I fucking hate Bart. Ok, that’s a bit of a lie, I don’t necessarily hate Bart, but I never really understood his appeal as a character. He is just a kid who is a troublemaker, and that’s really all that he has going for him, which has been a trait that I have never found appealing in any character. But hey, I guess that somehow makes for an icon that many can love and praise for many years, as well as one that people were just dying to put on whatever merchandise they could back in the day, including all of these god-awful Simpsons video games that I have been slogging through for the past couple of months. So, I figured it was only about time that we get back to them by playing what is definitely one of the most noteworthy titles from the early era of Simpsons video games, one that actually caused a game designer to leave the industry because of its development. That game in question would be The Simpsons: Bart’s Nightmare.
Out of all of the old-school Simpsons video games, this was definitely the one I have heard the most about. There have been many different videos made based on the game by content creators that I am a big fan of on YouTube, and just judging from the box art and title of the game, it feels like one that would be the most “unique” compared to the others. That doesn’t mean I thought it was gonna be good though, as I still went into this expecting another really shitty Simpsons game, and you know what? I didn’t get that. No, instead I got an ABYSMAL Simpsons video game, one that carries a lot of the worst traits that previous games did, and one that tries to more creative and “fun”, but ends up providing something that feels more like torture instead.
The story is completely stupid, just about Bart having a nightmare (who could’ve guessed), and he needs to find the pages of his homework, which will make him somehow get an A in school when he wakes up, because that’s how logic works, the graphics are, admittedly, pretty good for a Simpsons game, and it is definitely the best looking game of the bunch, having plenty of variety in the designs, colors, and environments that you travel through, the music is alright, I guess, with there actually being more than one track this time around (thank god), but most of them are pretty generic and forgettable, so it is nothing to write home about, the control is…………… I don’t even wanna talk about it, because I just might explode while typing this, and the gameplay is one that is filled with quite a lot of variety, but it forgot to bring any semblance of quality along with it.
The game is………. I’m not quite sure, exactly. It is primarily split into two sections, where in the first section, you take control of Bart, walk around on a street in the middle of Springfield, dodge plenty of different obstacles that will come your way while fighting off against them using various items and weapons like bubblegum and watermelon seeds, gather plenty of items that won’t do anything to help you, because this game hates you, and find the many different pages of Bart’s homework scattered around the streets to enter the second part of the game. There’s really not that much to say about this section, as it just serves as a means to get you to the next minigame every time, but I will say that it isn’t fun to play through at all, which I will get more into later on.
The second part of the game consists of a bunch of minigames, each one being one you have to complete in order to gain one of Bart’s homework pages in order to beat the game, and since each one of them is different enough, I will go ahead and go through each of them right now. The first of these minigames is one where you are apparently going into Bart’s body, where you swim around on the screen, kill germs with your pump gun, and you gather several Joe Fissions in order to get the homework page awaiting at the end, and… that is about it. It is definitely the easiest and the most tolerable out of all the minigames, and while it does still definitely have its frustrations, this is the one you will probably spend the least amount of time on.
The second minigame would be the Bartman section, where you will fly around as Bartman, shooting plenty of things with your slingshot, avoiding many different obstacles along the way, and defeating several bosses that resemble several recurring Simpsons characters. This one is somewhat fun to play at first, but then it gets overly frustrating really fast, as you not only are bombarded by a huge amount of projectiles that are almost impossible to see coming at plenty of different times, but the slingshot you have at your disposal completely sucks. It feels like it barely does anything to a lot of the enemies, its range isn’t long enough to justify its usefulness, and you can’t turn around, making several boss encounters a huge pain in the ass. Yeah, you do get plenty of lives, which can help you out with what you have to deal with, but trust me, you will probably lose those lives very quickly.
The third minigame would be the Bartzilla sections, with the first of these sections being where Bartzilla automatically walks to the right, and you have to press certain buttons at certain times to have him attack whatever is in front of him so that you don’t take too much damage and lose. This one is completely terrible because it is incredibly hard to tell what action does what, and which one you need to perform before you end up getting hurt. Yeah, you can memorize what does what and what where goes, but you barely get any time to properly execute a lot of these moves before you are bumrushed by a million things. The second section in this minigame also has you playing as Bartzilla, except now you are climbing up a building while avoiding many different projectiles from either people in the building, or the Marge-Mothra constantly flying around. Not only is the amount you have to dodge completely ridiculous, but the building gets smaller and smaller as you go up, leaving little to no room to fuck up, leading to many frustrating deaths in the process.
