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The Addams Family (video game)

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The Addams Family
Amiga box art
Developer(s)Ocean Software
Publisher(s)Ocean Software
Flying Edge (Genesis)
Platform(s)Master System, Genesis, SNES, Amiga, Atari ST, Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Gear, Game Boy, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum
ReleaseSNES
Sega Genesis
Genre(s)Platform
Mode(s)Single-player

The Addams Family is a platform game based on the 1991 film of the same name released by Ocean Software in 1992. The game was released for the Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Amiga and Atari ST.

Ocean released several other versions of the game for other platforms, featuring different levels and gameplay. One version was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Game Gear, with the latter ported by Acclaim Entertainment. A third title was developed for the Game Boy, and a fourth was produced for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum home computers.

In all versions, players control Gomez Addams as he attempts to rescue other members of the Addams family.

Gameplay and plot

Players control Gomez Addams and play through various locations of the mansion.

Abigail Craven is scheming to obtain The Addams Family's secret wealth. To do this, she brainwashes Uncle Fester, who has just lost his memory, into being an ally. She also is aided The Judge and the Addams' family attorney, Tully Alford, who takes control of the mansion. Morticia Addams, Pugsley Addams, Wednesday Addams, and Granny go to the house to meet with Tully about the property, only to be kidnapped within it by Abigail. When Gomez Addams gets home, he finds the other family members gone.[1][2]

The Addams Family is a side-scrolling action-adventure platform game.[3] It has aspects of open-ended titles such as The Legend of Time (1986) and Super Metroid (1994), as the player has the freedom to maneuver both the indoor and outdoor areas of the mansion in any order.[4] To save his family, Gomez runs, jumps, and squats his way throughout the large mansion invested with ghosts, mutants, monsters and rabbits, as well as stage hazards like stars, swinging clock pendulums, and fire lakes.[5] He also has to collect $1,000,000 to save Morticia.[6] The core of the game is in the mansion's Hall of Stairs, consisting of the front entrance and six doorways.[4] A boss, a huge bird, is located in the outside garden.[7] One of the doors is invisible and leads to Pugsley's Den, which has power-up weapons, money, and five 1-UPs.[4] Throughout the mansion, there are bonus areas containing extra lives and money, as well as unnoticeable spots in non-secret areas containing the same.[7][4] There are also boxes where Thing comes out and informs Gomez where to go.[7]

Similar to Mario games, Gomez kills enemies and bosses by stomping on them, and collects power-ups and coins.[7][5][8] Power-ups include a sword, a golf club that can shoot balls in a similar fashion to fire flowers, the fezi-copter hat that makes Gomez fly, and shoes that increases his speed. All of these can be held from door-to-door except for the fezi-copter, which disintegrates once Gomez enters a door.[4]

The player begins with five lives and two heart containers, of which its amount is the maximum amount of times the player can be hit.[9][4] Up to three additional heart containers, as well extra lives, can be collected.[4] Collecting 25$ fills one of the containers (50$ in the Amiga version), and $100 gives the player a 1-UP.[7][4] The player also has unlimited continues, although is put back at the Hall of Stairs once all the lives are lost.[4] A password is earned after defeating a boss, which also rewards the player with either one of the Addams family members or a heart container.[4]

Development

In the late 1980s, British developer Ocean Software gained a reputation for being the leader, and go-to producer, of game tie-ins for computers and consoles, such as RoboCop (1988), Batman (1989), Total Recall (1990), RoboCop 3 (1991), and Hudson Hawk (1991).[7][4] In April 1991, they started development on a tie-in for an upcoming film based on the fictional cartoon family The Addams Family; this was before the project switched studios from 20th Century Fox to Paramount Pictures.[10][11] The game was first announced by ACE magazine in June 1991.[12] Near the release of the movie, film industry journalist David J. Fox reported a widespread trend of video game tie-ins for major film projects. He attributed this to studios looking for other sources of income and promotional methods to make up for a rising decline in theater attendance.[11] Nintendo, in 1990, reported customers spending $2.4 billion on video games, nearly half of the $5 billion spent on movie tickets the same year.[11] The Addams Family's business plan was different from most others in that the game was released a month after the film. Just one other project around the same time had a similar strategy, Steven Spielberg's Hook, its video game published by Sony Imagesoft.[11]

The team consisted of James Higgins as coder, Warren Lancashire for game design and graphics, Simon Butler for additional graphics, and Jonathan Dunn for music.[10] Ocean only had the script to work with throughout development. Because most of the story was dictated by character dialogue, it was tough to incorporate it into a video game; they ultimately chose to base the game on the film's last 20 minutes.[10] Described Higgins, it was natural that the game starring a gothic family would have horror fiction tropes such as skulls and ghosts as enemies; however, Butler's surreal sense led to the creation of enemies like the flying teacups and tricycle-riding frogs.[10]

