A playthrough of Acclaim's 1991 license-based action game for the NES, The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants.
Developed by Imagineering for Acclaim, Bart vs. the Space Mutants’ carries the same quirky sense of offbeat humor as A Boy and His Blob, Ghoul School, and even Barbie.
Late one night, Bart spies a massive UFO hovering over a clearing in Springfield. He creeps nearer to eavesdrop on the invaders’ conversation and learns that they have plans to enslave humanity. Conveniently enough, Bart just so happens to be wearing his handy X-Ray glasses, meaning that he is the only one who can see through the invaders’ convincing human disguises. Surmising that he is humanity's best shot at survival, Bart decides to save the world.
The aliens seem to have arrived unprepared for their hostile takeover, so they program their doomsday machine to accept purple objects as the main components from which they will fashion their weapon of mass destruction. The first stage, taking place on the streets of Springfield, tasks Bart with destroying or covering up as many purple objects as possible in order to thwart the aliens' attempt.
This unique (and ludicrous) setup provides an interesting mixture of puzzle and platforming action. Avoiding contact with the roving aliens, Bart must find cans of spray paint in the hopes of hiding anything purple from view. For things that cannot be simply painted, a bit of creative thinking will usually reveal another solution: using a wrench on a fire-hydrant will douse the tool shop’s purple door awning, making it appear red, while launching a cherry bomb at the window of a pet shop will send the purple bird fleeing in terror.
As he's vandalizing everything in reach, Bart can also use his glasses to see if anyone he comes across is an alien. If you see tentacles, you can jump on them to steal their orb thingies, and if you collect enough of them to spell out the name of the family member whose picture sits in the bottom-left corner, they'll help you out during that stage's boss fight.
Once Bart has taken care of the streets of Springfield, he'll move on to the Springfield Mall to find hats, the fairgrounds to find balloons, and the Museum of Natural History for exit signs. Finally, the last stage has him searching the maze-like interior of the Springfield Power Plant for fuel rods, which need to be collected and placed in the cooling pool in the basement.
The series’ trademark humor shines brightly in the first stage through constant references to events in the show: Moe’s Tavern can be prank called, the Jebediah Springfield statue gives advice, and the whistle can summon Grandpa Simpson to his window at the retirement home. Unfortunately, though the streets of Springfield are loaded with sight-gags and subtle allusions, the first stage seems to have received the lion's share of the team's creative juices, and the fun fair stage got what was left. The other three stages feel uneven and uninspired in comparison. They aren't bad, but they feel much more rote in their design, as if the developers didn’t have the resources to complete the game as they’d originally intended.
I really enjoyed the puzzles in the first and third stages - they remind me of the type of thing you'd see in PC graphic adventures. They took me quite a long time as a kid to figure them out, but I remember having a blast experimenting with everything until it all clicked into place.
The gameplay itself is fairly janky and takes some getting used to thanks to the awkward control layout. Since an item is usually assigned to the B button, running is done by holding the jump button, and a running jump requires pressing both buttons at the same time (hopefully not wasting ammo in the process). It's not broken - it works quite reliably - but it is far more awkward and clumsy than it should be.
The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants is far from being the perfect game, but it keeps itself respectable with its unconventional challenges, clever humor, and its refusal to rehash every other platformers' mechanics. While it doesn’t succeed at everything it tries to do, I do feel that Bart vs. the Space Mutants is a fun, original, and personable game. I've always enjoyed it, warts and all, and I know I can't be the only one!
Here are a few links to some other Simpsons games:
Bart vs. the Space Mutants
(Master System) • The Simpsons: Bart vs....
(Genesis) • The Simpsons: Bart vs....
Bart vs. the World
(NES) • The Simpsons: Bart vs....
(Master System): • The Simpsons: Bart vs....
Bartman Meets Radioactive Man
(NES) • The Simpsons: Bartman ...
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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