"Yet another mediocre Simpsons game...this time, with rats and complex puzzles!"

Krusty's Super Funhouse is quite an odd game, to put it lightly. It's a basic puzzle game at its core, but the question lingering in my mind: what were the developers thinking? If they wanted a spinoff game from The Simpsons, couldn't they have done something else besides this? While a game involving Krusty might not have been so bad, they sure found a lot of ways to make this game a little weird and VERY frustrating.

So, here's the deal. Krusty has a huge funhouse, but it's been invaded by rats, and Krusty can't get rid of them. Luckily for him, he has some familiar faces from the show come along and help him get rid of the rats by setting up traps in some very obscure spots. All Krusty has to do is lure the rats into the traps. Easy, right?

Heck no!

The game is divided into five separate levels, with each level ranging anywhere from about eight to eighteen rooms. Rats are in every single room (except for the last one in each level), as is a trap where the rats will meet an unfortunate end.

Each room is a unique puzzle. In the early levels, the puzzles are pretty basic and will take you barely any time at all to figure out how to lure the rats into the trap and actually luring them in. But as the game goes on, the puzzles get more and more complex, and you may find yourself scratching your head at some of them.

Let me describe how each puzzle needs to be solved. There are a varying number of rats in each room. Sometimes there can be well over 10, and sometimes, there may only be one or two. But either way, you can't finish the puzzle until each and every single one of the rats is exterminated. (Unless you want to lose a life, that is. More on that later) So here's how you solve puzzles. The rats are about one "unit" high and walk in a straight line. If they run into something that's the same height as them, they'll simply walk over it, providing the object doesn't make them do anything different. If the thing in their way is more than one unit high, then they'll instantly turn around and go back the way they came until something else forces them to turn around or go in another way.

To get the rats into the traps, you have to use the items and lure them into the traps. Some of these items include blocks, which you can use to help the rats get up onto spots that were normally too high to get to before. You also have fans which can send a rat to the left, right, down (provided the ground isn't right beneath them) or up into the air. There are also pipes which the rats travel through that will take them to the opposite end of whatever pipe they walk into, as long as the other end isn't blocked off. There are barrels that you can kick around to help move the rats, and there are jars that can hold one rat. Once a rat gets in a jar, you can carry the rat around with you wherever you are and release it whenever you want. (Just be careful when using the jar, because once you release a rat from it, you lose the jar for the entire puzzle)

So, basically you need to use those items if you want to finish the game. By putting the right items in the right spots, you can successful lure the rats into the traps and be done with them for good. Once all the rats in the room are gone, you go out of the room through the door you came in. Upon leaving, you'll find yourself back in the main area of the level, and the door you just came out of should have a lock on it, meaning you've successfully completed the level.

But wait! Sometimes the lock won't be there! You know why? Because in some rooms, simply luring the rats into the traps isn't enough to finish the level. A few rooms have hidden switches concealed in purple boxes that need to be kicked before you can finish the level, and on a few rarer occasions, you need to go through a secret door concealed in some of the rooms where you have to go through a small area with a lot of tight spots and collect all the items in the room in a short amount of time. (Hands down, that's one of the most aggravating parts of the game, despite the fact it's usually pretty simple to do)

As if some of those extra little objectives in the rooms weren't annoying enough, Krusty's also got a slew of enemies lurking around in his funhouse. These include snakes, aliens with laser guns, flying pigs, and birds that always have a little something to drop on you when you walk right underneath them. And naturally, if you get hit by one of these enemies or their attacks, you lose some of your health. Get hit enough times, and you lose a life. The trouble is, Krusty doesn't have a health bar, so you have no idea how good or bad shape he's in until he's panting after getting hit over and over and can only take one or two more hits. If you lose all your lives, that'll take you to the Game Over screen.

And yes, once you get to the Game Over screen, you have to start over. Luckily, each level has a password system, and when entering the correct password, you can start the level over again without having to start the game over again. Unfortunately, this doesn't hold true for the individual rooms. You see, if you run out lives and you're in the fourth room of level 3, you can use a password to get you back to level three, but you'll have to do the first three rooms all over again. Yeah, it gets frustrating, but that should at least motivate you to be more careful.

Once you finish all the rooms in the level, you go through the final door where you simply have to kick some switch to open the door back out to main area. Upon leaving the level, you're given the password to the next one. Then you get to do the exact same things over in the following levels.

As stated before, the puzzles in this game really do gradually increase in difficulty. The ones in level one are basic, but from then on, they gradually get more complex and frustrating. Luckily, they're nothing you shouldn't be able to figure out, even the ones in late level 5. While a lot of the late puzzles may seem complex when it takes you nearly a minute just to find the trap in the room (never mind actually leading the rats there), most of the solutions are actually pretty simple when you figure them all out. You can get a satisfying feeling out of solving all the puzzles, despite some of the sheer frustration you went through to finish it.

Speaking of sheer frustration, let's steer away from the gameplay for a moment and talk about the music and sound effects. The music in every single level loops after just about one minute, and it NEVER STOPS PLAYING THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE LEVEL. Each level should take you at least around an hour to finish, with the later ones seriously taking longer. In other words, just be prepared to listen to the same music over and over and over again. (The mute button would probably work well here if you get frustrated by the music...level 3 is the worst offender of this)

But the sound doesn't stop there; I haven't gone into the sound effects. The sound effects to this game aren't as bad, although they're nothing great. The sound effects are pretty cartoony, and this is a cartoon-style game, so they actually fit pretty well. And while some of them are annoying, you can easily ignore them.

Lastly, I'll talk about the graphics. Krusty himself looks identifiable, and some of the levels and their backgrounds do set the mood pretty well. Some of the graphics are pretty bland and repetitive, but overall they look pretty good. No huge complaints here.

Initially, when I thought about how frustrating the puzzles get late in the game, I thought it would take someone with a lot of brain power to be able to beat this game. While that always helps, the real virtue you need to beat this game is patience. If you can just sit through the game and go through trial after trial of the puzzles before you finally figure out what you're supposed to do, then you shouldn't have too much trouble at all finishing the game later on. After finishing the game, I felt as if my ability to solve puzzles wasn't tested; it was more of my ability to just put up with it until it was over.

PROS

+ Should last you a while
+ Graphics are pretty good
+ Entertaining for a while

CONS

- Annoying music that loops a lot
- No health bar
- Puzzles get frustrating later on

FINAL NOTES

If you happen to have a Genesis that still works and a copy of this game, you might want to try it. All I can say is that if you try it, you'd better have the ability to sit through it a while before saying "The heck with this!" when you either get bored or frustrated with it. It's an okay game to play, and if puzzles are something you enjoy, then this game is worth a shot.

But really...so many options for a Simpsons spinoff game...and they have you trapping rats in a funhouse for a puzzle game while you play as Krusty. Weird. Weird indeed.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/04/05, Updated 05/21/07