The Wonder Years 31.10.07: Week 28 - Addams Family Values

Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 11.01.2007

There's some creepy, ooky, spooky goings-on.

Welcome to the column where all gamers of a certain age come to wallow in 16-bit nostalgia. I'm your host, Owain J. Brimfield, and I'll be discussing some of the hidden gems and instant classics of gaming's golden era. Some of these games may crop up on the Wii's Virtual Console at some point, some may be consigned to the annals of history. Either way, they're worth tracking down if you missed them first time round, or replaying if you were lucky enough to catch them. Let's take a trip to:

ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES

(Ocean, Genesis & Super NES, 1994)

Yes, it's that time of year when the wicked machinations of the spirit world are celebrated by an indulgence of capitalism, and right-wing Christians are out in force decrying the "worship" of Lucifer and his minions. Really though, Halloween is just an excuse for kids to get dressed up in cheap costumes and come a-begging on my doorstep for sweets. Thankfully this year my housemate has invested in a BB gun, so the little punks better watch out. Ah, but I digress. It's time for a seasonal choice of 16-bit game, and here we have the finest console entry in a horror/comedy franchise that has sadly lain dormant for the past decade or so - the scary scary Addams Family.

While it was the 60s TV series that thrust the Addamses into national prominence, they were reinvigorated by the eponymous motion picture that cropped up in 1991 that was surprisingly successful, and whaddya know - it became a relatively hot license to pick up. Of course, Ocean Software were the immediate choice to convert the franchise into videogame form, boasting as they did an impressive lineup of licensed games (including such luminary titles as Short Circuit and Hook). Although the self-titled platformer and its sequel Puggsley's Scavenger Hunt were both relatively successful on the 16-bit formats, the series' finest point came several years later with Addams Family Values, based on the movie sequel of the same name.

Almost a spiritual successor to the 1989 NES title Fester's Quest, Values takes a top-down action RPG approach, with the gamer taking control of Uncle Fester in a quest to rescue baby Pubert Addams from the nefarious clutches of rogue nanny Debbie Jelinski. To a large degree the game is a light-hearted take on the Zelda format, with combat taking place in real time, although Fester wields an energy-dependent lightning attack rather than a Master Sword. It's a typical excursion through a variety of different landscapes (all conforming to the usual RPG gaming clichés = swamp world, check; desert, check...) and several different dungeons in an effort to rescue the miniature Addams. For some odd reason, it's reminiscent in style of Windows title Star Wars: Yoda Stories at times, and I haven't quite worked out whether that's a favorable comparison, or just damning with faint praise.

It's refreshing to go back and see a licensed game that doesn't shrink away from offering a genuine challenge to players, considering every movie-to-game adaptation these days is a poor man's 3D platformer.. Values is pretty darn hard, although admittedly not always for the right reasons. Boss battles in particular can be intensely tricky, especially the final gargoyle boss which requires Fester to munch a fair few of his cookie-based power-ups. However, a lot of the game can turn into a long-ass haul around the relatively sizeable map in search of a particular item, or trying to locate the always well-hidden Cousin It in order to be issued a password save. These save points are so scarce in fact it's probably more advisable to tackle the game in a single sitting - unfortunately, while it's not a short game, a lot of the action is padded out by 15-minute treks to the next dungeon. But hey, they said the same thing about Wind Waker, didn't they?

Values is a pleasing slice of fun, particularly for fans of the Addamses themselves - they all crop up at some point in the game and the characters (and, in fact, the backgrounds) are drawn and animated rather nicely. You may find yourself cursing Gomez, though, for the inadequate maps he gives Fester. It was criticized in some corners for being a rip-off of the Zelda series, but I think the term 'homage' is probably more fair - while it does everything that Zelda does without anywhere near the same high degree of competence, it's still an enjoyable RPG-lite title based off a particular stylistic approach. Unfortunately, ever since the turgid 1998 Addams Family Reunion the franchise has been all but forgotten, so it's unlikely we'll see a new title any time soon. Nor would it really seem feasible for this to receive a Virtual Console release any time soon - 'good' but not 'great', y'know? Still, if you ever find yourself in a bargain basement second-hand gaming store and come across a copy, it's the perfect Halloween game - in equal parts amusing and creepy, just enough gaming to be completed in a day, and it'll give you the perfect excuse to lock the doors and ignore those pesky trick or treaters.

Addams Family Values trivia

• Values proves a 'valuable' (zing!) lesson for software companies who push back a game's development in order to ship vast numbers of localized editions - the game features a choice of three different languages on one cartridge for the full game dialogue.
  
• The game's developers, Ocean, were subsumed by French company Infogrames around ten years ago for the princely sum of £100m.
  
• Apparently, the Addams Family pinball machine is the best selling pinball machine of all time. I'd say that is probably the most unexpected bit of trivia I've yet written.

Reactions and interactions

I had an interesting email exchange with 411 reader Kenneth this week, brought about by my claim last week that Virtua Fighter wasn't as good as Eternal Champions. His two emails are in italics, my abridged replies in normal type:

From: Kenneth Bradford
Subject: Eternal Champions

"A nice article on Eternal Champions, but...

"Sega placed all its stock in Virtua Fighter, which although reasonably enjoyable could never hold a candle to its more accomplished predecessor."

Uh...this demolishes the entire article's credibility. And this is coming from a Sega-fan who owns Eternal Champions. EC is a fun diversion but to say Virtua doesn't "hold a candle" to it is lunacy."

