

Much like Konami’s similar arcade titles, The Simpsons offers up to four players the chance to get involved. The gameplay department is where almost any brawler shines. It falls into the normal trappings of the genre, with the game being quite repetitive for those who aren’t used to the style and it doesn’t help that the player controlled characters don’t seem to be any different from each other. Special attacks are performed by pressing both buttons and if more than one player is present, double-team moves are enabled by standing still when close, until both players link up.

After selecting your character from four of the basic Simpsons clan, you are greeted with a simple two-button control scheme, with one button for jumping and another for attacking. It’s as frantic and as animated as the action that takes place on screen, if a little unmemorable.Īs a brawler, The Simpsons is incredibly simplistic.
THE SIMPSONS GAME XBOX 360 PREVIEW FULL
In terms of music, it’s a bouncy exciting soundtrack, full of tunes that have that familiar Konami arcade sound, while calling upon the Danny Elfman theme tune for inspiration. These digitised samples are surprisingly clear, considering that most speech in games of the time were muffled and sometimes unintelligible. Like the graphics, audio-wise the game is faithful to the cartoon, with a number of sampled sound bites taken directly from the show. My main criticism with the visuals is that throughout the entire game, there really aren’t that many kinds of non-boss enemies there are probably only less than ten different kinds of enemy, and most of those are palette-swaps of each other.
THE SIMPSONS GAME XBOX 360 PREVIEW TV
There is the choice to put a smooth filter over the pixel-based graphics, but honestly there is nothing wrong with the rough look of the game, so you are better off staying well away from the filter, and set the screen size option to be as zoomed in as your TV allows. Everything is drawn and animated fantastically, and suits the source matter perfectly the whole package still holds up surprisingly well. Everything is bold and colourful, with chunky sprites over wonderfully drawn backgrounds. The attractive in-game visuals and cut scenes show big, bold cartoony images that are incredibly good representations of the source matter. Maggie is kidnapped, prompting our favourite Springfield residents to mount a rescue attempt, battling through 8 levels of arcade brawling action.Īs early 90’s arcade games go, The Simpsons is a bit of a looker. After Smithers robs a jewellers (?!) and bumps into Homer, a jewel stolen from the robbery ends up in Maggie’s mouth instead of her usual pacifier. Well, this is an arcade game from the early 90’s, so let’s just say the story is thinner than the hair on Homer’s head. Finally, after over 20 years, this piece of arcade history has been converted to a home console Let’s see if it’s aged well.

With the side-scrolling brawler experiencing something of a renaissance this generation (Castle Crashers, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, etc.) it has been a real pleasure to see Konami delving into their early 90’s arcade vault to bring back arguably some of the best examples of the genre.Īfter the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and X-Men there have no doubt been thousands of requests for that last piece of the brawling Holy Trinity – The Simpsons Arcade Game. Available on: Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStation Network (Reviewed via Xbox LIVE Arcade)
