Are Bart vs the Space mutants, Bart vs the world and Bart meets radioative man that bad?

[Xdqwerty]

I heard they are some of the worst simpsons games and some of the worst games ever in general, but how bad are they?

 

[hippy dave]

I played Bart Vs the Space Mutants on the Amiga back in the day, don't think it was great but far from one of the worst games ever. Play it if you're interested I guess.

 

[Maeson]

They are very poorly designed. NES/Famicom had a lot of poorly made licensed games, but I couldn't think of many with the amount of flaws they have, and with controls so frustrating as The Simpsons games.

The single, most hurtful element is that the button for running is the same button for jumping. This takes away a lot of your control from the character, and when you're forced to do running jumps it's really awkward. Add to this that Bart is quite slow when walking and its jump is also kinda awkward, and you have a rather bad combination.

They also have some very weird logic woven in their level and gameplay design. They're some of those games where you never quite know where you can jump at, or walk on. You know, those games that think that being able to walk on the frames of portraits or paintings, or being able to stay on top of door's windows, or that thinking "oh, if I jump like 6 to 10 times on this particular background object, something might happen!" is perfectly logical.

For Bart VS Space Mutants isn't is slightly less of a hassle in comparison because you aren't required to do as much platforming, a good chunk of the game is just walking right, but Bart VS The World is on an entirely different level. That one feels designed to cause pain.

The Hitbox detection is also very iffy, for several things you have to be at "pixel perfect" distance for hits to connect, or to activate something. The games love to throw things at you that are hard to evade with the controls they have.

These issues were there from the first game, but the developers never cared to fix the issues for the next ones they did, all three use the same engine with very few changes between them, usually changing the way you attack, but you always move in the same, sad manner.

Sound-wise they are also underwhelming, but the first one, Bart VS Space Mutants is specially terrible at this.

It has two themes. The majority of the game is one song, the Simpsons' main theme on repeat, and not a particularly great version of it. The only time it deviates from that is on "boss" battles, which uses... A very small section of the Simpson's main theme, constantly looping. Depending on the boss, the segment changes, but we're talking like two to three second loops or so.

The other theme is just there for a couple of stages and while repetitive too, whenever it starts playing is like a miracle, a rest from the Simpsons' theme.

These games represent the very early days of the show, and while as games are poor, they do have at least a bit of charm in how they show things from it, like having Bob, Skinner, or that one-time babyssiter character I can't remember the name as bosses, or framing Bart VS The World like a Krusty the Clown show.

I know people that have nostalgia for these, and hey, fine by me. I couldn't recommend them to anyone myself, not when you have a rather decent amount of good licensed games on the system to play instead.

I wonder how Simpsons' games could have turned out if the license went to other company rather than Acclaim.
Nowadays is very easy and quick to give them a try if they pick your curiosity, I suppose.

To be fair, none of the Simpsons games on 8/16 Bit consoles I find to be worth the pain, none until the ones on GC/PS2/Xbox, and that was partly because one was literally copying Sega's Crazy Taxi (and got sued, lol).

Road Rage on the GBA was surprisingly fun and well made, actually. I prefer it to the home console versions.