Game Review - the Addams Family (SNES)

The Addams Family is a game released based on the movie and cartoon installments by the same name. The game, having been released in 1992 by Ocean Software, has lived up to its counterparts in every way, receiving high reviews across the board.

In The Addams Family, you play as the character known as Gomez. Though the story is a bit loose, your basic goal is to find and retrieve the members of the Addams family as they have been mysteriously kidnapped. Throughout the game, you must travel through The Addams Family's mansion in order to rescue each member of The Addams Family except for Lurch. Similarly to the Mario games everyone is familiar with, The Addams Family is a platformer game, with many things to collect (parallel to the coins in the Mario series).

The graphics in The Addams Family are decent. I think they were made to appear quite a bit more cartoonish than their cartoon and movie counterparts, but this all comes together to create a stylized and functional viewing experience. Enemies are typically quite dull, however, and aren't very creative; the most creative I noticed was a puke-throwing cat. Luckily, no sprite is simply a re-palette of an existing character.

Audio in The Addams Family, while not unique or creative, is definitely okay by me. It's catchy and functional and recreates the atmosphere of the movie, being partially comedic, partially atmospheric, and partially scary. I really enjoyed the sound track in this one (with the characteristic clicking of the fingers).

I found The Addams Family extremely easy to master, and the game seems to have been targeted toward a younger audience (which is apparent in its lack of violence, despite being a combat-oriented sidescroller). The controls are ultimately the same as those in the Mario series mentioned above. You can run from side to side, jump, and collect things by pouncing on them (which requires no additional controls).

Overall, The Addams Family lives up to its predecessors. The sound tracks, the environments, the sprites, and the game's all-around atmosphere all allude to the series we all know and love, and do a great job of it. Despite being geared toward a younger audience, this game's replay value is awesome-it's definitely a nice change from the standard Mario games (picture Super Mario, except themed to a particular niche!). All-in-all, I'd give The Addams Family a 4/5.