Y’all remember Dr. Marvin Monroe? He was one of the earliest characters that was ever featured on The Simpsons, playing a big role in the fourth episode, “There’s No Disgrace Like Home”. He didn’t really do all that much, just being the therapist for the Simpsons, putting them through shock family to try to “reconcile” them, but after this episode, he was rarely ever seen again. This was apparently because not only did the series creator, Matt Groening, find him annoying after a while, but also because the voice actor, Harry Shearer, said that doing the voice strained his throat, so they then had him “killed off” in Season 7, before fully retiring the character all together. Now, with all that being said, why the hell am I talking about such an obscure character like Marvin Monroe? Well, because he appears as a commentator in The Simpsons: Bart vs. The Juggernauts, and that was the one good aspect I could get out of that entire game.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is time once again to take a look back at one of the many garbage Simpsons games of the early 90s, talk about why it is so bad, and watch as I get closer and closer to the brink of insanity (happy thoughts all around!). This particular title of the series was one that I was dreading a whole lot more than usual, because it is the second Game Boy title after Escape from Camp Deadly, which was one of the absolute worst games of the bunch so far, so needless to say, I figured this title was gonna end out the exact same way. Thankfully though, I wouldn’t say this game is quiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite as bad as Escape from Camp Deadly, but yeah, it is still pretty terrible. This time around though, instead of having just one terrible type of game for me to rip apart, we have an entire minigame compilation to tear through, OH JOY!
The story is practically non-existent, just being about Bart participating in a game show called Juggernauts week by week to win cash prizes, but at this point, nobody cares about the story, so moving on, the graphics are Game Boy graphics, but admittedly, they look pretty alright for the system, having good enough sprites for Bart, the enemies, and the other characters from the show, but there is still plenty of jank models to see as well, the music is good enough, having plenty of tracks that are either decent, or make me wanna rip my ears off, but hey, at least it isn’t just the main theme of the show playing over and over again, the control… varies in quality, depending on what minigame you are playing at that point, but for the most part, it controls about as well as a car missing most of its wheels, and the gameplay also varies in quality depending on what minigame you play, but for the most part, it plays… actually somewhat decently, but there is definitely some crap thrown in there as well.
The game is primarily a collection of minigames, where you take control of Bart Simpson (as if that wasn’t obvious enough), go through week after week of this show, compete in various minigames which will have you performing various stunts to earn money, take on very easy bonus stages to earn you some extra bonus money just in case you already aren’t swimming in the riches, and then turn off the game, grab a copy of Pokemon Gold or Silver, pop that into the Game Boy, and be refreshed, as you now finally remember what it feels like to play an actually good video game. It is just one of the most typical helpings of “licensed game slop” that you could possibly expect, and while most of these minigames are somewhat good, or at least competent, most of them aren’t all that good.
If you couldn’t tell already by the Played icon at the top of this review, I did not beat this game, and I probably never will. It makes sense, when you think about it, because no sane person would want to go through this entire game, but since I did quit early, I wasn’t able to play all of the minigames. But, I have seen all of them, so just like with Bart’s Nightmare, we are gonna go through each and every one of them, so HERE WE GO! The first one that I checked out was “Captain Murdock’s Skateboard Bash and Crash”, where you just skateboard down this ramp, trying to avoid these obstacles along the way, and try to bash the Juggernaut stationed before you on the giant platform. This one would be fine as a whole, as the skateboard controls are decent, and avoiding all the obstacles is easy enough, but the main problem lies when you actually have to bash into the Juggernaut. You have to jump off this ramp at the end in order to reach him, but depending on how fast you are going, or when you push the jump button, you can either miss the platform completely, go over it, or smash right into the Juggernaut’s shield, which counts as a lose. It takes a lot of experimentation to get this down, which takes a lot of tries and time that you don’t have, so that makes it more annoying rather then just plain awful.