I'm not sure I really have any credibility to demolish though... I'm just a random guy on the internet who writes about games he used to play. For the purposes of debate though, let's compare EC and VF one-on-one. As far as the raw numbers stack up, the games are pretty evenly matched, with EC just about coming out on top - EC has an extra character and more unique attacks per character (average of 24 as opposed to VF's 16), as well as ever so slightly more individual combos and the addition of finishers. VF does have more special attacks per character, around 13 to EC's 9, but that's not surprising given the emphasis on tactical use of specials in EC.

However, add in EC's customizable training mode, greater depth in terms of a challenging single player tournament, a tougher final boss, and the fact that it's one of the best-looking games on the Genesis when VF was one of the worst looking games on the Saturn (okay, so it was a first-generation game, but that doesn't excuse the horrendous blockiness). I will freely admit that VF was a bit of a revolution, and the emphasis on real-world fighting styles still feels fluid to play. But I stand by my claim that it's not as good as EC - if only on the evidence that I still play EC, despite not being a fan of beat 'em ups in general, and haven't touched VF or its sequels in years.

Hmm, maybe a bit of overkill to defend one man's opinion there, but I guess my point is that it's hardly "lunacy" to state my preference for one game over another.

From: Kenneth Bradford
Subject: Re - Eternal Champions

"Well, I overstated a bit. You're not a "lunatic". It's okay to prefer one game to another. But the statement "VF doesn't hold a candle..."--man, that's just crazy talk!

(Oops, there I go again.)

Number of moves != quality. Sure you can have too few, but that is NOT a raw metric for quality. EC is very much a stop-n-jerk fighting affair, the controls aren't as tight as they should be with a slight delay in presses and actions on screen, the "pick-up" of special moves doesn't always click as smoothly as it should, and the collision system often feels a bit clumsy.

VF plays smooth as butter, is ten miles deep, and it just struck me that you're probably using VF1 as comparison. I suppose that's a little more fair, with the blocky graphics and floaty jumps. But I'd put VF2 up against Eternal Champions Mega CD any day of the week. Easily. And that doesn't get into the fighting game nirvana the series became as time went on (Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution).

;))

Like I said, nice article just the same, keep on keeping on. You should totally do a "top fighting games" article. For reference, here are the top 5 fighting games of all time (you may call this opinion my good man, but I assure you this is actually fact.) *grin*

1. Street Fighter Alpha 3
2. Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution
3. Soul Calibur
4. Dead or Alive Ultimate
5. Marvel Vs. Capcom 2"

I wasn't intending to use raw numbers as a measure of quality, but it can be useful in gauging the relative depths of the games' fighting styles. I will agree that VF is more fluid to play, although I must admit I never really picked up on any latency problems with EC's controls. I'll have to go back and check that I guess. I still regard EC as a deeper game though, but I guess we'll have to agree to disagree there!

And yes, I was just talking about VF 1 - I'm not disputing that later entries in the series were much more accomplished. In the column I was trying to get across the Sega chose to put all its eggs in the VF basket simply on the strength of the arcade machine, and cancelled development of EC: The Final Chapter when that franchise had a very strong fanbase and could have proven a great title to sell the Saturn as a gamers' console. As it turned out, the VF series went on to greater success than an extended EC franchise probably would have done. However, I still think at that point in time it was an odd decision by Sega. But hey, that's why they're a multi-million dollar software company and I'm just an internet columnist.

Oh, and top 5 fighting games of all time? Well, if we're going by "best" as opposed to "favorite", I'd say:

1. Soul Calibur II
2. Virtua Fighter 4
3. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo
4. Samurai Shodown III (I originally thought SSII until my friend Rob introduced me to its sequel)
5. Marvel vs Capcom 2


I sense I may get some flak from other readers for my ideas about that list, but what the hell, if I can't provoke debate then what good am I?

[Note to readers: that was a rhetorical Q.]


The Videosphere

Let's take a look at this week's video highlight. I have, of course, bowed to convention and gone once again for a Halloween theme. Here we have a vid in which some annoying bloke on YouTube has compiled his take on the ten goriest 2D bosses of all time. If you skip past the unfunny skits, there's some nice game footage here, from titles I'd even forgotten about and may have to cover in the future like Joe & Mac and Super Smash TV. Take a look, folks.




General indulgences

Every week in this section I'll endeavour to provide you, the faithful readers, with a fascinating insight into the various forms of entertainment currently dominating my spare time.

This week, I have been mostly enjoying:

Not much gaming this week, as we're converting the spare room upstairs into a proper gaming room so I won't have to go joypad versus TV remote with my girlfriend whenever I want to shoot some shit to pieces. By next week it should be ready, oh yes - SNES, Genesis, N64, GameCube, PS2 and PS3 all in one place? Fuck yeah.

S.C.I.E.N.C.E. by Incubus, who despite being one of the poorest bands I've ever seen live are always resolutely funky on record. Plus, the hidden bonus track is one of the funniest slices of psychedelia I think I've ever heard.

Shooter, starring Marky Mark Wahlberg, which is probably the best of the recent crop of Bourne Identity retreads, and has the potential to become a decent franchise if the Markster ever runs low on cash.

and Thus Spoke Zarathustra by every coffee house pseudo-intellectual's philosopher of choice, Nietzsche. It's a shame that the good ideas he has have been raped by armchair "free thinkers" who like to drop names such as his and Rosseau's into everyday conversation to boost their egos.


And finally…

As always, reader feedback and suggestions are welcome, I respond to everything so just drop me a line. You can also check out my science fiction column "The Flux Capacitor" over at 411 Movies. Next week in "The Wonder Years" - C-Life and the power of Volteccer. Until then - keep it real, keep it retro.