This Game is UNNECESSARILY HARD | Addams Family (ZX Spectrum) 

The Hit Squad reissue of this game now reaches insane prices on cassette amongst traders. It was one of the last Hit Squad releases.

I have been taking an interest in the layout of the Adams Family games recently to look at how they were doing non-linear gating. I remembered this one had a nice big map as shown in your video so I went and found a copy of the map you showed to trace the paths and... OMFG. 2 hours of carefully stepping through, room by room, and there were whole areas I still hadn't found an entry to. I am convinced there is an error on the map as the icebox area seems to only have doors that go in a loop, but still. What a mammoth job it must have been to map that. Fuck this game entirely. I don't believe that the designers ever played it through as intended.

The game map shows that had there been more (any?) play testing it could've been great, perhaps a Metroidvania with multiple paths. Bloody hell... It's like a Terraria map.

Thos game always felt like a big budget het set willy to me. It definitely has the same sensibilities, Ocean must have put the old guard to develop it, as the 16 bit versions were far more console-y Oh your preview yesterday, I thought you were going to finish this blindfolded 😜

The music as the game map slowly pulls out and pans is genius level editing

In 1992 I'd moved on from the Spectrum to the NES. It's fascinating to see the gameplay mechanics that moved over to the humble Speccy. It looks surprisingly playable. 5:40 That's a big house! I wonder why they needed so many clocks. ;-)

This game would be probably a perfect candidate for a romhack. Make a proper instant run button, the stamina hearts could be just hitpoints (with invincibility frames) and infinite continues. Will this fix it?

Colin the cleaner would have a heart attack

God I remember this, and I struggled with Jetset willy... Speccy platformers were so painful

Wow that gamemap is almost Hollow Knight sized! '@_@'

That games map was beautiful.I had it on the Snes an it was hard as balls also never completed it still play it the odd time.

Listening to Rosie slowly create more and more innovative methods of chaining swear words together has made my day

Excellent stuff

This ominous zoom-out was just perfect. I did't play this game back in the day, but doesn't seem to be much harder than, say, Jet Set Willy. Well... in Jet Set Willy you knew where you would fall, though. Ok, its just another unplayable Spectrum game. But a well done one.

"Hey, kids liked Manic Miner, right? Let's make every Spectrum game play exactly like that! Forever!" (Jess wakes up in a cold sweat) "Oh God, I had a horrible dream that I was a British gamer in the 1980s!"

The worst thing is this looks great for a Spectrum game, and gameplay-wise so almost there in the classic Starquake style explore-and-bring-'em-up, and then it falls at the last hurdle with ridiculous difficulty. It's not needed! Like you say, the game looks huge and like it'd still last ages without needing to kill you every 30 seconds.

It's a shame that no one has amended the original game code to change the control mechanic and improve the hit box for the enemies. So many of these old games had a ridiculous difficulty level, which was such a shame considering the effort that the programmers put into crafting a big beautiful created maps that no one will ever get to see. Why was no one advising software houses that their games were too damn hard. Thanks for making that video it was really entertaining. Lots of love for the spectrum here.

"Screamingly Horrible" is a great little phrase, I shall have to add it to my vocabulary.

Sorry I missed the Premiere, we were having dinner. I enjoyed your slow descent into despair during the gameplay footage, though. I often get like that with really hard games, too. First the furious swearing, then the slow draining of energy until all you want to do is just sob into a pillow. I often find a second wind of rage follows shortly afterwards. I have been known to bite sofa cushions during this part of the process, and that's generally a signal that it's time to stop for a bit.

Zooming out to show the map was funny and 'oooh play a spooky game for Halloween!!'

Interesting to see the different takes on this selfsame concept across all the many, many different systems Ocean published this game on. I really quite like the SNES game -- it's also punishingly difficult, but once you learn about the "1-Up Room" beneath the stairs in the mansion's foyer, it becomes quite manageable, and really very enjoyable to play and explore. This is due in part to the wonderful visuals and music, which it seems were consistent across basically all versions of the game (incidentally, that intro music is in the SNES/MegaDrive versions of the game as well, and sounds just as fantastic there!). So while it is quite a shame that the ZX Spectrum version of this had the bones of a good game, but absolutely whiffed it in execution, you can at least take heart in knowing that those same bones were used in all the OTHER versions of the game too, and at least a couple of them wound up being quite good all-around experiences!