The next one I played was “Hop, Skip and Fry”, where you have to take a basketball over to a hoop over on the other side of these electrified tiles, making sure to step on the safe tiles while trying to avoid these two big goons all while doing so. This is actually probably the best minigame out of the bunch, as not only are the controls easy enough to get a handle of when you figure out what to do, but the challenge isn’t too needlessly difficult, while still being challenging. In fact, dare I say, I may actually think it is… fun? Nah, I probably wouldn’t go that far. The next one I played after that was “Moe’s Tavern Shove Fest”, where you have to wrestle against both another Juggernaut and Barney, making sure to shove them out of the ring before they can shove you out. This is the minigame where I started to think “Maybe I should just stop now”, because I for the life of me could not figure out how to win. You have a few moves you could pull off, and they can be very effective if used in quick succession, but not only can the opponent take you down very quickly if you aren’t ready, but I swear, I for the life of me could not figure out how to do these moves correctly and consistently, with some moves I just couldn’t do at all. I guess you could say that is a skill issue on my part, but considering what game we are talking about here, I am gonna blame bad game design instead, cause its easier.
The last minigame I played before calling it quits was “Bop ‘Till You Drop”, where you are stationed on a platform over toxic waste, and you have to bop the Juggernaut off of his platform using the stick that you are given… and it is piss easy. Seriously, all you have to do is just stand in one spot and rapidly mash the attack button, as there is no way that you can lose after that. Yeah, you’ll get hit a couple times, but you will never be knocked off of the platform, and you will get an easy win. After that, I decided to just look up the rest of them, because I didn’t feel like hurting myself anymore, so the next minigame I saw was “The Krustyland Hammer Slammer”. This minigame not only provides us with the most terrifying Krusty the Clown sprite I have ever seen (skip to 17:24), but it also allows you to just hit a bunch of high strikers with a hammer to prevent any of the Juggernauts from reaching the ground. This one looks easy enough, and there isn’t much more to say about it, other then how you are able to hit the striker so hard to the point where it shoots one of the guys off of it, which is hilarious.
The next one after that was “Military Minefield Mayhem”, which has you start out by parachuting down the screen while dodging projectiles, and then running through a minefield while… dodging projectiles. They got real creative with this one, let me tell ya. Once again, like with the Hammer Slammer, this one doesn’t seem thaaaaaaaat bad, as there isn’t an onslaught of projectiles that you just simply cannot avoid, but it does seem like it can be quite difficult when you don’t know what you’re doing. And finally, there is the last main minigame, “The Kwik-E-Mart Doggie Dodge”, which is a platforming stage that you have to go through while avoiding and/or distracting a bunch of dogs along the way. Knowing my past experience with Simpsons games, I can only imagine this one is the absolute worst of the bunch, not only based on some terrible platforming elements, but also because of how long and repetitive the stage itself gets.
Aside from one or two elements I didn’t mention here, that is pretty much all of what you get to experience in this game, and what a shocker, it wasn’t really that good at all. I don’t necessarily have a problem with minigame compilation games as a whole, but more often than not, they end up just being either some of the worst games you could possibly play, or they offer nothing of value and are just completely boring, and this game is a mix of both of those. There are some minigames that are genuinely terrible, and then there are those that are actually a bit of fun, but most of them are just monotonous, tedious, and boring as a whole, with little enjoyment to be found in them. What also doesn’t help these games out is the fact that, in order to beat the game, you need to play through the games multiple times, up to three times at the most, and let me tell you, while I did like that basketball minigame, if I had to play through it two more times, I probably would’ve thrown myself on an electrical panel just to end it all as soon as possible.
Overall, despite some enjoyable minigames here or there, this is pretty much exactly what you would expect not just from a cheap collection of minigames, but also from a Simpsons game from this era, being poorly designed, repetitive as all hell, not that appealing to look at, and just overall very boring. I could give it some credit, cause it is better than several of the other Simpsons games that I have covered at this point, but that isn’t really saying much when it is still a bad game at the end of the day. I would only recommend this if you were either a fan of those other Simpsons games, or you don’t mind playing through a collection of cheap minigames, but otherwise, there are many other games you could be playing instead. Hell, if you want some fun minigames, just play Mario Party instead. Those games actually make you feel emotion, like the sweet satisfaction of victory, or the feeling of wanting to strangle the person sitting next to you.
