Based on Fox’s wildly popular animated sitcom The Simpsons, The Simpson’s: Bart’s House of Weirdness is one of the earliest licensed Simpsons games, released by Konami in 1992. It is a standard scrolling platform game.
The game revolves around everyone’s favourite prankster, Bart Simpson. This time, however, Bart has gone one step too far and Marge and Homer have grounded him to his room. As Bart would say: “Bo-riiiing!” Bart’s imagination runs wild and the user has to help him escape from his incarceration and rescue Krusty the Clown, his hero.
Krusty is stuck in Krustyland and is being held by his arch rival, Sideshow Bob. To do this, Bart needs to collect cool shoes, a cool hat and cool shades. The gamer guides Bart around a variety of scenery, including the sewers and the rooftops of Springfield, the Springfield Mall, and a warped Itchy and Scratchy dream world in search of these coveted items.
Bart is armed with the classic side scrolling commands of jump and duck, as obstacles fly at him constantly. However, it is Bart’s House of Weirdness. Bart also has at his disposal an assortment of off-the-wall items including water balloons, a sling shot, and a can of spray paint, as well as other Bart-appropriate weapons. Along the way to Krustyland, Bart must battle evil space
mutants, basement ghosts, spiders, and the horrid baby-sitter bandit.
The user interface, like most scrollers, is very simple. There is an icon on the screen showing the number of lives Bart has available. There is an area that displays the cool items that Bart has found, and of course, there is Bart’s cool-o-meter, which is basically his health or hit points. The weapons available are shown in a little screen, and there is a box displaying the current objective, such as Maggie’s ball. You may also notice a small number, which does not represent Bart’s score. It is actually the screen that Bart is currently in.
Overall, this is a colourful, cartoonish platform game that portrays Bart as the hero he would like to be. There is some social commentary in the game, which can be found in the series if one is looking, but nothing that detracts from the actual game play. While the battles get to be somewhat tedious, game is advanced and kept fresh by the objectives of each scenario and the constant quest for coolness, making this a great download for Simpsons fans, and a good play for those who are not.
