Fester’s Quest (1989, NES) by Sunsoft

Current Any% Leaderboard (speedrun.com)

GAMES FROM THIS EPISODE OF THE AVGN:
–Fester’s Quest
-Home Improvement
-The Addams Family (SNES)
-Addams Family Values (SNES)
-The Addams Family: Pugsley’s Scavenger Hunt (SNES)
-The Addams Family (Genesis)

Coming off of the immensely-boring Bugs Bunny’s Birthday Blowout, I wasn’t expecting a gem until I read the next game’s title: a game I had as a kid! And my nostalgic bias aside, a good game! A Sunsoft game! Good graphics, good music, good controls! By no means will I say this game is perfect; far from it! The weapons must be mashed to fire quickly, enemies take too many hits, the gun can be annoying, and the game is brutal. But with a little practice, you’ll find a lovely speedrun!

You play as Uncle Fester in this title; Gomez has been kidnapped by aliens, and you must save him! In doing so, you’ll save the town, but who cares about that? We just need to save our brother!
Fester must gather clues to the location of the mothership by travelling around a town and defeating aliens inside of houses which have mazes.

The controls are responsive, if not annoying; to speedrun this game, you must mash. And mash. And mash some more. But luckily, the graphics and music are so amazing, you won’t mind this grind too much. The speedrun uses a glitch that requires the whip and a noose to clip out-of-bounds, cutting a chunk off the game and making the run much easier. The run also uses keys to glitch the boss fights, making the speedrun significantly easier to play than the casual play of this game.

I’d love to come back to this title and learn glitchless at some point. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed this speedrun. It’s not for everyone, though; the mashing is intense and it’s not an easy game. Still, you could do much worse.