I'm Chris Farrell from the All Things Good and Dirty podcast, a wacky weekend morning show, part of the Goony Geek Network, just like the show you're checking out right now. Shows on the network are individually owned, and the opinions expressed may not reflect others. Find other awesome geeky shows over at gunagieeknetwork.com. And welcome to Play Comics, where once again, we are here looking at a video game based on a comic and how well that game
represents its comic source material. Today, I am very, very pleased to be joined by my friend, Adam, who swears that that is not why we're looking at the Addams family, but it kind of is is because he told me the story earlier and I decided it kind of is. So Adam, how are you today now that I'm making up facts about your life? You know, I'm doing a fantastic job of not disagreeing with you right now and trying to think of a game that starts with your name. I can't think of anything.
Just the Chris Christie video games. I think even the bible games don't start with Chris. Yeah. They're all way too easy. There should be something out there. We're gonna I'm gonna find something at some point, just so I can say the same thing about you. Okay. I can work with that.
But until then, we spent some time looking at the Addams family. It's gonna be really awkward here talking about this, just like it was really awkward finding everything online, because we're looking at the 1992 release, which was based on the 1991 movie, and they both had the same name. And of course, the name is the name of the franchise overall. Mhmm. And it's just really awkward because it's all just called The Addams Family. Borderline on Googleable. Way to go the world before SEO.
Security through obscurity in the sense that there's too much information, I guess. I I guess so. This is like one of those wonderful licensed games that is so licensed that they didn't even try to come up with a clever subtitle. Title. The movie was based on the 1964, if I remember right, TV series Mhmm. Which in turn was based on some newspaper comics. Yep. I mean, the comics are little one panel things. They're fun. Yeah. They're from the New Yorker.
Because at one point, the New Yorker had good funny comics. They did. And fun fact, the New Yorker was so angry about the fact that The Addams Family got turned into a TV show on the sixties that they stopped running The Addams Family comic. What? Yeah. Because TV was lowbrow. New Yorkers were smart people. They last for one editor, and the next guy was, like, that's stupid. Bring back the Charles Addams comics. Okay. Good. Because that was just really? Yeah. Wow. It's true story.
See, that's why I like having you on the show because you know all these weird history things that I don't even know how I would have accidentally run across. Oh, I I did some deep dives, but I'm also a huge fan of the Addams Family. I think I've seen everything that's ever been made that is Addams Family or Addams Family adjacent. So what was it that got you wanting to look at the Addams family in the first place?
True true facts. It was on Nick at night when I was a kid, and Addams is right there in the title. So I had to watch it. It was part of that weird thing with, like, The Munsters where it's, like, baby's first goth. Like, oh, here's all these weird and creepy and kooky people, but they're actually a lot of fun and, you know, that's basically who I ended up spending most
of my life with anyway. The Adam family was just this kind of skewed view on reality that I really appreciated even as a little kid, and then I just kept with it because there's a whole universe of Adam's family nonsense out there. I can never decide what I like better between the Adam seemingly and the monsters. I think most of the time when I can make
a decision, it is what kind of mood are you in? Because the monsters seem to be more they just try to do everything super normal and everything's cool, and the Addams Family is, yeah, we're weird as fuck and deal with it. It it's one of those things that, like, went back and forth as I got older because the monsters are just really visually very, very cool, but when you're adult, you're like, oh, Gomez and Morticia are like the ideal couple. This is maybe the perfect family.
I mean, it does include a brother and sister trying to kill each other. So, yeah, that that pretty much tracks. Yeah. That's every every family. Yeah. But they never do kill each other. And isn't that what's important? I mean, there's a multi generational family living in one house. It's never clear on who the grandmother's the mother of in the TV show or who Fester's related to, but it's fine. Just assume they grab Fester off the side of the road.
Yeah. He's present, you know. Although, some have to be biologically related to anyone. One thing the TV show did, which the movies, kinda did as much as the movie can, is add more depth to what the comics had because the comics, for anybody who hasn't seen them, are essentially a far side setup. It's one panel, there's your thing,
you gotta get your joke in there in that one little rectangle, and that's all you get. So, there's not a lot of room for character development and there's not a lot of room for getting a lot of basic background facts of anything. Thing. Yeah. That one has switched with pretty much every adaptation, and even in the the newspaper comic, most of the characters didn't have names. Like, Fester and Huxley do not get named until the television show.
