The Simpsons

aka: The Simpsons Arcade Game
Moby ID: 2111
DOS Specs
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Description official description

Waylon Smithers has just stolen a diamond from Springfield Jewelers for Mr. Burns. While trying to make a getaway, he crashes into Homer, which knocks the diamond out of his hand. Maggie catches it in her mouth, prompting Smithers to grab her and run off. The Simpsons decide to go after him, but Mr. Burns has tons of henchmen, who want to prevent the family getting their daughter back.

The Simpsons is basically a side-scrolling beat-em-up featuring the characters from The Simpsons TV show. The player can choose to play as each of the four Simpson characters. Homer, who punches and kicks; Marge, who swings her vacuum cleaner; Bart, who wields his skateboard; and Lisa, who uses a jump rope as a whip. Other weapons such as hammers and bowling balls are also available to use. The game's levels are Downtown Springfield, Krustyland, Springfield Discount Cemetery, Moe's Tavern, Springfield Gorge, Dreamland, the Channel 6 studio, and the Power Plant. Each level ends with a boss whose speed and strength will increase after taking a certain amount of damage. End level bosses are the wrestler Professor Werner von Brawn, a hot air balloon shaped like Krusty the Clown, a pair of bouncers, a drunk at Moe's Tavern, a henchman in a bear suit, an imaginary, gigantic bowling ball, and a martial arts sensei dressed like a kabuki actor. There's also the showdown finale against Smithers and Mr. Burns in a robotic outfit.

Between levels, the player can compete against the other characters in two mini-games to be first to complete a task (inflating a balloon and waking up their character).

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Credits (DOS version)

19 People

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 77% (based on 11 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 61 ratings with 5 reviews)

It has no right to be THIS good!

The Good
It has EVERYTHING! It's the whole arcade game, in 8-bit glory!!! Okay, some minor details may have changed, but it is way beyond in term of C64 arcade coversions. Even the presentational bits and cutscenes are here. And the gameplay didn't get lost amidst all this.

There is 2 player co-op mode! The 4 player mode would have been impossible to implement, so this is as good as it gets.

The audiovisuals... well they are what they are, as a demake. But there is nothing particularly wrong with them. And there is even simultaneous music and sound effects during gamepaly, a rare feature on C64 games.

The Bad
One button Atari-style joystick controls. Not very comfortable, but manageable.

It came way too late in the commercial life of the C64, it's almost like a homebrew game made by enthusiasts (or I could also say it's perhaps for the better).

The Bottom Line
Wow! It's a beat-em-up that completely destroys the pathetic C64 port of Golden Axe!

Commodore 64 · by 1xWertzui (1135) · 2024

Another failure for PC conversions of arcade hits

The Good
Remember those days when the 2D sidescrolling beat em-ups were king of the arcades? Every videogame maker worth a damn had at least one title that fitted the description, and the same went for every marketable series, comic or motion picture out to make a quick buck. If you didn't have a Final Fight clone that beared your name then you were nothing. So you had the TMNT, The Punisher, X-Men, Batman, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, Robo Army, King of the Dragons, etc. etc. and of course: "The Simpsons: The Arcade Game" made by one of the two leading companies in the market: Konami (the other one being obviously Capcom).

Well, what can you say in favor of this particular licensed cash-in? Well for starters it features mostly recognizable Simpsons characters and landmarks for you to play in, and the gameplay and graphics are cartoony and cute enough to make you forget about the fact that a a bald, greasy old man can grab a little girl like Lisa from behind and hold her while a guy in a suit punchs her in the stomach.

Gameplay is brain-dead simple, and consists mainly of you hitting color-variating versions of the same two or three guys around as you try to hunt down Mr. Smithers and rescue Maggie. Through 9 or so stages at the end of which you have to face an obligatory boss fight against a unique enemy. Everything by the rules and entertaining as usual.

The game is challenging and offers a nice diversion if you have nothing better around to play with... Well, I guess that's as far as we go here.

The Bad
Well, it's an early 90's PC conversion of an arcade game... so if you were betting on it to suck ass then you just hit the jackpot! Completely redrawn (and badly redrawn) sprites, god-awful sound that replaces all the digitized samples and clear sfx that the original had, missing stages (or parts from stages), missing enemies, missing backgrounds, unbalanced gameplay (Marge was powerful but slow on the original, now she's both super strong AND super fast), missing moves (the original had a series of team-up moves with each pair of characters as well as other gimmicks... gone here too). The list just goes on and on...

Quite simply it's a lackluster port made to cash in quickly on the PC-using Simpsons fanbase.

The Bottom Line
Yet another botched port of what was originally an averagely entertaining arcade romp. This is why PCs got that fame that they were uncapable of handling action or arcade games. Want some good advice? Get yourself the original ROM, fire it up with MAME and enjoy the Simpsons in their original glory. The DOS version is merely an oddity that would appeal to collectors and isn't worth a dime.

DOS · by Zovni (10504) · 2003

A pretty decent conversion......OK maybe not

The Good
The storyline was pretty innovative. And the characters you could pick. Thats about it.

The Bad
Oh boy, where to start.....The graphics, they were terrible, The sound was just a MIDI file in the background and no actual sound effects, The sprites, sometimes you could see through them. Overall this game, well, sucked.

The Bottom Line
Don't buy it. It's so much better in the arcades.

DOS · by James1 (240) · 2001

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Character design

The Simpsons appeared in a series of shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show from 1987 to 1989. In these shorts, their designs gradually changed from crudely drawn to having a lot more polish. On both the back cover and the character profiles in this game, it is obvious that the five characters are based on the shorts that aired during the 1989 season of The Tracey Ullman Show. Since then, their designs have improved even more throughout the course of the half-hour The Simpsons show.

Characters peculiarities

  • Bart wears a blue shirt in the game, which is also the case on various T-shirts and merchandising items. He does not wear a blue shirt on the TV show however.
  • The bow in Maggie's hair switches between blue and pink during the game.
  • Barney's hair colour is yellow, the same colour as his skin. He appeared this way on a few early episodes of The Simpsons and has since been drawn with brown hair instead.
  • Smithers has a dark color-scheme for his hair and skin. This is not an accident, but based on a single episode of The Simpsons, Homer's Oddysey in which he appears like this but has since been given lighter skin and darker hair. He is also a lot more villainous here than he has ever been on the show.

Plot

At the time of this game's initial release, the show was in its infancy, with only two production seasons from which to borrow situations and plot elements. This explains, among other differences, why Lisa does not mind eating meat to restore health, and why Sideshow Bob acts as an ally, rather than an adversary, to the playable characters.

Rabbits

The rabbit-like characters often seen in the game are Binky (the two-eared rabbit) and Bongo (the one-eared one), two of the characters from Matt Groening's Life In Hell, a newspaper comic strip.

Information also contributed by Fangusu and WildKard.

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  • MobyGames ID: 2111
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Luiz Pacheco.

PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 added by Sciere. Commodore 64 added by Scott G. Arcade added by j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】.

Additional contributors: Satoshi Kunsai, Katakis | カタキス, Cantillon, Fangusu, Patrick Bregger.

Game added August 11, 2000. Last modified March 27, 2024.