The Simpsons - Angry Video Game Nerd - Episode 30
The Nerd: Alright, so there were a lot of Simpsons-related games. Simpsons games up the ass. Games like Krusty's Fun House, Bart vs. the Juggernauts, Bart’s Nightmare; there were Simpsons games on just about every game console. But there's two in particular that I remember from the Nintendo Entertainment System: Bart vs. the Space Mutants and Bart vs. the World. These games rank up with the most classic pop culture memories. But if you play 'em today, all it does is remind you how much they pissed you off.
The Nerd: Bringin' back the horrible memories of these games can best be described like this: imagine if you trapped a wet, smelly piece of dog shit inside an airtight container. Then, like 20 years later, you open that shit up, you take a good smell, and there you go. Welcome back.
Bart vs. the Space Mutants[]
(Shows the title card of Bart vs. the Space Mutants)
The Nerd: So this is Bart vs. the Space Mutants. The plot involves aliens that are tryin' to build an ultimate weapon to take over the world, which sounds simple and cliché. However, in order to build this weapon - whatever it is - it requires one ingredient: purple-colored objects. What kind of time constraint were they under when they came up with that?
The Nerd: So it's up to Bart to save the world, and this is the first level. And the object is to get rid of anything that's purple. Under most circumstances, this means simply spray-painting them red, but other times you have to be a little more creative to figure it out. It could mean walking across a clothesline, droppin' towels over them. The aliens will never think to look under those towels. Then there's a part where you have to jump on a ball and knock over a paint can, and if you miss this paint can, the ball doesn't come back. You don't get a second chance. And keep in mind you have to de-purple-ize all the purple objects. I think you're allowed to miss a few of them, but there's not much room to fuck up.
The Nerd: You collect coins as you go, which you're gonna need to buy stuff with. The first time playin' through, you're not gonna know exactly what items you're gonna need. And I can tell you for one thing, that key isn't necessary, and as for this whistle, all it does is summon an angry fuckin' crazy-ass dog that kills Bart if he comes in contact.
The Nerd: Comin' to a decision where you can buy cherry bombs and rockets, how many should you buy of each? Well, there's only one instance I recall where you need the cherry bomb, and many, many, many times when you need the rockets. But how the fuck would you know that the first time? You'll end up having to backtrack to the damn store. Tryin' to hit the bird is just ridiculous. Your accuracy has to be perfect.
(Bart misses the bird)
The Nerd: Fuck! (Bart misses the bird again) Oh God, I can't believe that missed. (Bart successfully hits the bird) There you go, ya fuck!
The Nerd: These vases are also a pain in the ass. They're too short to spray when you're on the ledge, so you gotta just keep jumping and spraying. And y'know, why's the Simpsons theme song still playing? It's good for the beginning, but when you have to listen to it for 10 straight minutes, what a shitload of fuck.
The Nerd: Let's talk about the enemies. It sucks butt that you can't really kill anything, but lucky for you, they got nothin' better to do than just bounce around in little patterns on the streets of Springfield all day. I also wonder why none of these aliens look anything like the ones in the beginning. Anyway, some of them disguise themselves as human beings, and you can only see them while wearing X-ray glasses, kinda like the movie They Live. These are the only ones that you can kill by jumping on their heads, but if it's not an alien, just a regular human being, then you take a hit. Two hits and you’re dead, by the way. So you always gotta make sure to have your glasses selected. Come on, glasses. Come on, come on, glasses! Come on, come on, come on! (Bart misses the alien) AH, FUCKFARTS!
The Nerd: Sometimes I just jump on 'em at a pure gamble because I don't feel like selecting the glasses. You don't need to kill 'em anyway, but they leave behind letters. Collect 'em all to spell "MAGGIE", then she'll help you during the boss battle. But besides, it's strangely satisfying to jump on those aliens' heads. After all, don't you wish you could just go around killing aliens, not making purple things not purple? Why not just fuckin' shit all over 'em and make everything brown?