That's just so weird to me that you wouldn't have a name mostly because as I try to make characters for things, they have a name even if it's some stupid name just so I can keep them straight. Yeah. Well, Pugsley was just the boy and, you know, another one of those obscure facts, Charles Adams wanted did name the characters for the television show, so he came up with the names. But he wanted to call Pugsley Pubert. Like Hubert, but with a p? P. Yeah. That's, certainly a choice.
Yeah. Then you said it's the baby's name in the second movie, though. Here's all your fun facts for Adam's family. And, hopefully, there's more fun facts because, eventually, we'll look at the tie in game for the second movie. Uh-oh. It it actually it holds up really well. I mean, the movies it especially the 91 movie, but also the sequel are so far ahead of their time in terms of, I don't know, both writing and the humor. Like, they would fit in incredibly well right now.
The way that Christina Ricci plays Wednesday in this 91 movie very, very easily could have been swapped into the Netflix Wednesday series, and the only issue would have been that she seems to be younger. Yeah. It it kinda really went for the, the whole thing of Wednesday being the, maybe, the younger sibling like she was in
the TV show. It's hard to tell. But, yeah, Christina Ricci is, like, 10, 11 years old. We were playing 10, 11 years old in that first movie, and that's a creepy little kid and I love it. So deadpan, I'm a psychopath. I look just like everybody else. I just had more emotion in it saying that because I can't take enough emotion out of my voice to make that work.
Yeah. They did a, they did a fantastic job recasting her with Jenna Ortega in the Wednesday show, but I don't think anybody can really ever hold a candle to the Christina Ricci performance or or to Raul Julia as the best Gomez Adams that ever will be. Raul Julia has been the best part of multiple movies from my childhood now, this and Street Fighter. I was gonna say, have have you gotten to do Street Fighter the movie the game? I have not yet.
That that movie like, Raul Julia, he's such a good actor. He's such it's such legit stuff that he does this weird genre of nonsense, and he gives a 100% effort. Like, if you ever look at just the cast list for that 91 movie, it's like, these are all, like, legitimate real actors that are playing The Addams Family. Ugly was the only one that hadn't done anything or went on to do things pretty much. Right?
Right. Yeah. I mean, you've got, you know, Angelica Houston who plays Morticia. Of course, you've got Round Julia. You got Doc Brown playing Fester. You've got a ton of little drop in characters that are all huge name actors in that movie. It's just an amazingly stacked cast. Oh, you you got Carol Kane as the grandmother. Like, it's these, like, legends of screening comedy just doing the silliest possible movie.
Have to think that it was people seeing, oh, wait, I can be in this TV show that I loved when I was younger and just jumping on the opportunity. Absolutely. And I think, like, the fact that they did it at such a high level of quality, like, so as compared to the game, they don't cut any corners in that movie. Like, it is beautifully shot. The music is amazing. The effects are really impressive for the early nineties, and they just they went all out.
Even the green screen 4 thing, just a hand that walks around, I sit there and I'm asking Kaylee, oh, man, you know, I'd love to see how they did that. And she knows that that I mean, like, see the actual nuts and bolts of how they did it, and not, oh, did they use a green screen? Even knowing that's what it was, there were maybe a few frames across the entire thing where
I could see the weird color that you get on the edge of green screen stuff that really tips you off. So the fact that they could pull this off for a 91 movie that well, especially after you've got versions of it now that have been upscaled and everything, and it still looks that good, that's just amazing. That's like that's putting a lot of love into the craft for basically a gag character. I mean, even though they ended up being
huge, I remember there being, like, mostly, like, Pizza Hut commercials with thing in them. Pretty much reusing footage from the movie, but still. The fact that you could have a hand have that much personality is amazing and just a testament to how much everybody really appreciated what was going on with this franchise and the fact that they got to be a part of it. Absolutely. I don't know. That's a movie that I will still sit down and watch. My kids have sat down and watched it, and they
love it. And that's, like, a huge mark of success when a 30 year old movie can still entertain its target audience. I don't believe you on how many years it's been, but I'm glad that your kids enjoy it. That movie is 32 years old. No. 33. No. At least I'm older than it still. That movie is almost old enough to have midlife crisis. Oh, what? Yep. Oh. Well, on that super creepy note, let's drop some promos for a few other shows and try to figure out where all the time went.
