Everyone knows that most video games based on The Simpsons, sucked.
But, everyone played video games based on The Simpsons.
I know I did. I think I've played every Simpsons video game ever made, except for The Simpsons Skateboarding and The Simpsons Wrestling. It didn't matter how big of fan you were, one look at the back of those CD cases was enough to realize these games were real life versions of Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge. But I played the rest of them. I owned a lot of them, too. Including The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare.
For the record, I loves me some Simpsons. Admittedly, I'm one of the old school fans that doesn't care for the last fifteen years of the show. But in it's glory days, I was flat-out obsessed with the show. I watched a couple hours of it every day. My parents knew it, too. And they knew that Santa would look like a hero if he could combine my love of The Simpsons with my love of video games. Christmas morning, a Simpsons game found it's way into our house more often than not.
I'm sure we'll do episodes of this show about some of those other games down the road. Today, we're talking Bart's Nightmare. I had it for the SNES, and I actually really liked it. I think the plot of the game isn't terrible. Bart falls asleep doing his homework, and you have to go through his dreams/nightmares to get the 8 pages of his homework back before he wakes up, which happens when you get a game over. The more pages you collect, the better grade Bart gets on his paper.
OK. Maybe it is terrible. But I liked it. I still do. It has issues, and they're the same issues that plague almost every Simpsons video game. The controls (at times), are awful. It's hard as balls. Frankly, it's a stupid game. But they nail some of the cameos and references to the show, and that's why I liked playing these games as a kid.
I never beat it, but I didn't care. I have great memories of fighting Homer Kong, flying through the sky as Bartman, and popping bubblegum on Principal Skinner's head. I like this game. My buddy Darren does too. He joins me on the podcast this week, and we finally dive into the urine-soaked hellhole that is the world of Simpsons video games on Remember The Game?
And I know, I could have said peepee-soaked heck hole.