The Simpsons: Bart's House of Weirdness - Rerez

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1991 saw the release of one of the greatest beat 'em ups ever — The Simpsons Arcade. Konami had the golden touch. Since they released 1989’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in arcade they had this great idea of how beat ‘em up games should work in an arcade setting. And man they really did a fantastic job on The Simpsons. Which was kind of funny because taking a television show that we were all used to and morphing it into a beat ‘em up game shouldn't have worked but it did. And sometime after they released that game they released another one on DOS — Bart's House of Weirdness. And it's complete garbage.

The game starts off with seemingly no story or plot. Bart did something bad I guess and gets sent to his room and that's where the game begins. Bart can interact with a bunch of random objects that are scattered around but it's just pointless really. Because what you're supposed to do is take Bart and leave the room and enter several adjoining areas that serve as entry points into the platforming levels. You can climb out the window and go to the front of the house or go into Bart's closet and if you like you can even go back out Bart's bedroom door. The platforming levels range from the basement and attic of the Simpson’s house, tree forts, downtown Springfield and even Itchy and Scratchy’s TV show. These levels are designed in a multi static screen movement style not unlike the original Pitfall which was common with several of the games on PC at the time. The sound is actually pretty good in parts. Not amazing but not bad and it does utilize some digitized voices. And the graphics are actually pretty decent with some pretty good animations. Nothing on the same level as the Simpsons Arcade but for a home release on DOS for its time it's pretty good.

Each level seems to have a goal like finding enough money to see a movie at a theater or returning Maggie's bouncy ball. However I wouldn't know much about the goals since I never completed a single one. Because this game is terrible. The controls are sluggish and the method of attacking enemies is imprecise. You can easily find yourself in a shooting match with what I imagine are bees or something and easily drain all of your limited ammo. And since the bees consistently change their flight pattern and hit detection seems to suck you'll never be able to defend yourself properly. Each enemy you face has huge problems whether it's a freakishly large amount of damage they can take, horrible and I mean horrible hit detection or just plain cheap attacks that serve only to frustrate you. And on top of an already bad design all the enemies respawn once you've re-entered an area and this coupled with knockbacks from being attacked you can find yourself being bumped around from room to room and even if you manage to take out all of the enemies they'll respawn not long after. Oh and the ammo and extra items that populate a level? Yeah they disappear after a few short seconds once you enter a room. Awesome.

I was excited to see what kind of game this could have been. But wow was I ever disappointed. So I don't recommend you go out and play the game because it's pretty bad. While the animations are really nice and some of the visuals can be really cool the gameplay itself is unbelievably bad. Even for the time period of which it was released. This game is just inexcusably poorly designed. Completely avoid it at all costs. It's just not worth it.

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