The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants

The Good
Bart vs. the Space Mutants is a platform game originally made by the New Jersey based studio Imagineering Inc, for multiple platforms. It was produced and published on the NES by Acclaim, that secured the IP even before the first episode ever aired (when it was just a segment at the Tracey Ullman show), in fact this was the franchise first video game... Acclaim just had an eye for talent and licenses that could potentially be successful. The Box Art is probably one of the best in the NES library, credited to Matt Groening (the creator of the Simspons), colorful, not at all generic and perfectly summarize and represents the game. In fact, Matt Groening and James L. Brooks (Producer of the TV show) were involved with the early concept and wanted a Simpsons "whole" family game. So Imagineering designed the first level, the streets of Springfield, with that mindset of being a Bart Level (with his spray paint graffiti personality); the Shopping Mall for Marge (looking to buy a hat for her hair), the amusement park for Maggie (longing for a balloon), the museum for Lisa of course and the last level, the nuclear power plant for Homer (forgetting the way around his workplace). But Acclaim demanded a Bart-centered game, so they had to abandon all these ideas and just change them for pure platforming with Bart. The rest of the family got relegated to NPC helper roles. That's the reason behind the "silly" goals the game has (though personally I never understood this complaint: you collect hats because... that's what you did in games back in those days) Also, from the original concept they had just 3 months to show a fully working prototype. Finally all the depiction of characters and music had also to be approved by FOX, and by the way, devs didn't have access to previews, so they just watched the show as it aired and added some gags and references on the go; Nintendo also demanded to make the jump feel like Mario, but they couldn't without completely redesigning the game... so they just made Bart jump a little higher and hope to get with that the "seal of approval" (it worked!). So you can tell there was a lot of roughness to the development cycle, and its a miracle that end up working so well...

The Bad
Still the game was very hard, completely unfair, particularly on the middle levels, where the puzzle element almost disappear and the very slippery platforming becomes more and more present with some frustrating moments of thumb hurting controls. These are weird by the way, jump and run are both the same button, A, and that's just the beginning of it, you jump higher and longer with A + B, but B also shoots and frequently the ammo is limited and hard to find... The controls really takes some time and discipline to master. You have few hits (2) , and a very short time limit, but at least a lot of extra lives that you can pick; add to this that boss fights are quite difficult and even confusing at times... and you'd probably never got to see the ending: navigating the gigantic maze of the Nuclear Power Plant.

The Bottom Line
In any case the first level is nothing short but genius. As a result of a conscious decision of trying to make it feel different to a Mario game, ends up hitting the perfect balance between platforming, action, puzzles, secrets and gags. The middle levels are still good, but never reach quite the same heights, and the difficulty in platforming really spikes by then. The graphics as a whole are beautiful, colorful and detailed, you can recognize a lot of characters from the show, and they're on their appropriate roles doing the kind of stuff they did in those first couple of seasons. And The Simpsons theme little tune is fantastic though probably overused with just another couple of original tunes, but the sound FX is great with iconic hit and jump sounds and there's some very impressive early 8-bit digitalization of Bart's voice.

It was a very successful game for Acclaim and spawned two sequels for the NES made also by Imagineering: Bart vs the World (1991), and Bartman meets Radioactive Man (1992) Acclaim hold the rights for NES publishing, but on the PC side it was delivered by OCEAN, and these Amiga and C64, MS-DOS ports they all feel and look slightly worse, clunky and kind of depressing. It even got a remake made by another studio Arc Developments for the Genesis, with ports to the Master System and the Game Gear. To be honest, this control better than the original, though the changes on graphics sound and music, even with 16-bit capabilities, were for the worse: it has more colors and better animations but uglier designs, very generic and not at all Simpsons like.

The original had fails; it is unfairly difficult, it controls poorly, but overall succeeds in being fun, and memorable and to actually make us feel inside The Simpsons universe like no other game from that era (or even from the next two gens). It has a classic, unique NES vibe that is very difficult to describe, and, to me, remains an iconic game from that time period.