Game #519
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is time once again to take a look back at one of the many garbage Simpsons games of the early 90s, talk about why it is so bad, and watch as I get closer and closer to the brink of insanity (happy thoughts all around!). This particular title of the series was one that I was dreading a whole lot more than usual, because it is the second Game Boy title after Escape from Camp Deadly, which was one of the absolute worst games of the bunch so far, so needless to say, I figured this title was gonna end out the exact same way. Thankfully though, I wouldn’t say this game is quiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite as bad as Escape from Camp Deadly, but yeah, it is still pretty terrible. This time around though, instead of having just one terrible type of game for me to rip apart, we have an entire minigame compilation to tear through, OH JOY!
The story is practically non-existent, just being about Bart participating in a game show called Juggernauts week by week to win cash prizes, but at this point, nobody cares about the story, so moving on, the graphics are Game Boy graphics, but admittedly, they look pretty alright for the system, having good enough sprites for Bart, the enemies, and the other characters from the show, but there is still plenty of jank models to see as well, the music is good enough, having plenty of tracks that are either decent, or make me wanna rip my ears off, but hey, at least it isn’t just the main theme of the show playing over and over again, the control… varies in quality, depending on what minigame you are playing at that point, but for the most part, it controls about as well as a car missing most of its wheels, and the gameplay also varies in quality depending on what minigame you play, but for the most part, it plays… actually somewhat decently, but there is definitely some crap thrown in there as well.
The game is primarily a collection of minigames, where you take control of Bart Simpson (as if that wasn’t obvious enough), go through week after week of this show, compete in various minigames which will have you performing various stunts to earn money, take on very easy bonus stages to earn you some extra bonus money just in case you already aren’t swimming in the riches, and then turn off the game, grab a copy of Pokemon Gold or Silver, pop that into the Game Boy, and be refreshed, as you now finally remember what it feels like to play an actually good video game. It is just one of the most typical helpings of “licensed game slop” that you could possibly expect, and while most of these minigames are somewhat good, or at least competent, most of them aren’t all that good.
If you couldn’t tell already by the Played icon at the top of this review, I did not beat this game, and I probably never will. It makes sense, when you think about it, because no sane person would want to go through this entire game, but since I did quit early, I wasn’t able to play all of the minigames. But, I have seen all of them, so just like with Bart’s Nightmare, we are gonna go through each and every one of them, so HERE WE GO! The first one that I checked out was “Captain Murdock’s Skateboard Bash and Crash”, where you just skateboard down this ramp, trying to avoid these obstacles along the way, and try to bash the Juggernaut stationed before you on the giant platform. This one would be fine as a whole, as the skateboard controls are decent, and avoiding all the obstacles is easy enough, but the main problem lies when you actually have to bash into the Juggernaut. You have to jump off this ramp at the end in order to reach him, but depending on how fast you are going, or when you push the jump button, you can either miss the platform completely, go over it, or smash right into the Juggernaut’s shield, which counts as a lose. It takes a lot of experimentation to get this down, which takes a lot of tries and time that you don’t have, so that makes it more annoying rather then just plain awful.