Do you feel like you're the only person in your circle who wants to go deep about video games regularly? We were like that too. Until then, welcome to Crossplay Conversations, the brand new biweekly topical video game podcast from Luke Lewis,
Joseph Hooper, and Jacob LaPorte. With many years of breaking it down separately on shows like the Left Eye Game Club, Player Player Podcast, and Nukewarm Games, the gang is finally coming together to publish their gaming group chat in audio form every other week. Expect roundtable reviews of the latest games, profiles of upcoming indies, and insightful conversations about essential topics in the video game industry, all with a mostly positive, insightful, and fun style.
Help us out by subscribing on your podcast platform of choice to get the 1st episodes delivered straight to your feed. And follow us on Twitter at crossplayconvos for updates about the show. Cheers, and happy gaming. Do you find yourself playing older games and wishing that there were new discussions about those games? Enter Tales From the Backlog. Hi. I'm Dave Jackson, and on each episode, I'm joined by a guest to break down those games that may be stuck in your ever
expanding backlog. Each episode looks at one game in-depth, focusing on mechanics, story, music, and other aspects with no spoilers until a clearly marked spoiler wall in the middle. If you've played the game, go ahead and climb that spoiler wall and enjoy in-depth story discussions. And if not, jump out when we warn you and maybe go play that game for yourself. We have over 100 episodes in the feed. Everything from Disco Elysium to Tunic to discussion episodes about how to get into horror
games and if games actually need to be fun or if they have more to offer. I guarantee that there's something in there for everybody. Once again, that's Tales From the Backlog available wherever your podcasts are found. So those are some great shows to check out, but first, let's finish up with this one. And, Adam, this game, on one sense, is a giant mess and almost a miracle that we're gonna be able to cover it.
Full disclosure, I remember loving this game when I rented it from Blockbuster Video as a child and, I might have been a really dumb kid. I I mean, I've heard other stories. You were definitely a dumb kid, but so was I. Yeah. That's fair. Yay. Life before the Internet. I know. Right? This game was released on the regular Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Game Gear, Game Boy, and Sega
Master System. There were also some computer versions, which we don't care about here, and maybe kind of a turbo graphics 16 game because that one was finished and then people didn't like it, so they made this one for all the other consoles and that's all we're really going to say about the actually no we'll talk a little bit about the turbo graphics one Just to knock it out of the way, you get to be Alfred, the lawyer guy, and go around and do things because I forgot because I wasn't actually
planning on talking about this one. I do want to acknowledge its existence just to mostly cut off anybody who says, oh, look. There's a TurboGrafx game that you didn't talk about. I love the fact that somebody out there went, you know who was the best part about this movie? The lawyer. He actually is a really good part about the movie though. Yeah. Actually, Tully is great, and I have no complaints about him. But he's, like, the last character I would want to play as.
He's, like, the number 4 wide receiver on an NFL team, and he's still really good. And he was probably really good at every other team he's been on, but you got these other 3 guys that are just amazing. Yeah. He's like a non SCC quarterback. He's gonna get drafted just, you know, there's other guys. That's right. That was sports people. Oh, just wait. We're gonna have a whole sports episode coming up once I could sucker someone into doing it. Oh, I can't wait. I'll let you know. Nice.