The fourth minigame is the Itchy and Scratchy segments, where you run around various parts of the Simpsons house while fending off against not just Itchy and Scratchy, but also plenty of other different household items using either hammers or a gas gun. There isn’t that much to say about these sections, as they are pretty simplistic, but it still manages to bring along the bullshit difficulty that the game loves forcing against you, which does still make it painful to play.
And finally, there is the Idaho Simpson segments, where you jump through a Q*bert-like temple, defeat several enemies using your whip, make sure to step on specific platforms to raise others so you won’t fall, and dodge plenty of obstacles along the way. These segments are, without a doubt in my mind, the worst segments in the entire game. It is extremely easy to constantly fuck up and die here, not just from the enemies and obstacles that you face, but also because of the fact that you never really know how to proceed forward through these segments without getting caught by a trap or an obstacle, leading to plenty of deaths. What also doesn’t help is that, unlike all of the other segments, you only have to get hit once, and then you die, making this the most painful segment out of all of them.
I think you all get the idea at this point, and you could probably gather there are two major things that completely ruin it: the difficulty and the lack of focus. Everything in this game is set on making you fail, as there are always enemies everywhere, you get very limited resources to defend yourself, there are limited lives, no continues, no passwords, no fucks given, and many dead Bart carcasses stacked on top of each other after I tried to get through this game. It is one of the most infuriating licensed games that I have ever played because of this, and this is coming from the guy who beat and somewhat liked the NES Silver Surfer game. It is fun for a little bit, seeing all the weird-ass shit that Bart imagines in his dream world, but once you get past all of that, only pain and misery await you for the rest of the game.
Overall, despite the improved visuals, music, and some of the creativity that can be found here, this may just be the absolute worst Simpsons game that I have played so far, even more so than Bart’s Escape from Camp Deadly. Sure, that game could barely keep itself together without collapsing, and it is as barebones as you can get for a Simpsons title, but at least that one had a clear setup and structure. On the other hand, this game prides itself on constantly fucking over the player, giving very little chance of success in many different sections, and not giving a satisfying enough payoff to make me want to actually try to beat it. Do not play this game, no matter how big of a Simpsons fan you are, or if you actually somehow liked the other Simpsons games released around this time, because trust me, it isn’t worth it at all. I’m probably gonna get nightmares myself after playing this, but thankfully I don’t have any kind of schoolwork to worry about. Nah, instead, I’m probably gonna get fired from my job if I don’t complete my nightmares properly.
Game #430
Out of all of the old-school Simpsons video games, this was definitely the one I have heard the most about. There have been many different videos made based on the game by content creators that I am a big fan of on YouTube, and just judging from the box art and title of the game, it feels like one that would be the most “unique” compared to the others. That doesn’t mean I thought it was gonna be good though, as I still went into this expecting another really shitty Simpsons game, and you know what? I didn’t get that. No, instead I got an ABYSMAL Simpsons video game, one that carries a lot of the worst traits that previous games did, and one that tries to more creative and “fun”, but ends up providing something that feels more like torture instead.
The story is completely stupid, just about Bart having a nightmare (who could’ve guessed), and he needs to find the pages of his homework, which will make him somehow get an A in school when he wakes up, because that’s how logic works, the graphics are, admittedly, pretty good for a Simpsons game, and it is definitely the best looking game of the bunch, having plenty of variety in the designs, colors, and environments that you travel through, the music is alright, I guess, with there actually being more than one track this time around (thank god), but most of them are pretty generic and forgettable, so it is nothing to write home about, the control is…………… I don’t even wanna talk about it, because I just might explode while typing this, and the gameplay is one that is filled with quite a lot of variety, but it forgot to bring any semblance of quality along with it.
The game is………. I’m not quite sure, exactly. It is primarily split into two sections, where in the first section, you take control of Bart, walk around on a street in the middle of Springfield, dodge plenty of different obstacles that will come your way while fighting off against them using various items and weapons like bubblegum and watermelon seeds, gather plenty of items that won’t do anything to help you, because this game hates you, and find the many different pages of Bart’s homework scattered around the streets to enter the second part of the game. There’s really not that much to say about this section, as it just serves as a means to get you to the next minigame every time, but I will say that it isn’t fun to play through at all, which I will get more into later on.