The next one I played was “Hop, Skip and Fry”, where you have to take a basketball over to a hoop over on the other side of these electrified tiles, making sure to step on the safe tiles while trying to avoid these two big goons all while doing so. This is actually probably the best minigame out of the bunch, as not only are the controls easy enough to get a handle of when you figure out what to do, but the challenge isn’t too needlessly difficult, while still being challenging. In fact, dare I say, I may actually think it is… fun? Nah, I probably wouldn’t go that far. The next one I played after that was “Moe’s Tavern Shove Fest”, where you have to wrestle against both another Juggernaut and Barney, making sure to shove them out of the ring before they can shove you out. This is the minigame where I started to think “Maybe I should just stop now”, because I for the life of me could not figure out how to win. You have a few moves you could pull off, and they can be very effective if used in quick succession, but not only can the opponent take you down very quickly if you aren’t ready, but I swear, I for the life of me could not figure out how to do these moves correctly and consistently, with some moves I just couldn’t do at all. I guess you could say that is a skill issue on my part, but considering what game we are talking about here, I am gonna blame bad game design instead, cause its easier.
The last minigame I played before calling it quits was “Bop ‘Till You Drop”, where you are stationed on a platform over toxic waste, and you have to bop the Juggernaut off of his platform using the stick that you are given… and it is piss easy. Seriously, all you have to do is just stand in one spot and rapidly mash the attack button, as there is no way that you can lose after that. Yeah, you’ll get hit a couple times, but you will never be knocked off of the platform, and you will get an easy win. After that, I decided to just look up the rest of them, because I didn’t feel like hurting myself anymore, so the next minigame I saw was “The Krustyland Hammer Slammer”. This minigame not only provides us with the most terrifying Krusty the Clown sprite I have ever seen (skip to 17:24), but it also allows you to just hit a bunch of high strikers with a hammer to prevent any of the Juggernauts from reaching the ground. This one looks easy enough, and there isn’t much more to say about it, other then how you are able to hit the striker so hard to the point where it shoots one of the guys off of it, which is hilarious.
The next one after that was “Military Minefield Mayhem”, which has you start out by parachuting down the screen while dodging projectiles, and then running through a minefield while… dodging projectiles. They got real creative with this one, let me tell ya. Once again, like with the Hammer Slammer, this one doesn’t seem thaaaaaaaat bad, as there isn’t an onslaught of projectiles that you just simply cannot avoid, but it does seem like it can be quite difficult when you don’t know what you’re doing. And finally, there is the last main minigame, “The Kwik-E-Mart Doggie Dodge”, which is a platforming stage that you have to go through while avoiding and/or distracting a bunch of dogs along the way. Knowing my past experience with Simpsons games, I can only imagine this one is the absolute worst of the bunch, not only based on some terrible platforming elements, but also because of how long and repetitive the stage itself gets.
Aside from one or two elements I didn’t mention here, that is pretty much all of what you get to experience in this game, and what a shocker, it wasn’t really that good at all. I don’t necessarily have a problem with minigame compilation games as a whole, but more often than not, they end up just being either some of the worst games you could possibly play, or they offer nothing of value and are just completely boring, and this game is a mix of both of those. There are some minigames that are genuinely terrible, and then there are those that are actually a bit of fun, but most of them are just monotonous, tedious, and boring as a whole, with little enjoyment to be found in them. What also doesn’t help these games out is the fact that, in order to beat the game, you need to play through the games multiple times, up to three times at the most, and let me tell you, while I did like that basketball minigame, if I had to play through it two more times, I probably would’ve thrown myself on an electrical panel just to end it all as soon as possible.
Overall, despite some enjoyable minigames here or there, this is pretty much exactly what you would expect not just from a cheap collection of minigames, but also from a Simpsons game from this era, being poorly designed, repetitive as all hell, not that appealing to look at, and just overall very boring. I could give it some credit, cause it is better than several of the other Simpsons games that I have covered at this point, but that isn’t really saying much when it is still a bad game at the end of the day. I would only recommend this if you were either a fan of those other Simpsons games, or you don’t mind playing through a collection of cheap minigames, but otherwise, there are many other games you could be playing instead. Hell, if you want some fun minigames, just play Mario Party instead. Those games actually make you feel emotion, like the sweet satisfaction of victory, or the feeling of wanting to strangle the person sitting next to you.
Game #519
Jamesbuc
1 month ago