But this game, as I said earlier, was released in 1992. Wikipedia doesn't have an exact date on it, and I forgot to pull up Mobi games as I was looking. The Super Nintendo one anyway doesn't have a month. Same with the Sega Genesis, except that it was released in 93. The regular Nintendo one was released in January of 1992, and that's pretty common. Movie tie in games
used to not try to come out right with the movie. This one was actually praised, if that's the right word for it, for coming out as close to the movie's release as it did. And weirdly weirdly enough, they start production on this game before the movie, which is kind of never done in that era. It's another reason why we're not really gonna talk about the computer games because most of them are a completely different
game from this one. And I've already set the precedent that I'm not looking at games that are just computer only because there's way too many of them that are just really stupid, and I don't wanna look at them. That's fair enough. And, like, as much of a, let's say, cash in as this game is, it still has the pedigree of being a real honest to God video game that you can play if you try.
The whole plot of this Addams Family game is that you are Gomez Addams having to go around and save the other members of your family from different people who have kidnapped them. Pugsley and Wednesday and Granny have all been taken. You have villains from the movie that are being the main bosses that you have to go rescue your family members from. And unlike a lot of tie
in games and stuff, this one this is rather open world, you know, as much as you could have for this era. You just kinda do the levels and whatever or you feel like doing them in. Yeah. And there's no, like, rhyme or reason to progression in the game. You can grab power ups and carry them from area to area. You can except one version of the game has a slightly different ending than the other games. Otherwise, it's just this weird chaotic mess of Adam's family.
Which really is the only proper kind of Adams family, so I think it works really well. It it works. It captures the vibe at the very least. As Gomez Adams, you get to also run around collecting a bunch of money in the form of dollar signs just floating around, which Gomez likes his fancy things, so you know, he's gonna make money how he needs to to get his fancy things. And the entire plot
of the movie is based around trying to get to this fortune that they have buried somewhere in the mansion. So it really ties into a lot of things so well. It does, and it's also kind of in most of the versions of the game kind of an abandoned point that to release the final member of the family, you have to collect $1,000,000 in one version of the game. And the other ones, the dollars are present.
Kinda like points in games of this era. Yeah. They're just kind of there because people expect them to be there. So here here is my my mind blowing take on the Evans family. When I sat down to play it, I kept having this, like, nagging feeling. This reminds me of something. Like, oh my god. I feel like I'm playing Braid. I don't know that one.
The very famous games as our little time travel time mechanics game. It's like it's it's a very pretentious little platformer, but the art style is so similar between the 2 games that I just sat there and giggled like an idiot for, like, 5 minutes. I'm gonna have to go check this one out then. Trust me, somebody's gonna get super mad that I said that. Probably Jonathan Blow actually. This is gonna get super mad said
that. He's the very pretentious new shoe man in the game. That's right. Hedgehog. He'll, he'll love that. I'll leave that in just in case he listens. I hope he does. He definitely name searches himself, so That's right. I'm going hard on an indie game developer from 20 years ago. We've gone at people before like that, so there there is a precedent. No one else could see the look of your face when I started in on that. That made all the difference.
Yes. As far as newspaper comics go, we haven't looked at a ton. There were a few things in that Atari wrap up episode. I think it was mostly Snoopy and Popeye. There's Snoopy Sports. There's a Phantom 2040 game, Little Nemo the Dream Master, Garfield, Dick Tracy, Dennis the menace, the American version of that character, and the why does this exist, we could not figure it out after hours of trying Fester's quest.
Oh, I feel like you've left out one real winner that you're gonna have to punish somebody with later. Maybe it's a Patreon stretch goal. Have you heard of Dilbert's desktop, Gabe? I have not. Also, I'm assuming it came out later, so it might not have to be a Patreon exclusive. Yeah. This was a late nineties video game. It it was pretty pretty bad. I mean, it's a Dilbert video game. I don't know what anyone would expect out of it.
Man, I wonder if there are any famous podcast people that I could get on to talk about Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator, and then the making of this game that you're speaking of? I don't know. I can't think of anyone. Well, I bet if there was somebody, then I would try to make it out. That would be excellent. Anyway You also have a pretty big difference in the people who worked on this game. For the 2nd Genesis version, it was published
by Acclaim who put out, like, almost all the good things that you can think of. The entire Turok series, a a bunch of the Spiderman games of that 16 bit era, the crow city of angels, Batman and Robin and Batman forever, children of the atom, a ton of good comic based games, and developing the game and publishing You know, just to be to be fair, they also published the first Batman video game. My research and note taking here have failed me.
