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Fester's Quest

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Fester's Quest is one of the first games based on The Addams Family, following Fester on his quest to save the townspeople from aliens. This is basically Blaster Master, but with The Addams Family slapped onto it.

Unused Graphics#

General#

NesFesterq-Ball.png
A ball, usually stored near the graphics for the missiles and items. A bullet type, perhaps?

Item#

Nesfesterq-item.png
An icon for an unused special item that looks like a knight's hat and a shield. Armor, maybe?

Enemies#

In-Game

Fixed

A crab-like alien, meant to appear in the spaceship. It's the only unused enemy that is functional in-game. This enemy will slowly approach Fester and spread three bubbles when it takes damage, which is the behavior similar to the other bigger alien found in the same area.

It can be seen in-game by setting the value of RAM address 030E to 15 (in some cases, the game might freeze after that). The enemy is glitched in appearance due to loading the incorrect tiles (5D,5E,6D,6E) instead of the proper (79,7A,89,8A).

NesFesterq-ScorpionRight.gifNesFesterq-ScorpionDown.gifNesFesterq-ScorpionUp.gif
A scorpion stored in the graphics for the streets. In the horizontal angle, it has sprites for firing a projectile from its tail.

Interestingly, this enemy is mentioned in the instruction manual, but the screenshot shows a giant spider instead. Either the scorpion used to be in the game, or the spider was simply mistaken for it.

Tiles

Mockup

A four-headed, four-legged enemy located in the spaceship assets, which could fire in four directions. This enemy is assembled to have the horizontal part mirrored and then overlaid by the vertical sets of the heads as a single sprite. The vertical head is similar to the one which appears during the 5th boss, the difference being the shading and separate tiles for the eye looking left and right.

Bosses#

Tiles

Mockup

Nesfesterq-boss2.png
NesFesterq-UnusedBoss2Tiles.png

What seems to be two unused bosses.

In the sprite bank for the 2nd and 3rd boss, there are unused tiles for a gun and what looks like a left arm, which fits into the graphics of the upper boss. The same bank contains the graphics for the boss's projectile, similar to the one fired by the 4th boss. Each building in-game contains a boss except for the optional first building, meaning this boss may have been originally been in that area.

The arms and lower jaw of the big one are loaded as sprites. He was able to fire projectiles from his hands (or to walk, hard to tell), along with launching his jaw, which has tiles for a 90 degree rotation. This boss is stored with the graphics for the final boss, the alien ship computer, so there may have been two bosses to be fought at this point.

The computer has lots of tiles related to its eye looking around and being destroyed, which is static in-game. It could be that the boss' eye would have followed Fester. Strangely, the eye was supposed to be animated by a background layer, unlike the rest of the bosses where their limbs are represented as sprites.

Its turrets have unused graphics for a completely upward angle and for firing the laser beams. In the final game, these are fired without any effect. The graphics below the turret could be a particle for charging up the laser beam.

Ending#

Tiles

Mockup

The sprite tiles for the lightning with the graphics of the alien ship combined, meant to be overlaid with the original ship sprites. This was supposed to be used right before the UFO blows up, complete with its palette being loaded during the cutscene.

Unused Music#

The theme used for the beginning cutscene lasts 26 seconds, but only the first 12 are heard in-game before fading out.

The game's data contains one track which has no pointers to it at all.

(Source: MrNorbert1994 (YouTube))

Regional Differences#

The European version of contains some differences that make the game noticeably easier.

  • All enemies and bosses take less hits for them to be killed.
  • The projectiles fired from the gun can go through walls and obstacles.

Revisional Differences#

Revision 0

Revision 1

The European version gained a revision which updated the copyright spiel, making it clearer that the game is based specifically on the 1960s TV series (as opposed to Hanna-Barbera's 70s animated series) in the process.