Addams Family Amiga: The Backgrounds Edition - OCS and AGA Amigas, now with restored backgrounds! ( Coming October )

EAB member DJ Mike has announced a major breakthrough for Amiga owners, revealing a heavily modified "Backgrounds Edition" of Ocean's classic 1992 tie-in game, The Addams Family. Set for release in October 2026, this project rectifies a decades-old disappointment. When the original game launched across multiple platforms in the 16-bit era, the Amiga port notoriously lacked the detailed background artwork present on rival systems. Prompted by a discussion on the English Amiga Board (EAB) forums, DJ Mike reverse-engineered the game's code, discovering a startling secret: the original developers actually programmed the backgrounds to render, but the code ultimately ignored and overwrote them before they could reach the screen.

Comparisons of the original system versions

Overcoming the technical limits of the hardware required massive code restructuring and meticulous memory management. The developer discovered that the original team intended to implement parallax scrolling running at half-speed. However, because standard OCS Amiga chipsets max out their 32-colour bitplanes on the foreground action, a true dual-playfield effect was impossible without causing severe visual lag. To maintain smooth performance on standard OCS machines, the new version locks the restored backgrounds to scroll at the same speed as the level. Meanwhile, AGA-powered machines like the Amiga 1200 and 4000 get the premium experience; by leveraging 32-bit FMODE graphics and storing 32 distinct copies of the background in memory simultaneously, the game pushes the 2MB Chip RAM limit to deliver flawless, intended half-speed parallax scrolling.

An old BETA build from March showing the backgrounds

The project is currently nearing completion as the developer irons out the final feature set. While initially built as a WHDLoad installation to streamline development, DJ Mike has confirmed that a standalone ADF floppy disk image is actively being mastered for purists who prefer booting straight from a disk. Thankfully Amiga owners will only have to wait a few more weeks to experience this definitive, visually restored edition of a 16-bit staple.

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