The Addams Family was initially planned to be a puzzle video game released only on computer systems. However, within two weeks of development, Paramount called Ocean asking to create ports of the game on consoles such as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. After finishing the SNES version in November 1991, they went back to the code for the computer version and, with a console-game-influenced viewpoint, disliked it to the point of rejecting it. They found it had too little graphical colorfulness, too slow of a frame rate and no parallax scrolling.[10] Additionally, with a lack of "console-style" products released on systems like the Amiga, Ocean had wanted to be the first company to develop and release a 16-bit computer game that was a Mario-esque platformer well before the game's development began.[10][13] Thus, they made the computer ports identical to those of the console releases, "arcadey" platformers with pickup items, extra lives, level warps, secret areas, and bonuses.[10] Two other console-type platform games would be released on computers around the same time as The Addams Family: Fire and Ice and James Pond 2: Codename: RoboCod.[10] Thus, reviews of 16-bit computer versions of The Addams Family constantly brought up those two titles.[7]

Reception

The most common claim about The Addams Family was that it was good in terms of gameplay, graphics and sound, but offered nothing special or original to the platform genre.[a] Reviews of the Mega Drive port published in 1994, such as those from Computer and Video Games and Hyper, considered it especially out-of-date given the amount of more innovative platformers already in existence, such as James Pond 3 (1993) and the Sonic games.[8][26] Michael Foster disagreed with the consensus of the game being a clone of other platform games, feeling it had "a lot of variety, and it's complex without being impossible".[9]

Critics outside that lukewarm barrier included Amiga Format's Brian Sharp who called The Addams Family one of the top three video game adaptations of films,[7] and an extremely negative review from Mega magazine's Andy Dyer that dismissed The Addams Family as a "complete non-event" with uninspiring graphics, repetitive level design, and enemies that irritate rather than tests the player.[48]

Amiga Format's Neil West, reviewing the Amiga version, generally enjoyed it. He praised the sprite animation, huge spaces to explore, and the controls, writing that Gomez "scuttles around his Robocod-meets-Freddy-Krueger world with panache". He did, however, critiqued the gameplay's lack variety and originality, as well as the rejection of backgrounds that were in the SNES version, reasoning they detached the game of atmosphere.[20]

Aktueller Software Markt journalist Hans-Joachim Amann wrote that lives can run out very fast, calling it still hard even if the player had more than ten lives.[5] Reviews noted the game's large amount of areas to traverse and master, praising how they contributed to the challenge level and lastability.[7][4][49] Nintendo Life journalist Jamie O'Neill wrote it made the player come up with routes to figure out where to go. He wrote freedom in moving around the very large mansion fools the player into thinking progress is being made when in actually they haven't killed the bosses and thus obtained the passwords they need to move forward.[4] He praised the controls as responsive and easy to use, although found Gomez to be too slippery and the collision detection to be imperfect.[4] Martin Alessi of Electronic Gaming Monthly was also critical of Gomez' slipperiness, and found the gameplay enjoyable but repetitive.[3]

Sharp called the graphics "humorous and a joy to watch on screen", while O'Neill praised its backdrops for being varied and colorful.[7][4] Both noted the smooth parallax scrolling.[7][4] Computer and Video Games writer Garth Sumpter highlighted the pictures of the Family in the hallway and the use of beer-rugs and armour suits as hazards.[8]

Reviews of Amiga and SNES versions praised the upbeat tunes, bass parts, and incorporation of the franchise's theme.[7][4] GamePro journalist The Spam Weasal, on the other hand, claimed the NES version had some of the worst music for the console, arguing it was just the theme playing over and over again.[6] The Spam Weasal gave a poor review of the NES version, dismissing its average graphics and low difficulty.[6]

Other versions

Ocean released a very similar version for the NES, Game Gear and Master System (the latter two developed by Arc Developments rather than Oceansoft).[52] It also featured Gomez Addams looking for his family in the mansion, as well as many of the same themed-locations. It was ported in 1993[52] with different graphics, different layout and less linear gameplay. For example, if the player had freed Granny, she would fix her "fog machine" to provide one of the items necessary to free Pugsley.

Two more versions of the game were developed; one for the Game Boy and another version for computer systems Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum.[52]

Notes

  1. ^ [3][32][6][20][26]