Well, luckily, I am a horrifying research monster because that's what I do in my day job. And also, I had, like, one of those strange moments of deja vu saying the the ocean splash page, and they made so many of what I think of as, like, the c tier movie tie ins. Like, not the ones that are absolute garbage and not one that you ever made the mistake of buying, but the
kind of stuff you would rent from, like, Hollywood video. So they did Jurassic Park. They did Hook. They did a couple of wrestling games. They did a version of Total Recall. They had a truly weird catalog of games. Oh, and all the Robocops. They're a weird little publisher because they, like, I feel like more than anybody they found that niche of we can make a licensed game that's
about 5 hours long and people will pay out the nose for it. Part of me respects that. Because I don't think these are bad games. Like, I was out here playing that stupid Batman driving game, and, this was way better than that. This is so much better than that one. Like, you could see what you're doing. The hit boxes on every single one of the little weird monsters in this are complete
nonsense, which is a terrible thing to have in a platforming game. By the way, you kill everything in this game Super Mario style, which I appreciate it. You know, unless you're half a pixel off and then you die. Right. Yeah. You cannot. What were any of those monsters? What do you want them to be? Because I feel like that's the correct answer.
I mean, I know some of them were definitely the weird ostrich things from Joust. Nothing in this game, like, beyond the fact that you save members of the Addams family has anything to do with the Addams family. And yet, what does the Addams family have that makes any sense? So it it's a weird thing where, yeah, it it doesn't really connect, but it doesn't feel out of place either.
No. They're it's like, oh, this is like yeah. Yeah. Fine. That might be a gremlin on a tricycle. That might be ET from the Atari game. Those totally live in the Adam's house. Why not? Getting to go back and watch this movie again and getting to go back and play this game for the first time in a very long time for me, It just really brought me back to my childhood, and not worrying so much about what the game was doing, like,
what kind of statement it was trying to make, what kind of artistic level it was trying to get to. It was just, hey, here's a crazy game, and we get to go have fun with it. And that mini version of the Addams Family thing, they nailed that so freaking well across all the different platforms. It's like a fun little experience. You should definitely not track it down and pay real money to play it, but the fact that it exists is pretty cool.
I'm gonna go against you a little bit and say you should maybe not take the special trip to go out and find this one. But if you're out anyway and you see it, you can spend a reasonable amount of money on it and be fine. I I would pay up to $7 at a flea market for this game. That sounds about right. And I would go so far as to say if they had this one and the sequel, I would pay $10 for them together. I think that's a little bit much.
Yeah. I am I am basically, in that case, just paying all $10 for the first game. Well, the first game in a donor cartridge. Also, you get little Super Mario power ups for Govetz in this game. I totally get why he has the fencing sword. I don't understand why he throws golf balls or why he has sonic speed shoes. Well, he does hit golf balls at the neighbors. Yeah. Yep. That's true. That's true. But he never wears sneakers. But if he did, you know they'd be fly as hell.
They they would, and he would run real fast. So they'd definitely be red. But again, I appreciate that. I appreciate the fact that somebody just would throw it in. It makes sense. It's the atoms. Normally, this is about the point where I'd ask what this gets right and what it gets wrong, but the comics themselves are so sparse. The TV shows and the movies all get to pretty much make whatever they want decision wise as long as it doesn't,
like, super directly go against what had been done previous. And it's all just so crazy that it's really hard to say that something is right or wrong outside of, like, this is a character's name. I guess it's kind of fair to say that, those are definitely members of the Addams Family. It gets the music, and it's gonna make you chuckle. So it wins. And I guess that's the best I can say for it. That certainly is one unit of Addams Family Entertainment.
If you knew somebody who wanted to get into the Addams Family, would you give them this game as a bit of a primer course? No freaking way. Nope. I would however give this game to somebody who really enjoyed licensed games from the 19 nineties, and said, this is what people made video games of movies with. And if somebody enjoyed the 1991 movie and liked video games, I would tell them check out Escape.
