The Simpsons: Bart vs. The Space Mutants Review (Sega Genesis) (Retro WedNESday #9)
Developer: Arc Developments
Publisher: Flying Edge
Released: 1992
This game is bad. It was bad when I was a kid, and going back to it on an emulator recently confirmed that time has not softened it even slightly. Some games you revisit and think, okay, I was too young to appreciate it, or I was too hard on it. Bart vs. The Space Mutants is not one of those games. It’s exactly as bad as I remembered, possibly worse.
Here’s the thing about being a kid in the early 90s though. You didn’t get new games all the time. A new game was a birthday or Christmas present, maybe a rental on a good weekend if you were lucky, or a random gift for good grades or because it was on sale in the bargain bin at Sears. So when you had a game, even a bad one, you played it. You played it because it was what you had. You sat there, controller in hand, getting beaten down by a game that had no right to be as difficult as it was, and you kept going back because what else were you going to do.
That was me and Bart vs. The Space Mutants for a solid chunk of a year plus. I hated it. I always hated it. But I kept trying.
The premise is actually fine on paper. Space mutants are planning to take over the world, and Bart Simpson is the only one who can see them through his X-ray glasses. The aliens need to collect purple objects to power their weapon, so your job in the first level is to spray paint or otherwise obscure everything purple in Springfield before they can grab it. Each level has a different collection objective and a timer counting down while you scramble around trying to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing. It’s a reasonably creative concept for a licensed game in 1992.
The execution is where everything falls apart. The controls on the Genesis version are stiff and unresponsive in a way that makes every jump feel like a negotiation rather than an action. Bart doesn’t go where you tell him to go with any kind of reliability, and in a platformer that’s basically a death sentence. The hit detection is inconsistent. Enemies respawn constantly and aggressively. The level objectives are unclear enough that you can spend significant time doing the wrong thing and not realize it until it’s too late. And the difficulty doesn’t build gradually the way a well-designed game should. It just starts hard and gets worse. Stupidly hard for a young kid, and I’m not entirely sure whether it was purely poor design or if the poor controls played the bigger factor.
The Genesis port specifically was developed by Arc Developments rather than Imagineering, who did the original NES version, and honestly, neither team covered themselves in glory here. The Genesis version has some visual improvements over the NES original, but the fundamental problems are all still there. The controls are still broken, the level design is still punishing in ways that feel arbitrary rather than earned, and the whole experience still feels like a game that was rushed out to capitalize on The Simpsons being the hottest thing on television without anyone stopping to ask whether it was actually fun to play.
It wasn’t. It isn’t.
What makes it sting a little is that The Simpsons deserved better. The show, in its early years, was great television. It had sharp writing, memorable characters, the kind of comedy that worked on multiple levels. The arcade game from Konami that came out around the same time was a blast. There was a version of a good Simpsons platformer that could have existed. This isn’t it.
I never got far in this game as a kid. I don’t think I ever cleared more than the first couple of levels despite putting real time into it. Going back now with save states available, I can see more of the game than I ever did at seven or eight years old, and the honest truth is that more of the game doesn’t make it better. The later levels are just more of the same frustration with higher stakes and less patience to deal with it.
Some games earn a nostalgic bump in the ratings because the memories attached to them are good enough to cover the flaws. Bart vs. The Space Mutants doesn’t get that bump, because the memories aren’t good. The memory is sitting there, grinding my teeth at a game I didn’t even like, playing it anyway because it was what was in the Genesis at the time, and it was “new” so I wanted to beat it.
The Simpsons: Bart vs. The Space Mutants gets a one out of five: FLAWED.
This one give you nightmares too? Misery loves company, so come share yours in the comments. For games that didn’t make me want to throw a controller, check out my reviews of TaleSpin on the Sega Genesis, Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis, or Super Mario Bros. on NES, or browse the full Retro WedNESday archive.