The Nerd: So, you foil the aliens' plans because now there's nothing purple in existence. So, what do they do? They change the ingredient to hats. So, if they can just switch like that into anything, why not make it somethin' like grass or water or somethin' that's really easy to find? It just makes no sense.
The Nerd: So you're goin' through the mall, stealin' all the hats because, this is the only mall that has hats. Whether they're floating in the air or you gotta grab 'em off somebody's head, the concept is pretty simple compared to the first level. No ingenuity, just collect hats. The imagination employed is just astounding in how inconsistent it is. It's like a different person designed each level. It's also really funny that people just casually walk by. If I was walkin' through the mall, and I saw giant bouncing doughnuts and killer marshmallows, walking shoes and spring-jumping shoes, moonwalking shoes, paper bags with legs, paper bags with scary fuckin' heads, and killer towels, I think I'd shit my pants. Shit would come out of my ass.
The Nerd: Another thing really fucked up about this mall is that a lot of the floor's covered in cement, which results in instant death. The only way to get through this shit is master some of the worst controls in video game history. This should've been the first thing I commented on, but now is the point where it's really a problem.
Bart: Eat my shorts!
The Nerd: Lookin' back at the first level, it takes a lot of practice to make some of those jumps. Jump and run are both the same button. The A button jumps, and holding the A button runs. Why the same fuckin' button? What were they thinking? So tryin' to execute a running jump is not possible. By hitting both the A and B button at the same time, you do a super jump. Gettin' used to this is required in this game. FUCK! Here we go, gotta get the hat. Get the hat! (falls in cement) D'oh!
Bart: Eat my shorts!
The Nerd: Now I'm jumpin' across lollipops; gotta land on 'em when they're horizontal. (Bart falls through the lollipop) YOU MOTHERFUCKER! I went right through it! Alright, just one big jump...! (Bart falls into the cement again) Eat my fuckin' shorts! There's no continues in this game either. If you get hit twice, you're dead. Die three times, and the game's over. You can get some 1-ups, but no continues, as if it's not challenging enough. Now I don't have a problem with challenge, but when the challenge is based on how fuckin' crippled the controls are, then FUCK IT!
(Takes out the Bart vs. the Space Mutants game cartridge)
The Nerd: Eat my shorts. Eat 'em good. Right after I took a shitty diarrhea dump.
Bart vs. the World[]
(Shows the title card for Bart vs. the World)
The Nerd: So this is Bart vs. the World. The title always confused me. Bart saved the world from the space mutants. Now he's against the world?
The Nerd: The plot is basically Bart won a trip around the world by drawing some shitty picture of Krusty the Clown for an art contest. Now Mr. Burns wants the Simpsons wiped off the face of the Earth, so he calls help from his relatives, which happen to descend from places like China, Egypt, and the North Pole. Your basic goal is just to get to the end of each stage without dying.
The Nerd: There's also bonus games along the way. And here we've got a memory game to match the cards. I liked it when it was in Super Mario 3, but here, I just don't feel like memorizing shit. I'd rather put sticky notes all over the screen. Then you got "Guess Which Igloo the Krusty Head's Under." Then you have a puzzle game which drives me insane. Then you got a Simpsons trivia game, then you got "Dodge the Beer and Get the Krusty Heads." Krusty heads are good, beer is bad. Makes a whole lot of sense. Then you got the stupidest fuckin' game in the history of games. "Find the Bat in the Coffins." Now, this isn't like the igloo game where you see which igloo it is, and then they move around. No, this is just three coffins sitting here, and you gotta pick the right one. It's just pure luck. And every time you get the wrong coffin, this green arm comes out, and you just gotta wait. While nothing happens; it's not like Bart's even struggling. You just wait. So that's the bonus stages.
The Nerd: Now that I got those out of the way, let's talk about the actual gameplay. Every level consists of two or more sections. The first level's China, and this is the first section: a boat. First thing you’ll notice is that the control is the same as Bart vs. the Space Mutants. Nothing's improved. Even the graphics are still funny, like when Bart's nose disappears when he stands still. So I'm just goin' around this ship, tryin' to figure out where to go. Oh look, there's Maggie. What do I do here?