The second part of the game consists of a bunch of minigames, each one being one you have to complete in order to gain one of Bart’s homework pages in order to beat the game, and since each one of them is different enough, I will go ahead and go through each of them right now. The first of these minigames is one where you are apparently going into Bart’s body, where you swim around on the screen, kill germs with your pump gun, and you gather several Joe Fissions in order to get the homework page awaiting at the end, and… that is about it. It is definitely the easiest and the most tolerable out of all the minigames, and while it does still definitely have its frustrations, this is the one you will probably spend the least amount of time on.
The second minigame would be the Bartman section, where you will fly around as Bartman, shooting plenty of things with your slingshot, avoiding many different obstacles along the way, and defeating several bosses that resemble several recurring Simpsons characters. This one is somewhat fun to play at first, but then it gets overly frustrating really fast, as you not only are bombarded by a huge amount of projectiles that are almost impossible to see coming at plenty of different times, but the slingshot you have at your disposal completely sucks. It feels like it barely does anything to a lot of the enemies, its range isn’t long enough to justify its usefulness, and you can’t turn around, making several boss encounters a huge pain in the ass. Yeah, you do get plenty of lives, which can help you out with what you have to deal with, but trust me, you will probably lose those lives very quickly.
The third minigame would be the Bartzilla sections, with the first of these sections being where Bartzilla automatically walks to the right, and you have to press certain buttons at certain times to have him attack whatever is in front of him so that you don’t take too much damage and lose. This one is completely terrible because it is incredibly hard to tell what action does what, and which one you need to perform before you end up getting hurt. Yeah, you can memorize what does what and what where goes, but you barely get any time to properly execute a lot of these moves before you are bumrushed by a million things. The second section in this minigame also has you playing as Bartzilla, except now you are climbing up a building while avoiding many different projectiles from either people in the building, or the Marge-Mothra constantly flying around. Not only is the amount you have to dodge completely ridiculous, but the building gets smaller and smaller as you go up, leaving little to no room to fuck up, leading to many frustrating deaths in the process.
The fourth minigame is the Itchy and Scratchy segments, where you run around various parts of the Simpsons house while fending off against not just Itchy and Scratchy, but also plenty of other different household items using either hammers or a gas gun. There isn’t that much to say about these sections, as they are pretty simplistic, but it still manages to bring along the bullshit difficulty that the game loves forcing against you, which does still make it painful to play.
And finally, there is the Idaho Simpson segments, where you jump through a Q*bert-like temple, defeat several enemies using your whip, make sure to step on specific platforms to raise others so you won’t fall, and dodge plenty of obstacles along the way. These segments are, without a doubt in my mind, the worst segments in the entire game. It is extremely easy to constantly fuck up and die here, not just from the enemies and obstacles that you face, but also because of the fact that you never really know how to proceed forward through these segments without getting caught by a trap or an obstacle, leading to plenty of deaths. What also doesn’t help is that, unlike all of the other segments, you only have to get hit once, and then you die, making this the most painful segment out of all of them.
I think you all get the idea at this point, and you could probably gather there are two major things that completely ruin it: the difficulty and the lack of focus. Everything in this game is set on making you fail, as there are always enemies everywhere, you get very limited resources to defend yourself, there are limited lives, no continues, no passwords, no fucks given, and many dead Bart carcasses stacked on top of each other after I tried to get through this game. It is one of the most infuriating licensed games that I have ever played because of this, and this is coming from the guy who beat and somewhat liked the NES Silver Surfer game. It is fun for a little bit, seeing all the weird-ass shit that Bart imagines in his dream world, but once you get past all of that, only pain and misery await you for the rest of the game.
Overall, despite the improved visuals, music, and some of the creativity that can be found here, this may just be the absolute worst Simpsons game that I have played so far, even more so than Bart’s Escape from Camp Deadly. Sure, that game could barely keep itself together without collapsing, and it is as barebones as you can get for a Simpsons title, but at least that one had a clear setup and structure. On the other hand, this game prides itself on constantly fucking over the player, giving very little chance of success in many different sections, and not giving a satisfying enough payoff to make me want to actually try to beat it. Do not play this game, no matter how big of a Simpsons fan you are, or if you actually somehow liked the other Simpsons games released around this time, because trust me, it isn’t worth it at all. I’m probably gonna get nightmares myself after playing this, but thankfully I don’t have any kind of schoolwork to worry about. Nah, instead, I’m probably gonna get fired from my job if I don’t complete my nightmares properly.
Game #430
2 Comments
i salute you my friend for this wonderful essay on barts nightmare, a game that does not in any universe deserve this much words dedicated to it
slibslime
4 months ago
Wait til you get to Virtual Bart