stop responding if your standing still in an area so you need to be constealy moving and shooting, but since when you shoot the gun it only shoots 1 bullet at a time you need to be constantly pressing it over and over again then entire game if you don’t wanna die in less then 2 hits, and for the long of god don’t die; because if you do you go all the way back to the start of the game. The bosses are pretty easy once you get their patterns down but other than them the game feels so artificially difficult the whole game just feels like a chore. Although seeing Uncle Fester fight off aliens with a gun and whip is probably worth dealing with the hassle alone because that shit is really funny.

Is Fester's Quest the worst game ever made? No. Not by a wide margin. Does that mean Fester's Quest is good? Let's not get too ahead of ourselves. Really, sometimes I look at this game and wonder why it exists. It's just so...Esoteric.

Fester's Quest is a free roaming shoot 'em up. Picture Smash TV, but less elegant. You play as the eponymous Uncle Fester in your quest to stop the aliens from invading. You know, the aliens, so known from Addams Family canon. You do this by picking up upgrades for your gun and navigating several, SEVERAL mazey sewers.

On paper, a Smash TV-esque action game seems like it wouldn't have anything particularly egregious going for it. One would think that there would be very little to mess up. But there are two serious grievances nearly everyone who plays this game will notice. Firstly, some powerups actually hinder your ability to play. In the tight corners of the sewers, many powerups will curl or move in such a way that the wall simply absorbs them, preventing your shots from ever hitting their target at anything closer than absolutely point blank. Apparently, letting bullets pass through solid objects would have been too reasonable of a solution.

The second biggest issue is death. The nature of NES games frequently result in death being a tumultuous affair, but Fester's Quest is particularly damning. While you do get to keep your health powerups, you yourself teleport back to the very beginning of the game. Keep in mind, this is not a game that has a berth of shortcuts for you to unveil. You simply must plow through the entire game all over again. To call this unforgiving is an understatement.

Yet still, it's not the worst game. There are times when walking around and shooting things can feel oddly cathartic. The first person maze houses that hold hidden health upgrades make for a small break in the monotony, and the sound design seems fine throughout. So it's not an irredeemable piece of garbage. It's just not a particularly good game.

The fact that there exists an NES game where you go around blasting aliens as Uncle Fester armed with some kind of blunderbuss makes me giddy with joy, the kind of absurdity you would come to expect from only this era of video games.

I have a bit of a soft spot for this game out of nostalgia, but I have no clue what the fuck they were thinking having your shots get blocked by the level architecture. They thankfully fixed it in the PAL version(hence my score), which is such a nice upgrade that I think it almost makes the game "great". If they had gotten rid of the weapon downgrade pickups it would've actually done it, because it's obnoxiously annoying to walk over that shit on accident and it's so important to have the best upgrades for some of the bosses and the final UFO stage. Which is a stage that is already absurdly difficult and anyone who says they beat it without abusing Lurch is lying through their fucking teeth.

Those first-person corridors before the bosses are also mildly creepy, but otherwise they have no real reason to exist aside from finding one or two health upgrade power ups. I don't think there's any more elsewhere, so why do they exist other than to fuck with you when you inevitably loop yourself and go back out the door you came in and waste a key?

With all of that said, I absolutely love it when video game composers just decide to go completely ham regardless of the games content. "What's my context? Uncle Fester shooting aliens? Okay, gonna make one of the most badass stage themes of all time."

If you decide to play this absolutely go PAL region, have some save states on hand(or be prepared to stop if you die at a certain point) and bring a turbo controller, cause goddamn I can't imagine playing through without them. And yeah, if you die you go ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE FIRST SCREEN IF YOU CONTINUE. This game doesn't give a shit dude, goddamn.

I think I always heard of this game mentioned as like, legendarily bad, so because I am who I am I randomly decided to play it for giggles. For a few minutes it seemed pretty competent and I wondered what all the complaining was about, but turns out that as hyperbolic as the internet has been I can at least look at this and go yeah okay there's some issues.

A befitting the era, the nods towards the alleged source material of the Addams Family are sparse, though I do enjoy the fucked up pixilated Pugsly and the jaunty chiptune version of the theme song and, most importantly, the fact that they made Fester putting a lightbulb into his mouth a mechanic. Gotta give them credit they knew what was most important. I lament that we no longer live in a society where you can just kinda take some assets from your sci-fi game and be like "yeah Uncle Fester is fighting aliens now he has a gun. He can shoot homing missiles out of his ass" these days it would be some awful mobile game with unpleasant monetization. In fact hold on

oh yeah there is a fuckin Addam's Family mobile game with microtransactions and ads fuck this earth

Anyway, the game started out looking like it would be a bit of non-linear roaming around a city map and finding items, but it very quickly reveals itself to be a straight series of corridors. I haven't played Final Fantasy 13 but you can insert that joke here. If you die (and you start with two whole pips of health that can be extended to 4 if you find some very hidden powerups) you have to go back to the starting point and walk the path again. You do have a big inventory of items for healing and attacking enemies, which are useful for when the enemy spawn RNG just decides to get real mean at you and toss really tanky frogs your way. There's a certain survival horror battle-of-attrition going on with Fester's Quest that is interesting and also annoying.

The power ups are another potentially interesting point that doesn't totally work. Enemies drop some standard consumable keys and lightbulbs, as well as money that is used only to buy hot dogs (this is how I live my life irl) but you also get upgrades AND DOWNGRADES for your main weapons, GUN and WHIP. The only difference is that the downgrades are in red text and the upgrades are blue. That's the opposite of my intuition it's a problem. The whip (it's just a straight up Castlevania whip it's hilarious) picks up drops automatically too so any time you use it presents the threat of a surprise downgrade. I think maybe the differences in fire patterns for the 8 levels of gun meant they thought you would actually want a downgrade in some cases but in practice you will never want anything less than a full level 8 gun. God help you if you get two downgrades and go to 6 on the American version because your shots terminate on hitting a wall in that one and it's nearly impossible to shoot anything in a corridor except on levels 1, 2, 7 and 8. And honestly the latter two are still pretty sketchy.

There are ALSO first-person maze segments with no real obstacles other than the bosses which you get shunted into hilariously abruptly that are all very tedious but never difficult. Just so much stuff in this game for how short it is! They obviously didn't have much of a budget for it but I love this approach of just unrestricted tossing stuff out there. If I'd played this as a kid I would have thought nothing of it, but I miss this. I miss this ethos. I miss shitty licensed games on the NES. I am fond of this garbage