I used to play Ocean's Addams Family game for the Game Boy, which reminds me of this a lot. But this is like a nightmare version of it. Not knowing WTF to do was OK in the GB version because it was fun to explore. That was probably due to the difficulty being pretty low for most screens, with the hard parts reserved for the bosses. The movement mechanic alone probably makes a huge difference to the Speccy version; I wonder how playable it would be if someone hacked the movement to be 1 fixed speed. It'd obviously still have the BS Jet Set Willy timing traps that UK platformers of the time loved, but maybe it would be playable if you could react on the fly.

It looks fun, except for that accelerating walk, even just watching it is frustrating.

I played this a lot as a kid, could rescue Lurch but never managed to get any further, other than seeing Wednesday once and badly failing the minigame. The weird momentum movement is definitely what makes all the difference here, reminded me a lot of Grell & Falla's irritating movement. I don't think this game was as hard as the Bangers & Mash game though, that was absolutely brutal. Edit - You actually had the opportunity to rescue Lurch but didn't! You have to jump on his head (obviously..) to begin the rescue sequence.

@RoseTintedSpectrum Another Retro Gaming Chanel I must Sub to! LOL! I was an Amstrad CPC Lad myself... My first Computer was an Atari 520XL... Don't even go there! (Lets just say I did not use it as a Computer most of the time!)... But My Sisters had the ZX Spectrum 48k... And to be honest, I sued it more than them! I never got to experience Addams family on any system... But WOW! It looks Hard!!! Chalk up another sub dude! Love the Video!

What a horror! I've recently played this. I gave up really quickly, the whole jumping movement thing sucks! I feel your pain. Surely there's easier Halloween type games out there.

I don't know why youtube algorithm chose to show me this. The level designers were clearly on ALL of the drugs. But whoever was the programmer that enabled the labyrinthian compression this game must use to store that ginormous map and be readable on a zx spectrum? they deserve a round of whatever their booze of choice is, full stop. the man(?) should basically never have to pay their tab _ever_ again. That map size is just next levels of insane!

0:18 There's the money shot

That map is pretty damn impressive, it reminded me of Symphony of the night.

Unlike the movie, this game did not elicit a laugh from me, never mind a smile.

"about as terrifying as reading a Goosebumps book in a busy Starbucks" is a sentence that will stay with me

I also had the spectrum cover tape demo and remember thinking there was no point buying the game as I couldn’t get past the first few screens either. It wasn’t just me, my friends who were much better gamers had the same problem. I think the demo actually harmed sales, because I was totally into TAF at the time but after playing this decided not to buy the game.

This is a challenge and a half...I like it

0:18 Bottom right post-it - "Cry on camels for Monty"? Is there a Jeff Minter Monty Mole game? Or is that an abbreviation for a Carry On Camping video coming out on Monday?

This game would drive me mad how bad I would be at it.

I had this on the CPC (think it was the last non-budget release for it) and I got pretty far eventually. But probably sank too many hours of my young life into it. Also weird seeing it in colours that are not different shades of green

9 lives, health _and_ continues?? You young 'uns don't know you're born 3 lives with Monty Mole is all we got, sonny Jim, and we were grateful!

Ocean, it was a company that existed

Jesus, how many screens??? Looks good but virtually unplayable.

Oh god..late era Speccy games are so not my jam. They are somehow stuck between proper game design for the time and Chaotic Evil.

"piss, bollocks" pmsl, you sound like me

Welp, I think we've found next years charity stream game! 😂

You think this is hard, try Wizards lair on the C64, it's a total bastard of a game in many, many ways. Literally a game to introduce anyone to a lifetime of Prozac and valium.

Harder than Cauldron 2? 🤔

Get OneCreditClassics on this. He'll do it blindfolded. But seriously... this has some nice ideas and lovely graphics and then some... odd ideas. The respawn at doors that are far away is.... frustrating. I can get the building up speed but not instantly stopping. And so on...

Sod NES hard - I go off Amiga hard that softy Americans will never understand. Have you played the C64 version? Imagine this lovely looking Speccy port but shrink Gomez down to the size of your patience in the video and try playing it again.

Those reviews are horrible. Great vid. Greetings from The Netherlands.

I hear you complaining allot but I bet you already have plans to turn this into a 12 hour charity stream, where you never complete it and wonder you never stream good games like Sims, Runescape and Rock Drummer 2

RU-vid seems to be serving your videos up to me in order of how badly you've damaged your nose.

amazing video dont mind me i will sub