The Simpsons

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!

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.

The Good
Well, you've seen the hit TV show, you brought the figurines, now play the video game. Konami brought us Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game, now they've brought us The Simpsons. In downtown Springfield, a jewel heist involving Homer and Smithers goes wrong when Homer bumps into him while Smithers is carrying one of the diamond. It flies in the air and lands in Maggie's mouth. As a result, Maggie is kidnapped by Smithers, and it's up to the Simpsons to rescue her.

As the player, you can choose to rescue Maggie as Marge, Homer, Bart, or Lisa, but since The Simpsons supports two players, you can only play with one other person (the arcade version has 4-player support). Each character has their own weapon. For example, Marge uses her vacuum cleaner to knock down enemies, Lisa uses her skipping rope, Bart the skateboard, and Homer only his fists). I personally play Marge, since her vacuum cleaner can pack a mean punch. Furthermore, they have their own quotes, which you can read if you stand there doing nothing for five seconds. Marge, for instance, will say "How's my hair?" and Bart says "Who are hell are you?"

There are eight stages in The Simpsons, and involves you chasing Smithers around the place. In order, these stages include:

1. Downtown Springfield
2. Krustyland
3. Springfield Discount Cemetery
4. Moe's Tavern
5. Springfield Butte
6. Dreamland
7. Channel 6 
8. Nuclear Power Plant

You have to knock down people that get in your way stage after stage after stage, and fight the end-of-stage boss. While knocking down enemies, you can also pick things up and throw it at them, and more often than not, they will go down in just one shot. For example, in stage one, you can pick up bus stop signs and letter boxes and throw them mostly at enemies with blue suits. Rather than using your default weapon, you can also get weapons along the way like hammers and slingshots, either lying on the ground or from someone else offering it to you.

You start each new game with three lives and there is a meter right next to the number of lives to tell you how much energy you've got. If you get hit by an enemy, your energy is reduced, and once the energy meter is depleted, you'll lose one of your life. The only way that you can get an extra life is by winning two bonus stages. In the bonus stages, you compete with three other CPU players, and the first bonus stage has you blowing up a balloon so hard that it is bigger than the rest of the balloons. The second has you hit yourself on the face as many times as you can.

As with the energy meter, you can restore it to its fullest if you manage to pick up a piece of fruit or a bowl of rice. It is recommended that The Simpsons is played with another person. That way, you won't get sore fingers if you're going to handle more than one enemy.

The Bad
The Simpsons is only available for MS-DOS, and I'm afraid that it is not quite as good as the arcade version. First, all of the music sounds terrible in the game. The music was done in MID format, and it could have been better if it was in Sound Blaster and used the WAV format. The only music I liked is the music while you're entering your name in the high scores. The sound effects are also crap, and not the best that they could be.

Second, the graphics are not as great as the arcade version, as they were done in EGA. Third, I mentioned that the MS-DOS vesion has support for only two players, while the arcade version has support for four. It would sure be nice if you played the game with three other players instead.

Finally, some locations that were present in the arcade version are not present in the MS-DOS version. As far as I know, for example, after you've beaten stage three in the arcade version, you ride in this elevator while you fight enemies. This is not present, and it means that the MS-DOS version is much shorter than the arcade version.

The Bottom Line
A poor conversion with features lacking here and there, this game isn't even close to the original, and gamers who have already played the arcade version may not be as pleased at what the MS-DOS version has to offer. If you don't want to be disappointed, you might as well play the arcade version through this magnificent emulator. *