The Baron's Rant about Bad Simpsons Games
Jan 26 '03
The Bottom Line Simpsons games are discrediting the TV show, and I feel the need to fume about it.
Can you believe that The Simpsons has been on the air for 15 years now? I’m amazed that I can remember when I started watching the show, way back in the first season. I remember all the hype, the merchandising, and, funniest of all, the shocked parents who were outraged over Bart’s antics. I commend series creator Matt Groening for not only keeping the show on for that long, but for keeping it from crumbling under the pressure of its own hype. While much less controversial than it used to be, The Simpsons is still a fresh, funny satire of life and culture, despite the recent downgrade in quality. Most importantly, I still consider it the most watchable program on TV. I’ve become a true Simpsons fanatic, having seen almost every episode at least twice. The only exceptions are the episodes that originally aired over the last two seasons, and that’s only because they haven’t made it into syndication yet. (Ask me anything, go ahead, I dare ya!)
Going back to what I said about rememberances about merchandising, I also remember all the hoopla that surrounded Nintendo when they aquired the rights to a video game based on America’s favorite yellow-skined family. The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants was the hottest game of the year, but these days most hardcore gamers are quick to point at it as an example of lousy games based on great liscensing. With good reason: Bart vs. the Space Mutants was a horrible game, and cheesier than the space mutant movies that Bart loves so much.
Unfortunately, the fact that the game sucked didn’t prevent a flood of Simpsons fanatics from going out and buying it. Simpsons nuts (I mean the TRUE Simpsons nuts) are a devoted lot, ranking right up there with Trekkies. They’re fiercely defensive about their favorite program, and many of them will try to one-up each other in their trivia knowledge. That this devotion will occaisionally spill over into merchandise purchases is to be expected-anything that features The Simpsons has that as a redeeming quality. As a result, Bart vs. the Space Mutants sold very, very well.
This being the situation, in the 15 years The Simpsons has aired, not one playable console video game based on the Simpsons liscense has ever emerged. That covers some three or four console generations.
After the releases of the recent Simpsons Road Rage and Simpsons skateboarding for the PlayStation 2 and the reviews that ranged from lukewarm to downright slanderous, I’m beginning to think that The Simpsons just aren’t made to star in video games. Of course the argument exists that The Simpsons is a sitcom, not an action movie, and therefore has no business in the gaming industry. I guess one bottom line here is why even try when the product will likely suck anyway. A good bottom line, but lets face the facts: The Simpson family is bankable material, always has been and always will be as long as the writers keep churning out quality spoofs. As long as The Simpsons are bankable, game designers will keep profiting from them no matter the quality of the games.
I think that the overall poor quality of Simpsons video games lies right in the fact that The Simpsons is a TV show. At least in action movie adaptations, the designers have a lone good guy and a bunch of faceless bad guys to work with, and so a game can easily be born from the original movie material. But The Simpsons is a comedy TV show. So even with a liscense that clearly lets programmers mangle and maul all they please, no one really knows what to do. As a result, most Simpsons games released nowadays are little more than emulators of gaming trends that the show would normally make fun of. Think of some of the similarities: Road Rage was nothing more than a gussied up version of Sega’s far superior Crazy Taxi series. Skateboarding is clearly an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Tony Hawk series. A few years back, there was a Simpsons Wrestling for the PlayStation that was so bad it could only have been designed by incompetent worker Homer Simpson. How fitting, seeing as how Homer often attempts poorly thought get-rich-quick schemes based on trends.
I wonder if the show’s decrease in popularity has anything to do with the lousy video games.
Now, I can understand a handfull (or even a lot of) poor products based on hot, potentially undying liscenses. Look at Star Wars and all the crap that its produced. When you think about it, Star Wars fans really don’t have a lot of good games to feed their obsessions. For every Starfighter or Rogue Leader, there’s likely to be ten or 20 Jedi Power Battles or Demolitions. But those ten or 20 don’t matter to Star Wars fans because, let’s face it, Rogue Leader and Starfighter are fine games, and they DO get released every once in two blue moons. But with The Simpsons, when I say there was but one game ever released the complete satisfaction of both Simpsons and video game fanatics, I mean ONE GAME. One measly video game that no one remembers because it was 1-an arcade exclusive, and 2-a cheap and very blatant knock-off of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game.
