Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants

Genre: Action Developer: Imagineering Inc. Publisher: Flying Edge Players: 1 Released: 1992

When I was ten years-old, I watched my first episode of The Simpsons. Before that day, I knew nothing about it. I just didn’t like the idea of a town with a bunch of yellow characters. But after that day, I knew I was wrong. I loved the show totally. It couldn’t be better. I also bought a Simpsons game to the PlayStation 2, but that’s another story. Once I started to collect for the Mega Drive, I wanted Bart vs. The Space Mutants, a game about one of the most famous cartoon characters of all time where you have to save the world from aliens on the best game console ever! What more could you ask for?

The game starts with the Simpsons logo in the air with some clouds, just like in the TV-series. But where the heck is the Simpsons theme? It’s totally gone! Anyway, the story is that Bart finds some magic sunglasses on the street. When he wears them, he can see that some people on the street are aliens, turned into Simpsons characters. He also learns that the aliens have a plan to build a weapon which can destroy the earth. This weapon has one ingredient: purple-coloured objects, so the aliens need every purple thing that exists in Springfield . There’s only one person who can save the earth, and that’s Bart Simpson.

Then the game begins, and the mission is to make every purple thing green for example. You can spray most of the targets, but sometimes you need to throw a little bomb at a purple bird or drop some white towels over a purple football. You can use the glasses by pressing C (if you have the glasses selected) to see if some of the people on the street are “real” human beings or aliens. If they’re aliens, you can jump on them and they leave a little coin. If you collect six coins on the level (depending on which level it is) it spells “Maggie” in the left corner. She will help you with the boss at the end of the stage. It can also spell “Marge,” but she’s on the second stage. One bad thing is that you can’t kill anyone really, except the aliens, which you can jump on, and the boss at the end of each level. All the small aliens who are jumping around can’t get killed.

Another thing which is worth mentioning is that there are no continues at all. You get three lives when you start the game. Every life can take two only hits, so you really need to get used to the controls before you know how to get away from everything that tries to kill you without getting hit. Every time you die, the screen freezes and you hear Bart’s classic voice say, “eat my shorts.”

The control is really, really bad this time. If you press the A button, you spray if you have any spray left. The B button is kind of weird. If you press it, you jump. If you hold the B button, you run. So jump and run is the same button. Anyway, press the C button, you use the object you have selected (the sunglasses for example). If you press the start button, the game pauses and by then press up or down on the D-pad, you choose between the items you collected.

The music is nothing like the Simpsons theme, but even so, it’s pretty charming I must say. By the way, the music on the first stage is the same music as on the title screen. The music changes from each level and you will maybe be tired of hearing it, but you have to live with that. All the voices (or just Bart?) are the original voices from the TV series. The graphics are just fine, nothing really special for being 16-bit, but it makes good use of colour, and you get a happy feeling if you look at the town which you sometimes can see in the background. You can see what everything is and it’s not bad, especially the Simpson’s characters; They look great.

Bart vs. the Space Mutants is very hard to play, mostly because of the controls. The game itself is not bad but putting two different things on the same button was a horrible idea, if I may say so. You can’t jump and run at the same time, which makes it really hard sometimes. Another thing which can be kind of hard is that many of these things you need to collect require a lot of practice before you learn exactly how to get them. There’s one person on the first stage who have purple clothes, and the only way to meet him is to jump a little bit to the left of the statue in Springfield. so you really need to play every stage many times before you know what to do.

This is not the worst game ever, but if I would be you I would pick another Simpsons game like Krusty’s Fun House or Virtual Bart. It could been better if they had included some better controls, easier levels, and some more extra lives with continues. Instead, it’s a mess with the yellow family in Springfield. But just because the story, the good graphics and charming music, I can just give this game a three out of ten and have only one comment: Eat my shorts.