Simpsons
Bet you thought I was going to review Gauntlet
next, right? Sorry, I decided to review the arcade version of
one of my favorite television shows. The Simpsons game captures
some of the wackiness of the television show and it should be
commended for this. Many of the characters from the show pop up
in the many, many levels of the game (I played through at least
7 and the game wasn't over yet). Just about every character from
the television show (up to the point of this game) are in there,
including some of my favorites like the comic store owner and
the three eyed fish!In
this game, you choose from four different Simpsons characters to
be. At the arcade, you could have up to four players. While I
guess you could on MAME, some fingers are going to get tied up
on that keyboard. The characters are the main Simpsons family
members, Homer who uses his fists, Marge and her sweeper, Bart
and his skateboard and Lisa and her deadly jump rope. No sexism
here. As you make your way through the game, you will find that
besides your chosen weapon, you can also pick up items to throw
at enemies. There are all kinds of things to grab and throw and
the amount of interactivity is astounding! Shake a tree and get
an apple for health. Shake it too many times and a creature pops
out and tells you to leave it alone. There are also little
surprises all over. Go by a door and hit the action button and
see what happens. There are all kinds of surprises and you will
need to play a few times to see all of them.
Between some levels, there are
mini games. Most are ones where you must hit the controllers as
fast as possible to fill a balloon or something. The better you
finish, the more points you get. While nothing groundbreaking,
they are a nice change of pace (and will make the purchase of a
new keyboard a priority).
Like I said earlier, the game is
huge! Each level is very, very large and there are many of them!
This is one game that will make you happy there is a pause
button. One nice thing is that each level is different and there
are lots of surprises to be found. This and wanting to see what
other characters there are is what will drive you. The fighting
is average and the novelty of fighting with a vacuum cleaner or
a jump rope wears off quickly. Also, the funny little things the
characters say will wear thin real fast. I wish they would vary
these more as you soon get sick of hearing the same one liners
over and over and over.
The best thing about having the
Simpsons on MAME is now you will not have to spend a fortune to
see the end of it. At the arcade, it would have taken at least
$10.00 in quarters to finish the game, unless you were some
super game player. Now you can continue until you are tired of
it. Plus, you can go back and make sure you discovered
everything without spending a small fortune!
This is just a review of the arcade machine.
If you are looking for the actual arcade machine, you may want
to check out ebay. Click below to see if you can find this
game.
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