11. Bart vs. the Juggernauts (GB)
I had this one when I was a kid and I have no fucking idea why. Maybe someone loaned it to me and I never got around to breaking it. Anyway, this is an American Gladiators style game that sees Bart participating against the titular Juggernauts in a TV show hosted by Kent Brockman and Dr. Marvin Monroe. Their commentary between events is effective and funny, acknowledging how harsh it seems to be to pit this child up against these giant grown up athletes. Pretty much all of these games have nonsense plots, but a few of them have fun with it in true Simpsons fashion.
To no one’s surprise, the games themselves are a mixed bag. The combat based ones are dreadful. There’s a shoving contest at Moe’s where Bart has to try to shove a lady out of the ring. And then after you beat her, you gotta fight Barney! I don’t think he’s one of the Juggernauts, I think he’s just drunk. Bart’s size makes it incredibly frustrating, as you’re at a giant disadvantage for this entire game (especially once Barney gets to pushing his best friend’s son around.)
Herman’s parachuting-into-and-then-running-through-an-actual-minefield game is even worse than the shoving matches at the bar. Every other game makes sense at least in the world of the game show plot, pitting you against one or two of the Juggernauts. This one, however, has a whole fucking army shooting at you while you parachute to the ground and navigate a minefield. It could be the worst minigame from any Simpsons game at all, and that’s saying a lot.
There are some highlights, however. Krusty has a fun enough game where you try to keep four guys suspended up in the air on those test of strength machines by running around and whacking them with mallets, a combination of Midway’s arcade classic Tapper and the bit from Jackass Number Two where Pontius uses one of those machines to fire a dildo up Bam’s ass at high speed.
The best game here is Dr. Monroe’s Hop, Skip, and Fry, a take on American Gladiators’ Powerball game that sees Bart trying to get a ball across the floor to score a layup, avoiding two Juggernauts and the hazardous spaces on the floor in the process. I was always surprised at just how fun this one is, and like the Bartman game in Bart’s Nightmare, a whole game based on this invented sport might’ve been a better pursuit than this hodgepodge of bullshit.
All of these Simpsons games are just way too hard. Do you know how hard this game is? I thought I’d do what I couldn’t do in my youth and use an emulator to assist me in winning every last game during the four episodes the game takes place over, to see what the ending was. I still lost for not having earned enough prize money in said games that I won. A funny game, Bart vs. the Juggernauts. The only way to win is not to play.
Fun Fact: If the opening credits are to be believed, this game was made by five guys in New Jersey. Nice work, fellas!
10. Bart Simpson’s Escape From Camp Deadly (GB)
Camp Deadly is a pretty run of the mill Game Boy platformer that didn’t blow me away but is hardly the suckiest thing I’ve ever seen suck. The plot of Camp Deadly is a LOT like ‘Kamp Krusty,’ the legendary episode that aired a year later. Coincidence? Yeah, I don’t know. Probably. Instead of [Mr. Black] and company, here the tyrant making Bart and Lisa’s summer miserable is ol’ Ironfist Burns, some guy that I guess is a relative of Mr. Burns? Several of these games had you fighting relatives of Mr. Burns that looked just like him but with regional accessories and whatnot.
You play as Bart, escaping through woods and cafeterias, occasionally receiving a power-up from Lisa, like boomerangs and beekeeping hats. It’s hard as hell, but the game is courteous enough to give you a good amount of extra lives and hit points. Bart can really get his ass beat for a while before he dies, so that’s nice. You fight bosses mostly made up for the game, but at one point you do fight Nelson as he chucks a bunch of apples at you. Gotta chuck somethin’.
It’s a decent amount of fun, but ultimately Camp Deadly is a wicked combination: short and redundant. Level one is a rehash of level three. Four is a rehash of two. It’s not hard to tell that this game is from the period of time that they were cranking out three or four Simpsons games a year like gruel. Sweet, nourishing gruel.
9. Night of the Living Treehouse of Horror (GBC)
An okay game, meaning a well above average Simpsons game. It plays and looks better than anything that came before it, but pretty much everything afterwards had voice acting and fun things in the margins that this GBC game just isn’t equipped to deliver. If you weren’t familiar with the Simpsons games that led up to this, you might think this was an underwhelming platformer, but if you were up to speed on all things Springfield, you were probably blown away by the way this game told you what to do and actually had levels based on the TV show (the twisted and brilliant Treehouse of Horror episodes, no less). By making sense, this game was a huge step forward, and showed that Simpsons video games could be more than a loose collection of minigames that made you wish you were doing anything else instead. It’s a shame this is the last Simpsons handheld game with the exception of a few inferior ports, as it is a step in a fun and original direction.
8. The Simpsons Skateboarding (PS2)
By now fully in their “let’s just remake popular games with the Simpsons” era of Simpsons games (no shade, it’s the best era of Simpsons game by far), this is Homer and company taking on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. The game starts with a downright hilarious parody of the THPS intros. Grainy film footage of Simpsons characters nailing gnarly moves in slow motion. It’s played completely straight, and I love it.
