The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants

The Good
The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants for the Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive for PAL gamers) is noticeably improved from the original NES Nintendo edition.

Here, the Simpson's characters and the beloved town of Springfield look much closer to the television series.

The famous musical score also sounds much better on the Genesis, in comparison to the original Nintendo edition.

The Bad
Once you get beyond the nice visual and audio improvements, many of the faults with the Nintendo edition have been left intact on the Genesis.

Young Bart can still only take two direct hits before he loses a life and his health is only restored after completing a level. You will need to collect the maximum number of extra lives if you plan on beating this game, without using the Galoob Game Genie device.

Each level requires Bart to accomplish two main tasks -- within a fairly limited amount of time. First, certain objects in each level must be stolen or modified; i.e. balloons, hats, shoes or purple objects so as to prevent them from being used by the evil space aliens.

Originally, prior to the Internet becoming mainstream, it was not always clear what items you needed to collect or where they were in each level.

Even if you knew what type of item needed to be "obtained", you had to content with an fast moving timer and, again, your inability to survive more then two direct hits.

Secondly, it is VERY difficult -- if not impossible -- to defeat the boss at the end of each level, unless you have persuaded a Simpsons family member to help you out.

How do you do what, you may be asking? Well, it is another tedious pain in the you-know-what.

Some of the Springfield residents wandering around the levels are really space aliens. If you carefully, jump on these residents heads then they will drop an icon that spells one letter in a family member's name.

If, you get enough of the icons to spell out a character's name, then they will be on hand to give you some much needed assistance when battling a boss.

On paper this probably sounded like a fun idea. Just like the idea of collecting hats in a indoor shopping mall, may have sounded like a really, really, really, really fun concept for a Simpsons video game....on paper.

Yet, most of the time these objectives are tedious and, because of the cruel timer and the fragile (and rather passive) nature of your character, frustratingly difficult.

True, Bart does get to make a prank call early on in the game and, yes, he can collect various prankster-type items.

However, his character is still amazingly passive because most of these "offensive" and cool items are not used against the army of space aliens plotting to take over the world.

These cool items are used primarily to help you change an object's color or help you collect shoes or hats. What teenager wouldn't love the opportunity to collect cool, juvenile-type items so that you can....collect hats and shoes.

Wait, I have changed my mind. Their is no way such an idea could have looked remotely cool on paper, unless it was written by the Springfield Principal or Mr. Burns.

Last, but not least, it should be noted that the folks at "Flying Edge" (Cool Name....NOT!) had the habit of reversing the standard game play format for Genesis video games.

So along with the flaws found in the original Nintendo edition, this version adds in bad control mechanics. This was not just a one time flaw. Just about EVERY single Flying Edge video game I played, made this same mistake. Hmm.

The Bottom Line
The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants for the Sega Genesis looks and sounds better then the original, Nintendo edition of the game.

The game features many of the familiar characters and locations from the TV series and, on paper, the idea of young Bart stopping space aliens with bottle rockets and other such tools does sound cool.

Sadly, the flaws from the original Nintendo edition were brought over to the Genesis edition, along with some new flaws.

Diehard Simpsons fans will want to check out the game. Other gamers, even those that enjoy the TV series, will probably feel like telling the game to go "eat" its-self or something else, less polite.