Yeah. This is the first one in a long time where I would definitely not want to give this to somebody to get them into it, but I would definitely wanna give this to somebody who was already into it. There's nothing wrong with it as an Addams Family fan. It's just kind of incomprehensible if you've never played or watched any of the other stuff. If you knew somebody who was thinking about getting into the Addams Family, what comic and game would you give them? Not necessarily from the
I actually think everyone should watch wouldn't stay because it was a great show. But if I was gonna give people a comic and a game because it's in the watch, there are some really great collections of Charles Addams New Yorker cartoons, and I think that is just kind of the go to, especially the first, like, the collections of the earliest strips are just a really great way to dial in on the humor very very fast. Although, there's also a collection of them from the seventies where they're all
wearing, like, mod clothes which is bizarre. And, so I'd tell them to, you know, take a look at that. I honestly don't know what I would give somebody. Like, the Addams Family is just so itself. Honestly, the Bunsters is the only thing I can think of that's even close, but it's not. You know, what's got a very similar emotional vibe is Psychonauts. See, I haven't played that which I know is a problem. Everybody can yell at me in the comments.
Yeah. You should play that, but it's got that very kind of it's just a little weird, like, a little weirder than normal, but everybody's cool with it within the game that it's so weird. I think if you like that kind of humor, if you like just kind of the idea of abnormal being normal, You can get into this franchise of stuff really easy. But nobody else really goes after
that in, like, the world of video games. So maybe these really weird licensed games from the nineties are the best video game for it. Maybe. And I feel like I'm stretching this, but maybe the Cave Johnson parts of Portal. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Doing that yeah. Just doing that one chunk of Portal 2 would be a great introduction to that kind of human illusion. Video games don't do, like, funny terribly well most of the time, And they don't do, like, this kind
of weirdly heartfelt funny. This part of the Adam's family. Because there's, like, there's even stuff in Baldur's Gate 3 that I think is very Addams Family types of humor, but it's just little chunks of it. Nobody goes as hard as the Addams Family. Speaking of heartfelt family friendly humor, Adam, it has been great talking to you about your family and everything here. And if people wanna hear more from you, where else can they find you around the Internet? They can't.
That better be that they can't yet. I'm still trying to pressure you into making that thing I know you're thinking about. I've got a bunch of it written. Good. I just need time. So, you could find me on the Internet in hopefully by May. Oh, and on Blue Sky, actually, as effect not affect. There are definitely gonna be links down in the show notes to all that stuff because I will forget how to spell that one. That's the point.
Also, if you, click the tag of Adam's name, you can see past episodes he has been on here as well as things that he has written. Yay. Yes. And I will probably before I do anything else, probably write more things. So be on the lookout for those. As always, if you wanna hear more from me, you can head on over to playcomics.com where there's links to all the social media things, you know, like Twitter, which I can't escape because nobody can escape when you stay where the people are and the
people stay where you are, and that's just how the cycle of Twitter continues. But, you know, there's also links to Blue Sky and Mastodon and other places that I technically am that I need to be on more. If you wanna support the show, you can be like the patrons I have at Ono Litclast, Dan McMahon, and Carlo Antonovitz. You can, you know, just tell me that you like the show.
You can go leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser or, you know, just share the show with a friend because that is how podcasts spread. It's not that new and noteworthy thing. It's people saying, hey, guess what? I know this thing, and it's good, and I like it. Don't forget the Playa Comics is a part of the get a geek.com network, home to such other wonderful shows as Legends of S. H. I. E. L. D, where you get to hear me talking about Marvel things. Right now, we're looking at x men 97
because it's out, and it's good, and we love it. Don't forget too too that that giveaway from last week's episode is still going on. There's gonna be a link to that episode in the show notes, which in turn has a link to a Twitter and Blue Sky thread where you can enter and win some other things that Michelle Abinator has made and, you know, If you like the music that I'm
really talking on top of right now, head on over to soundcloud.com/bestashday to check out Best Day's music. But most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics, and go find yourself a new favorite character. Okay. I can work with that. But until then, I can hear you typing like a madman. If you wanna support the show, you can head on over to Play Comics. No. You can't because that's what I just said.