My fellow Backloggdians…. after what feels like an eternity of having to endure such shitty products over and over again, I think I have finally cracked the code for these Simpsons games! I’m like Charlie from It’s Always Sunny right now, I feel like I’m onto something here! See, most of the Simpsons games we have talked about so far have been pretty bad, garbage even, and I have found one common element amongst them all that makes it so that they are so bad: Bart is the main character in all of them! Meanwhile, the few Simpsons games we have talked about where he is not the star, such as The Simpsons Arcade Game and that one Itchy & Scratchy game on the Game Boy, have actually ranged from being alright to actually really great. So, as long as we just avoid any Simpsons games that star that spike-haired nuisance, we shouldn’t have to play any bad Simpsons game ever again! But, there’s only one way we can figure out if this is the case, and that’s with a field test, so the game we will use for this field test will be The Itchy & Scratchy Game.

Naturally, I wasn’t really looking to try this one out, but I was admittedly looking forward to it more than the others. Not only did does it not seem to have Bart in any form or capacity here, but it is somewhat following up the other Itchy & Scratchy game we got a year before (according to external sources), so I figured it was gonna at least be somewhat alright. Hell, it could even end up being the second best Simpsons game that we have played so far, right behind The Simpsons Arcade game. However, what I ended up getting out of it instead was… a pretty repetitive slog. I wouldn’t say this game is bad by any means, and it does have some VERY admirable qualities for what it is, but it is one of those games that you can easily take one look at, get all the info you need, and then move on from.

The graphics are surprisingly pretty great, at least, in terms of SNES standards, where the environments are fun and colorful enough to not look like an eyesore or be too boring, and the animations for the characters, specifically with Itchy & Scratchy, look fantastic, being very smooth and well done, especially for a licensed Simpsons game of all things, so I will give the game credit for having some pretty great visuals for what it is, the music is pretty decent, with each track fitting both the setting and the scenario of each level pretty well, even if the tracks themselves aren’t anything I am gonna be going back to listen to on a daily basis, and the gameplay/control is extremely simple, to where you will be able to pick up on what to do very quickly, but also to where you will get tired of what you are doing very quickly.

The game is a platforming arena game, where you take control of Itchy, go through a set of seven levels, each one having its own distinctive theme from each other while being framed as an episode of the cartoon show itself, run around each of these arenas while beating the absolute fuck out of Scratchy until he is a bloody disgusting pile of guts on the floor, gather plenty of different items that you can use to help you kill Scratchy in a more efficient way, and take on plenty of boss fights against…. an even stronger version of Scratchy, which can be tricky at certain points, but most of them are pretty manageable if you have plenty of patience and plenty of cartoony-skill. It is a pretty simple premise, one that is actually fun for a good bit once you start actually trying it out for yourself…… however, that good bit ends very quickly, to where it then turns into a repetitive slog that can’t be recovered.

I will say, the one factor that this game rides and dies on is the quality of the visuals, because they are genuinely very impressive for what we have here. Before each level, you get a fully-animated recreation of the Itchy & Scratchy intro, followed by plenty of level themes that aren’t exactly creative, but they are very well made for the kind of licensed game we are dealing with here. Not to mention, while the violence itself is unfortunately neutered, not featuring any kind of blood or gore like in the actual show itself (which is a huge letdown, don’t get me wrong), it is cartoony and slapstick-y enough to feel like a proper Looney Tunes-type game. It isn’t much, but hey, again, I will give credit where credit is due, as they did a really good job on that front.

However, everything else in comparison leaves much to be desired. For most of the entire game, you will primarily just be doing one thing: trying to find Scratchy, hitting him, avoid getting hit by him, rinse and repeat until you beat the game. You can explore the levels to see what kind of items there are to get and what kind of secrets there are to find, but that in itself is pointless when the main objective is so cut and dry. All you have to do is pretty much just stand around, wait for Scratchy to show up, whack him, and wait for him to come around again to do that again, and while there is a time limit present, you are given plenty of time, so it isn’t anything you need to be concerned about at any point in the levels. The boss fights don’t help break the repetition too much either, as they can be beaten fairly quickly if you know what you are doing, and even they get pretty repetitive as the game goes on too. Thankfully, the game itself isn’t that long, so it’s not like you will be spending hours upon hours doing this, but again, you will pretty much get all of what the game has to offer you in the first level, and with no real ending or congratulations to be found at the end of the game, what is even the point of any of this?

Overall, despite having great visuals and a promising gameplay set-up, this game unfortunately is nothing more than a tedious and boring treadmill that keeps you in the same loop of gameplay over and over again, offering nothing to keep it interesting or fun after the first level other then with the level themes and some items, and it isn’t worth putting all of your time into. I would recommend for people to at least try it for a little bit, playing around with the first level to see if you end up liking what you end up getting, especially for those who somehow liked the previous Simpsons games and the show in general, but for everyone else, there is nothing here to sink your teeth into, so don’t even bother trying to load it up. So, I guess after all of that, I guess my theory was incorrect… even if a Simpsons game doesn’t star Bart, it is still as capable at being as bad or boring as the rest of them, meaning that I will never truly escape this hell-hole of mediocrity………. depressed sigh...

Game #658.5