Virtual Bart

"Virtual crap."

The last Simpsons game for the Snes is terrible, it works in the same way than Bart’s Nightmare but it has even more terrible controls and mini games, ugh!.

Plot:
This time Bart is in a science festival at the preliminary school, he was looking at the experiments when he sees one called Virtual Reality, and when he tries to stick his noses on it, he gets cough in the experiment, and he has to succeed in all the situations he is presented to get out safely.

Gameplay 2/10:
All the flaws and annoyances Bart’s Nightmare had can be found in this game, only that this time they are (if that is possible) even worst. We have to play mini games again, only that this time they suck, all of them suck. At a first glance they look very good, and they could have been very good certainly, just like in Bart’s Nightmare, but the truth is that they are horribly boring because they are done in a horribly boring way. For example, there is a mini game in which we have to throw tomatoes to the kids that are walking at the school gate, but they way we have to throw tomatoes is far from being great, instead of an incredibly fun tomato battle, we have to hit them using some kind of “bar” that starts to move automatically if we press the button and that stops when we hit the button again, then the tomato is thrown at the point the bar stopped, you have probably played some Atari games that work that way, so you know that is a very boring way of playing. Then there is another one where we are Bart when he was like one year old, and our mission is to get to the ice cream van before Homer does, but we have to go climbing trees and it is very boring, the only tolerable mini games is that one where we are a dinosaur, that is a more or less typical platform scenario, it is horribly made, but this game is so bad that if you want to have fun for five minutes the only thing you can do is to play that stage.

The mini games are highly imaginative and all of them could have been great, but the controls are terrible, terrible, terrible, and the few that have decent controls are boring as hell, like when are a pig and we have free our pig buddies that are imprisoned in a meat factory, that mini game is perfect if you can’t sleep one night.

Like in Bart’s Nightmare, the difficulty is another thing that ruins this game, we have to beat all the mini games in one ride, which is simply impossible for two reasons, the first one is that they are too boring to be concentrated for more than ten minutes (i.e. after you have already seen all the mini games), and the second one is that if we, somehow, manage to stay up, there aren’t passwords or battery to save.

As you can see, every single flaw the previous game had can be found here, the only difference with that one actually is what we have to do to play each mini game, and....yeah!, they way we do that is even worst than in Bart’s Nightmare, yet, I have to admit that Bart’s Nightmare had a fun and original way of choosing a stage, it was possibly the only entertaining thing in the whole game, anyway, here we get caught in a circular Virtual Reality machine, the machine starts to spin and we have to try to press the button in the right moment to make it stop in the mini game we want. Boring.

Terrible gameplay, and without doubt, the best in the whole game are the often hilarious intro and ending sequences each mini game has, they are highly imaginative and very, very funny.

Graphics 8/10:
More or less the same from Bart’s Nightmare, the mini games are like more imaginative and good looking this time maybe, but the graphics are not better. Very good anyway, specially due to the enormous variety of situations and the exact look all the Simpson characters have when compared with the TV show, if I don’t give them a higher rating that is because their movements are not all that good, they look pretty bad in fact.

Music 6/10:
Again, when there is some, it is very good, but there is not enough by any means. Like before also, Bart says Ay! Caramba, and there are some other expressions, funny, but insubstantial.

Overall:
As you can see, Virtual Bart is an even worst version of Bart’s Nightmare, so if you are a hardcore Simpson fan (and I mean a true hardcore Simpson fan) that wants to play one of their games no mater what, then the previous one, Bart’s Nightmare was, if tremendously mediocre, better, but I should stick to Bart versus the World for the Nes.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 03/14/04