References

  1. ^ "Creepy, Kooky, Ooky, Spooky". The Addams Family Instruction Manual (SNES) (PDF). Ocean of America. 1992. p. 2. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  2. ^ "Creepy, Kooky, Ooky, Spooky". The Addams Family Instruction Manual (NES) (PDF). Ocean of America. 1992. p. 3. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d Steve; Ed; Martin; Sushi-X (March 1992). "The Addams Family". Electronic Gaming Monthly. Vol. 5, no. 3. p. 24. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r O'Neill, Jamie (22 October 2010). "The Addams Family Review (SNES)". Nintendo Life. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  5. ^ a b c d Amann, Hans-Joachim (June 1992). "Die etwas andere Familie". Aktueller Software Markt (in German). p. 126. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  6. ^ a b c d e The Spam Weasel (March 1992). "The Addams Family". GamePro. No. 32. p. 30. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Sharp, Brian (July 1992). "The Addams Family". Amiga Action. No. 32. pp. 24–25. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  8. ^ a b c d Sumpter, Garth (November 1993). "The Addams Family". Computer and Video Games. No. 144. p. 85. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  9. ^ a b c Foster, Michael (December 1993). "The Addams Family". Game Players. No. 35. p. 174. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h Brennan, Ciarán (March 1992). "The Addams Family". The One. No. 42. pp. 28–30. Retrieved August 26, 2021.
  11. ^ a b c d Fox, David J. (November 10, 1991). "ff-Centerpiece : Movies : A Land Between Movieland and Cableland--VideoGameland". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on August 27, 2021. Retrieved August 26, 2021.
  12. ^ "The Addams Family". ACE. No. 45. June 1991. p. 9. Retrieved August 26, 2021.
  13. ^ "The Addams Family". CU Amiga. April 1992. pp. 34–35. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  14. ^ White, Gary (April 1992). "The Addams Family". ACE. No. 55. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  15. ^ Baker, Christopher Michael. "The Addams Family – Review". AllGame. Archived from the original on 15 November 2014. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  16. ^ "Grauselgie Angelegen-heit". Aktueller Software Markt (in German). March 1992. p. 127. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  17. ^ "The Addams Family". Aktueller Software Markt (in German). April 1994. p. 112. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  18. ^ Maddock, Jonathan (August 1992). "The Addams Family". Amiga Computing. No. 51. pp. 92–93. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  19. ^ Price, James (May 1993). "The Addams Family". Amiga Force. No. 5. p. 16. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  20. ^ a b c West, Neil (June 1992). "The Addams Family". Amiga Format. No. 35. p. 66. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  21. ^ Bielby, Matt (June 1992). "The Addams Family". Amiga Power. No. 14. pp. 20–22. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  22. ^ Rand, Paul (May 1992). "The Addams Family". Go!. No. 7. p. 18. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  23. ^ Lawrence of Arcadia (March 1994). "Addams Family". GamePro. No. 56. p. 148. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  24. ^ The Unknown Gamer (November 1993). "Genesis ProReview: The Addams Family". GamePro. No. 52. p. 62. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  25. ^ Arnold, J. Douglas (July 1992). "The Addams Family". GamePro. No. 36. p. 70. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  26. ^ a b c Humphreys, Andrew (February 1994). "The Addams Family". Hyper. No. 3. p. 68. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  27. ^ DjiDane03 (3 May 2013). "Test de The Addams Family sur Gameboy". Jeuxvideo.com (in French). Archived from the original on 20 July 2013. Retrieved 27 August 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  28. ^ O. Prezeau (March 1992). "The Addams Family". Joypad (in French). No. 6. p. 129. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  29. ^ Trazom (February 1994). "The Addams Family". Joypad (in French). No. 28. p. 81. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
  30. ^ "The Addams Family". Joystick (in French). No. 29. August 1992. p. 272. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  31. ^ Markus; Sandrie (March 1994). "The Addams Family". Mega Fun (in German). p. 104. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  32. ^ a b Rob; Julian (June 1992). "The Addams Family". Mean Machines. No. 21. pp. 62–64. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  33. ^ George; Rob (February 1992). "Now Playing". Nintendo Power. Vol. 33. pp. 102–105. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  34. ^ "Now Playing". Nintendo Power. No. 31. December 1991. pp. 84–87. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  35. ^ "Now Playing". Nintendo Power. No. 35. April 1992. pp. 100–103. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  36. ^ Elwood. "Addams Family". Player One (in French). No. 36. p. 38. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  37. ^ "The Addams Family". Player One (in French). No. 23. September 1992. pp. 52–55. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  38. ^ Ricketts, Ed (August 1992). "The Addams Family". ST Format. No. 37. p. 80. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  39. ^ Andy (July 1992). "The Addams Family". Total!. No. 7. pp. 48–49. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  40. ^ Andy (July 1992). "The Addams Family". Total!. No. 7. pp. 36–38. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  41. ^ Andy (August 1992). "The Addams Family". Total!. No. 8. pp. 40–41. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  42. ^ Schneider, Boris (February 1992). "Addams Family". Video Games (in German). Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  43. ^ Knauf, Andreas (December 1992). "Addams Family". Video Games (in German). p. 103. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  44. ^ "Addams Family". Video Games (in German). April 1994. p. 84. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  45. ^ Knauf, Andreas (June 1992). "Addams Family". Video Games (in German). p. 111. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  46. ^ Lopez, Amaya (June 1992). "The Addams Family". Zero. No. 32. pp. 24, 55. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  47. ^ Shields, Steve; Osborne, Ian (July 1992). "The Addams Family". Zzap!64. No. 86. pp. 60–61. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  48. ^ a b Dyer, Andy (November 1993). "The Addams Family". Mega. No. 14. p. 36. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  49. ^ a b "Nintendo Games Index: Super NES". Super Gamer. No. 2. May 1994. pp. 122–124. Retrieved 16 March 2021.
  50. ^ Johnson, James (December 1993). "The Addams Family". Sega Pro. No. 26. p. 38. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
  51. ^ "The Addams Family". Sega Pro. No. 26. December 1993. p. 71. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
  52. ^ a b c "Release Information for The Addams Family". MobyGames. Retrieved 2009-08-30.
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