Sadly, when it comes time to just be a fun skateboarding game, it’s a little less impressive. The soundtrack, a pivotal part of any THPS clone/parody/rip-off, is a bunch of generic music that you’ll get sick of in no time. The timing of performing your tricks is very strange, like they took what wasn’t broken in Tony Hawk and changed it for the sake of not being identical to it. I guess I get it, but it’s too bad, because those games are perfect, and this game gets boring pretty quickly, even with the requisite collection of fun unlockables and different parts of Springfield to explore.
Still, as always, any Simpsons game with a bunch of the voice cast saying shit is gonna be at least a little fun. Bart says “I’m a shredophile!” at one point, which I found hilarious and a bit surprising, a ballsy joke that could really backfire if not pulled off properly. Try landing that, Bob Burnquist!
7. The Simpsons Tapped Out (iOS, Android)
I got sucked into this game back when it game out in nineteen-dickety-two, and I was going to write up a snarky thing about how freemium games are barely video games and that it represents how greedy and soulless this hobby of ours can feel sometimes. Then I decided I should be a good journalist and play the stinkin’ video game. So I threw it on my iPad, and went through the vaguely familiar motions: design your Springfield, build shit, meet iconic characters, give them tasks, get XP, repeat. Like most of The Simpsons games released this century, it’s aided tremendously by voice acting, and over a decade of attention and updates mean there is an astounding number of beloved characters available at this point.
Honestly? It’s a little fun. Maybe it’ll wear off in another week, but having a realistic expectation for the game, as opposed to slowly realizing what it was really all about back when it first came out, set me up to enjoy the experience a little more. Sometime in the morning or afternoon, I remember my little Springfield exists, and I check in with everyone, and generally read or hear a funny gag by the time I’m done getting my dumb points and assigning everyone new tasks. It’s like a little Simpsons daily calendar, and I enjoy that about it.
It’s inherently flawed and more than a little shallow, but that goes for most of the games on this list. None of them have anywhere near this much fun stuff to unlock and discover, however. Just download with reasonable expectations and ignore the parts that feel like they gave The Wallet Inspector a video game.
6. The Simpsons Bowling (Arcade)
This is an arcade game from 2000, and it’s perfectly fine. A fun Simpsons game that plays well and makes sense is Top Ten shit through and through, and this game has all of that plus nice graphics and enjoyable endings for each character. Absolutely worth a play. Since it uses a trackball, this is a game best experienced out there in the real world, like that ceramic Homer I kicked a soccer ball at that one time.
You can do fun shit like use Maggie as a bonus ball and roll her down the lane. As funny as that sight is, seeing her crawl back through the ball return as you take your next turn with a normal ball is even funnier. I also had fun watching all the little animation each character does after they win a game, with my personal favorites being Willie turning the trophy into a mop bucket and Krusty, well, dying. This was also included in the recent 1Up Simpsons arcade machine, complete with trackball.
5. Itchy and Scratchy in Minigolf Madness (GB)
Did you know that this Game Boy putt putt golf game starring secondary characters was the best Simpsons console game for years? It ain’t Link’s Awakening, but this Game Boy cart benefits from a cohesive vision that is actually pulled off. Several months later, Itchy & Scratchy would get their starring game on the SNES (and Game Gear), but as I mentioned earlier, the main hook of that game doesn’t really make sense. Sure, you can explore the levels if you want, but you’re also just as free to stand there and kick Scratchy’s ass. The failed experiment became all the more puzzling to me upon realizing this effective game starring the duo was released just four months earlier.
In TS:I&SIMGM, you actually play as Scratchy this time around. Among other things, running from the homicidal mouse is a lot more rewarding than hunting down the cat and killing it over and over. And speaking of grisly murders, unlike The Itchy & Scratchy Game, this one has the appropriate amounts of cartoon violence! Somehow nabbing a an E rating along the way, this game has vivid and inspired deaths. Itchy saws Scratchy in half with a chainsaw or blows him up with a bazooka. The animations are all really good, too.
Unlike the stinkers that came out beforehand, here is a Simpsons game that achieves what it sets out to do. This feels exactly like playing an absurd round of miniature golf while being the star of a violent cartoon, complete with par 22’s and nine lives per hole. I love a silly golf game, and I had somehow never heard of this one. It’s too bad, because it’s really fun. Whenever I write up a big list like this, I’m always hoping to discover some diamond in the rough that I anticipate revisiting long after I’ve turned the piece in, and after swimming through a pipe filled with shit for the last few days, I am now being cleansed by the rain of Itchy and Scratchy Miniature Golf Madness.
