The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare

""I'll Bart their world!""

Ahh, the Simpsons: a great show, but can its games live up to the name? Not in this case. Bart's nightmare does have a few things going for it, such as a wide variety of small games within the main game, and many scenarios based on the TV show. The story is simple: Bart falls asleep, and his homework gets blown out the window. You play Bart Simpson, and your goal is to find all the pages of your homework assignment, so you can get a good grade and be the pride of the Simpson family (and more likely rub it in Lisa's face ^_^).

GRAPHICS
The game stays faithful to the series with many cameo appearances by other Simpsons characters. Apu rides by on a magic carpet, principal Skinner makes sure you're dressed nicely, and even the three eyed fish shows up. However since it IS faithful to the series you won't see any huge detailed aliens, or mild 3D effects. It looks just like the cartoon, which good just don't expect more.

SOUND
The sound is about as average as the graphics. There is one or two sampled sounds for Bart's voice, which sound good, but most of the game is without voices. The music is nice. The music fits the particular scenario you're in very well. When you're just walking along the street there's a "walking along the street" kind of tune. When you're risking your life against Itchy and Scratchy, there's a fast paced panic song.

GAMEPLAY
The game has a variety of different situations, but they have all been slapped together rather poorly. It may be just that it's supposed to be all jumbled up like a dream. The game starts out as a simple side-scrolling walk down the street with various things rolling, bouncing, flying, and swimming around you. You are able to interact with most, if not all of these things. This makes things pretty interesting. The Principal will dress you up nice if you get caught by him. The fancy clothes make you walk slower, as well as make you a target for the bullies to beat you up. An old woman will blow you kisses, which will make you pause, making you vulnerable to the various things flying around on the screen, however if you've been turned into a frog (by your loving sister flying in the sky) the kiss will turn you back to normal! These are just a few of the many different things that go on during your walk. My big complaint about this part of the game is that the jumping is awkward. You have to jump over several things in order get different items. It took a while to get used to the jumping, and I'm still not good at it. The good part is that the control is pretty good in the other parts of the game. To get to the other parts of the game you have to find a sheet of your homework and jump on it. They seem to show up at random most of the time. Once you do this you get a choice of two doors. Each door leads to a different scenario/dream, where Bart is the star. There are five total, based on Bart's fantasies: Bartman, Indiana Jones, Godzilla, Itchy and Scratchy, and some strange Innerspace kind of thing. Each one plays differently, and stays very faithful to the show considering that these are dreams. You only get the homework paper, if you finish the sub game, and some of these will take a while to get the hang of. The game is actually somewhat challenging overall (partly because of the less than graceful control in some areas). The only bad thing is that it can get old fast, and you may not want to keep at it.

OVERALL
This game is defiantly a fun rental, but I wouldn't go out and buy it (I got it on a bum trade :P). If you're not big on video games, but you like the Simpsons, you might have fun with this game. There are better Simpsons game titles out there though. I was going to give this game a 5, but since it's got the characters we all know and love, and the game stays faithful to the show, I gave it a 6.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 09/03/02