The Simpsons Arcade Game (full)

I used to play this at the movie theater, and Hotskates on Long Island.

The Simpsons (c) 1991 Konami.
A jewel heist gone wrong sees Mr Burns’s sidekick, Smithers, kidnapping Maggie and making his escape. Between one and four players take on the role of either Homer, Marge, Lisa, or Bart in this colorful, horizontally-scrolling beat-em-up from Konami. Each Simpsons character possesses an attacking move specific to them; Marge is armed with a vacuum cleaner, Lisa has a skipping rope, Bart has his skateboard, and Homer fights with his fists. The players must battle their way through a variety of Simpsons-themed levels – such as Springfield and Krustyland – fighting goons, thugs, zombies, drunks, firemen, and several Simpsons regulars. Many Simpsons characters that don’t appear as enemies have ‘cameo’ scenes in the game (Otto working at a burgerstand in Krustyland, for example). The archetypal ‘boss’ character awaits the players at the end of every stage. The game ends with a final showdown with the evil Mr. Burns in his luxurious mansion.

The Simpsons was designed to Konami’s typically-high production standards and was, like the ‘Ninja Turtles’ games that appeared a couple of years’ earlier, very faithful to its source material. The colorful, smoothly-animated sprites captured the spirit of the legendary cartoon superbly, and the game’s many humorous touches were timed to perfection.

– TECHNICAL –

There were several distinct versions of this game available in the arcade, the four player dedicated cabinet, the four player conversion kit (designed to retrofit “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, but a lot of them ended up on “Gauntlet” machines too), and the two player conversion kit (designed to retrofit almost anything). The only real difference in game-play between versions was the maximum amount of players. The Simpsons dedicated cabinet was fairly large and had an over-sized control panel (to accommodate four players). The sides were decorated with painted side-art showing all five members of the Simpsons family scampering around (Homer seems to be stepping on the tail of the family cat). Some cabinets may have this same scene as a large sticker, instead of it being painted on. American machines are usually blue in color, while the European ones were usually white. The marquee shows a family photo and has a ‘The Simpsons’ logo done in yellow. The control panel repeats the graphics from the marquee and has four joysticks (one for each player), each of which is a different color. Different Simpsons machines will have different sized monitors, although 25” and 32” were the most popular sizes available.