4. The Simpsons: Road Rage (XBox, GC, PS2)
Road Rage is great until the fun wears off. It’s Crazy Taxi starring The Simpsons. straight up. There are minor differences, of course. There’s less Offspring songs and more banter between my favorite people off of the TV, for example. The game is fun and offers a lot of tantalizing stuff to unlock, which sadly loses its appeal once you realize the gameplay loop isn’t changing anytime soon. Nevertheless, this game is a treat while the fun lasts. I love the way that there are a lot of specific dialogue options for unique pairings of characters. I hoped like hell that Marge would greet Bart with “My special little guy!” when she picked up him, and I wasn’t disappointed. Speaking of Marge, her response to Hans Moleman’s line in the game’s opening movie is probably the biggest laugh I got from playing any of these games.
3. The Simpsons
This game was a home run out of the gate, the Blue Album of Simpsons video games. Why they never ported this and/or made a bunch of spiritually similar brawler games for the NES/SNES beats the shit out of me like Marge Simpson with a vacuum cleaner.
Modeled after the stellar Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beat ’em up, this game represents a time where arcade games offered experiences that would put your home consoles to shame. You’d see this game’s graphics and hear the Simpsons theme come out of it and play with THREE other people at the same time and sit there getting your world rocked like Milhouse entering his name into Bonestorm. Then you’d go home and play Bart vs. the World on your NES and wish you were dead. That was the power of the arcade in the ’80s and early ’90s.
The biggest drag about this game isn’t even its own fault. Since it was made right after season one, there’s a ton of characters not in the game, and the ones that are repeat quite often. That’s hardly exclusive to this game, however. Half of the games on this list feature Dr. Marvin Monroe as much as they do Krusty or Moe. So what are ya gonna do? This game ruled back then, it rules today, and it was decades before any other Simpsons games really compared to it.
2. The Simpsons Game
A wonderful game that’s probably overlooked because of the awful reputation Simpsons games had earned by then, this is like a spiritual sequel to the original Simpsons brawler; not a direct ripoff of any one title, but just a perfectly playable video game emblematic of its era with a wonderful layer of Simpsons sheen applied.
It being decades after the ‘91 original, that here means the expected top notch episode quality cut scenes and voice work are present in this 3-D platformer that doesn’t reinvent any wheels, but is technically sound and a delight to explore. Slightly before self-aware meta plots made us all want to crawl into an oven, The Simpsons Game is all about The Simpsons discovering that they are in The Simpsons Game. It’s pretty funny, and the bit is well executed. The game they find in-game even has the same cover art as the game you’re playing. It’s kind of like… uh, did anyone see that movie Tron?
Nevermind.
With a tutorial that has you control Homer running around The Land of Chocolate, The Simpsons Game takes no time at all to let you know it’s going to be breezy and fun. The combat isn’t remarkable, but it’s fine. What really helps catapult this game up the list (besides the just-right plot length and fun optional couch co-op) is its visual style. We love Hit & Run and Road Rage of course, but the 3-D graphics take a little getting used to. The voices and writing can help of course, but it’ll always just feel a bit off to me. The Simpsons Game, meanwhile, features 3D gameplay rendered in the familiar 2D style of the show, and it really looks like you’re running around in an episode of the show. It brings a great big ol’ smile to my face.
This is the first Simpsons game to feel like The Simpsons, and whether it was intentional or not, the game makes up for its franchise’s shoddy history by cramming in as many video game tropes as it possibly can. The Comic Book Guy is there to point out every cliché you observe (like obtaining a double jump or finding a hidden barrier). This device allows the game to basically be a sampling of what you could find in video games back in 2007. I am fine with that, as 2007 was a banner year for video games!
1. The Simpsons: Hit & Run
Save the pitchforks, I got this one right! There’s a good chance you clicked over to make sure this was number one before you decided to give this list a few minutes of your time or not. I don’t blame you!
Hit & Run has so much going for it. The Grand Theft Auto template is perfect for Springfield and its inhabitants. Instead of the rigid parameters set by games like Road Rage and Skateboarding, the GTA style allows for all kinds of different things to do, giving this game the depth none of the others on this list have. You’ll roam around Springfield, unlock new cars, participate in street races (“1, 1, 1, go!”), fight robots, gather coins and collectible cards, buy new outfits, and progress through a perfectly paced plot that incorporates as many fan favorite characters as you’d expect.
All of this wouldn’t mean anything if it weren’t all executed so flawlessly and with clear reverence for the show. Every aspect of this game is thoughtful and fun! Playing through a week with a different character every day is a brilliant way to make sure you spend some time as all of the main family members and unlock stuff for them all (including Lisa’s Floreda costume, a possible GOAT of bonus content in anything ever).
Hit & Run has better collecting than The Simpsons Game, better driving than Road Rage, and better Easter Eggs than all of the others combined. The in-game week ends on Halloween! You get to dress up in Treehouse of Horror stuff as Kodos, Kang, and zombies infiltrate the town!
Most of these Simpsons games I wanted to be done with as quickly as possible, to be honest. A handful were pretty fun and are completely worth your time, in my opinion. This is the one, however, that did everything right, and merged the comedy, storytelling, and performances that put The Simpsons on the highest shelf of entertainment with fun and rewarding gameplay that completely holds up today. The inanimate carbon rod out of all of them.
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