Bad Simpsons games have spread Kang’s slimy tentacles to just about every genre, with the possible exceptions of RPGs and fighting games. Many of the genres that haven’t been covered generically have been present in what are really just cheap genre sample games. Bart’s Nightmare, anyone? Virtual Bart? They’ve even gotten a puzzler out of the liscense (Krusty’s Fun House). It’s a little like that Halloween episode where the Simpsons wished for riches and fame, and everyone got sick of them because they were everywhere.
My so-simple-it’s-stupid solution to this plague of perpetually bad Simpson’s games would be to just stop making them altogether. Look at the quality of the show. Honestly, much as I still love the show, I’ll also be the first to admit that it jumped the shark several seasons ago, and finally hit its low point during that dreadful season 12 (or is it season 13?). Since the quality of the show can only go downhill now, you could assume that the games won’t be getting any better either. Heck, the games hit their low before the show did with Simpsons Wrestling, a game that had shoddy, connect-the-dots graphics and even shoddier gameplay more two-dimensional than any Simpsons cast member.
Perhaps it’s not too late, though. It may be possible to salvage just a single good Simpsons game from money-hungry developers between now and the time the show becomes unprofitable. The Simpsons seems to have the potential to turn up a good RPG, with a colorful cast of offbeat heroes and villains. Since the characters are already there, just send the liscense over to Squaresoft and let them develop a storyline and a battle system. A gaming partnership between Squaresoft and The Simpons may sound a little out there, but so did a gaming partnership Squaresoft and Disney. See my Kingdom Hearts review to learn how that one turned out.
Until that glorious day, though, I guess we Simpsons/game nuts will just have to make do with what we have. Yeah, right. Good luck finding the arcade game, and anything else is just a waste of money. From the original beginning of this travesty with Bart vs. the Space Mutants through the genre compilations of 16-bit to the horrible Simpsons Wrestling to the latest 128-bit devil spawns, the Simpsons liscense has been churning out crap game after crap game for over a decade. It’s almost enough to make you wish the show would just crash and burn already so we innocent gamers don’t have to put up with... With... ... I don’t know, think of another clever Simpsons metaphor, glue it here and give me the credit.
And now, so no one NH’s me for not dishing out enough info on the games themselves, here’s what I know:
The Simpsons (Arcade)
A thorouhly enjoyable beat em’ up in the tradition of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. Maggie’s been kidnapped by Smithers, and so the rest of the family beats the crap out of a ton of businessmen to find her.
Bart vs. the Space Mutants (NES, Genesis)
I know I had the ridiculous objective of painting things in the first level. I don’t know much beyond that, because the unresponsive controls marred me from a second playing. I do believe that it’s a typical platformer in the Mario mold, though.
Krusty’s Fun House (NES)
Seems that Krusty’s funhouse has been taken over by an army of rats. Instead of calling the exterminator, Krusty sets up an elaborate layout of immobile traps. Since their immobile, you (as Krusty, of course) get to find a way to lead the rats to the traps. While you don’t get to command your favorite characters, this puzzler is probably the most playable Simpsons console game out there.
Bart’s Nightmare (Genesis, maybe Super NES)
Bart has a bad dream and you get to guide him through varying scenarios, with Bart taking a different guise in each one. Go through the Temple of Maggie, trample buildings as Bartzilla, and more that I don’t know because I’ve never had the misfortune of playing it.
Virtual Bart (Genesis, Super NES)
From the crapmasters at Acclaim, Bart is now on Martin’s virtual reality machine. The basic premise is the same Bart’s Nightmare but with less variety. You get Jurassic Bart, Baby Bart, Doomsday Bart and five others. Actually, it has a few playable moments.
Simpsons Wrestling (PlayStation)
This is just some kind of backyard rumble. You get to pick from a dozen or so characters, but don’t expect the depth of a UFC Tapout or another wrestling game. Each character gets only four moves, and the graphics look like some talentless animators just connected some dots out of a coloring book. This is the worst Simpsons game I’ve played.
Road Rage (PlayStation 2, Gamecube, Xbox)
Crazy Taxi starring the Simpsons.
Simpsons Skateboarding
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater starring the Simpsons.
That's all I can think of right now.
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Epinions.com ID:
BaronSamedi3
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 in Games |
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Location: Chicago
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Doing work on my blog: http://phoenixinquirer.wordpress.com/
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