RETRO REBOOT | The Simpsons (Arcade)

• Developer: Konami

• Published by: Konami

• Release Date: 1991

Ah, the Simpsons line of video games have been a medley of mixed results. The most prominent one (and often considered the best) has been the coin-op arcade game that many who grew up in the mid-80s and early 90's were quite fond of, as it was quite ubiquitous. Me and my brothers often played it when we made regular stops to the department store Hill's. We were young enough to practically be impressed by any kind of interactive media, and arcade games were galaxies beyond the stuff we played at home.

While it is too bad there was never a home conversion for the SNES and Sega Genesis by Konami, as the years went on, I ended up playing this again during a school trip to Washington DC in 1997. The Comfort Inn had a real kick-ass line of arcade cabinets, that included the aforementioned, The Terminator, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, and Darkstalkers (my formal introduction to that one). At that point, I kinda realized that it actually kinda sucks.

Brawlers are, by design, straightforward, mindless, and satisfying. They're supposed to be adequate stress relieving games that act as a venue to blow off some steam for about a half hour; simply walk to the right or left and beat the ever-living snot out of a large palette swap of Y-Signals. In The Simpsons, it becomes very apparent that the game barely works. I would have to check my sources, but I can't think of a beat'em up with such hideous hit detection and a useless itinerary of attacks.

Because of this, enemies will easily gang up on you and drain your life bar faster than your NFT stock portfolio. Playing this solo, you'll just get ripped to shreds because of how unfair it is. It feels like the same engine as the TMNT Arcade Game (which is also incredibly flawed), except the 50/50 on offense and defense is thrown to the four winds if you're playing this solo. The only way to survive is utilizing the team-up moves, which is kind of neat.

The graphics are good, sprites have a great deal of personality, and the comic violence is rather enjoyable. It might get old after a while, but some of the enemies are amusing. At this point, if a new Simpsons brawler were made, the roster of personalities they have established at this point could easily fill out a lineup of enemies. To think that watching the Simpsons family pursue Smithers and Mr. Burns to get Maggie back by pounding their way through KrustyLand mascots, zombies, ninjas, and TV set aliens to flesh out its baddies.

Sound is alright as well. Some of the garbled digitized audio sounds quite bad, considering this game is two years older than the aforementioned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but OST can be a little catchy, and has a gritty edge to it. This would have sounded cool coming out of the Genesis.

The fun factor really only holds up, depending on how many people you're playing with. If you can get a full party, it's a little more enjoyable. There's no strategy or nuance, it's one of the most bare bones experience of mashing buttons since Bad Dudes. Granted, that is a lot to ask for of a game of this genre, but so much is carried by the IP, it masks how banal of a beat 'em up The Simpsons really is.

Overall, The Simpsons is pretty mediocre, and time hasn't been kind to this game. Homer, Marge, Lisa, and Bart have mildly different play styles, I barely noticed if they have any difference in their attack range or power. With eight stages total, and some of the bosses being HP sponges, it feels like it drags, compared to other games in the medium. It has fairly good music and presentation, but I found the experience to be very fleeting.

This is one of those games that, in my opinion, its reputation has been built on a period of scarcity and nostalgia. Rights issues with 20th Century Fox ended up seeing it disappear off the Xbox marketplace, so the heightened demand propped it up. The re-release on the Arcade 1up line of cheap cabinets may have satiated fans, but The Simpsons remains of the most overrated games. Genuinely bad? No. But nowhere near as good as hyped to be.