(a ship comes up and explodes)
The Nerd: Okay, a boat comes and explodes? I don't get it. Now, where do I go? I'm stuck here. Maggie, can you help? No? Well, suck my ass. Guess I'm just gonna commit suicide. (Bart jumps into the sea) Love how Bart doesn't even give a shit. He's pretty depressed. I'd be too.
The Nerd: The next section's the Great Wall of China. What really brings my piss to a boil is that fuckin' dragon. Fuck! The fact that you have to be so accurate to get through that damn doorway. Oh, and these ramps? Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em to Hell. You gotta be goin' fast to go over 'em, but you always seem to hit somethin' that slows you down, so you gotta go back just to regain your speed. Fuck! Oh, OH, OH, OH! FUCK! So then you got Fu Manchu Burns. He's pretty easy.
The Nerd: Movin' on to the next level, the North Pole. Of course, unless your jumping is dead on, you'll end up fallin' right through the platforms. Ugh. Goin' up these things is just tedious as all Hell, like, goddamn. These glaciers are the worst. To make 'em move, you gotta jump on 'em, of course. Gettin' to cross them is a bitch, and tryin' to avoid the birds is a motherbitch. Fuck! Alright, here we go. Damn! FUCK, FUCK, FUCK! The boss battle's with the Abominable Snowburns, obviously a take-off of the Abominable Snowman, which isn't from the North Pole.
The Nerd: Next up is Egypt. Follow the blocks, follow the blocks, (Bart falls off a block) shit. Look. What a piece of shit. At the end, you've got Ramses Burns, who's also pretty easy when you find out how to kill him.
The Nerd: Now, believe it or not, you're in the final level of the game: Hollywood. The first section's a pirate ship. Your worst enemy is gonna be the cannonballs. Hate these fuckin' things. Then you got a horror movie set. (chuckling) I have to say, that's pretty funny. Then the game turns into a maze, like you go into a coffin, you come out another coffin, you pick a coffin, next coffin, other coffin, oh, been there already. Goin' through the coffins, the coffins, the coffins. Back here again. Goin' to the next coffin, the coffins, coffins, FUCK! I hate this shit. Just tell me where to go.
The Nerd: Okay, now we got, like, a million platforms to jump on. This is one of the most boring and difficult parts of any game I've ever played. You go from the left, all the way to the right, then up and over to the left again, then back to the right, and it goes on, and on, and on, and on. If you fall, you're dead, and you gotta start all the way back from the beginning. It's possible that if you miss a jump, you can land back on one of the platforms, which sucks anyway because you have to work your way back up again, but at least it prevents death. Ugh, shit! God! Bitch, ass, shit! GOD! You know, they got really carried away with this. How long can it possibly go? The first time, I thought there was a glitch in the game, like something was wrong. It looks like the same pattern being repeated again and again. The background never changes; it's just those putrid stone bricks all the way up. So it's hard to tell how far you got. All you gotta do is just keep going up, up, up, up. Have. Fuckin'. Mercy. At least this is the end of the game. All you got left is Eric von Burns. He's probably the hardest of all the bosses, which is rightfully so.
The Nerd: Then you get the end screen which says, "It's too bad you didn't find all the unique Krusty items. We had a special surprise for you." It's like at the end of Bubble Bobble when you don't get the correct happy ending. It's like, you know, fuck you. I beat the game, I don't give a shit.
The Nerd: I just wanted to point out that for a game titled "Bart vs. the World," there really isn't a lot of the world in the game. No shit, right? Just Egypt, China, the North Pole, and Hollywood? Pretty fuckin' educational, right? When I was eleven years old, my whole world was video games. Just locked in my room playing Bart vs. the Space Mutants and all this crap. Man, I wasted all my time on this shit. I want it back! I-It ruined my life!
The Nerd: (Swigs beer) BART'S MY ASS AND KRUSTY'S MY BALLS! Fuck this shit, now I'm gonna eat my own shorts. (Puts beer down, then proceeds to rip out boxers with teeth, and then eats it in a ravenous manner.)