"Springfieldian Gladiators"

I don't know how Bart got into the lame situations Acclaim used to put him into in their horrid line-up of NES and Game Boy games made in The Simpsons' infancy. He's done things that are outlandish even by Season 9 standards. As I recall, he's had to save the planet from the bastard children of Kang and Kodos, taken on the entire ungrateful world that he saved from said aliens, duked it out in virtual reality against a number of fictitious foes based on series regulars, and even helped his television idol Krusty the Clown rid his fun house of a rather nasty rodent infestation. And let's not even go into ''Bart and the Beanstalk,'' which we all know by the title and the total misses that Acclaim has fired before it that it's not even worth the devotion of brain cells you put into considering playing it.

But I look at the cover of Bart vs. the Juggernauts (Acclaim, 1991) and I think to myself that this has to be the worst one yet. Squid-like aliens that use the color purple (the actual color, not the movie) to dominate the planet sound more probable to me than little old 10-year-old, 60-pound Bart Simpson going up on the jousting column against a muscleman in a leather outfit studded with rhinestones whose ludicrous stage name lies somewhere along the lines of Flex, Rock, or Grinder. Bart himself yields the padded jousting stick with a determined grit that shows the mouth lines that appeared in the show's earliest seasons and the blue shirt that was on all early Simpson merchandise but curiously never on the show. In the background, two nasty mohawked gladiators stand on the pyres that are the Springfield power plant's nuclear silos. For me, I think the pool of acid surrounding it all puts the icing on the cake of hyperbole. Maybe I can find the pair of Bart's shoes with the holes eaten entirely through them on eBay or something.

Having effectively judged a Simpsons game by its cover (and who hasn't won money on that bet?), I go in to play and hear the basic theme song with its driving beat and thumping bass. I am not already offended beyond belief, so I find reason to delve in further and I learn of a story whose skin is hanging off its bones: Kent Brockman and Dr. Marvin Monroe are both emceeing a tournament in which Springfield's finest and richest are pitting little ol' hapless Bart against other citizens and the aforementioned leather-dressed rhinestone-studded hulking gladiators. At first you can only choose from a couple of events that are comprised of a ramp jump where you knock a gladiator off a pillar with your skateboard and a sort of board game where you move along the safe white spaces and hope that all of a sudden the white spaces you're hopping along don't turn into 50,000-volt black spaces as you make your way toward a hoop with a basketball in your hands the whole time. These are the two mini-games you start with, and man alive, are they both a bumpy ride.

In true Simpsons game form, the mini-games are unnecessarily difficult thanks mostly to some bad controls and the problem of the wrong obstacle being in the wrong place at the worst time. However, you feel that this is not the fault of any directly involved party who is now being pelted in the street for the crime of designing all first- and second-season-era Simpsons games. Unlike in other games starring the spiky-haired brat in blue shorts, many of these events can be slowly mastered through trial and error. When something doesn't work the first time, you take the effort on the next go-around to swerve out of the culprit's way. It may take a few dozen playthroughs to get it down exactly right, but eventually, BvJ starts to work on its own terms as a game that requires strict attention to one pre-designated solution for beating a certain event. With a bit of hunting, there are even a couple of handy secrets to be found, as in the skateboard ramp game where you find (almost always accidentally) that you can fly past the gladiator you must knock over with your board to locate an extra life.

It quickly gets harder to root out the nuances that indubitably help you win battles in BvJ as you unlock more of its hidden faux-Olympic games. After the ramping mini-game and your brush with death on the electroshock basketball grid, the nuclear silo joust seen on the cartridge front and a greatly unbalanced wrestling match set in Moe's tavern present themselves for your video-athletic pleasure. The nuclear joust game is not so difficult, and is fact one of the easiest facets of anything to ever be found in games rooted in Simpson lore. There is one inevitable moment that has been looming in the shadows through the entirety of the game, however, and you will finally realize too late that it has pounced ruthlessly upon you once you play the wrestling game. Soon, the trial-and-error investment you had been putting into the game becomes sickeningly futile. Barney's belches that reek of a deadly alcohol intake and his exaggerated beer belly would be enough to put any little boy out of the ring in seconds. But once you finally conquer the fatty beast, a monstrous body-building woman comes into the ring whose frame and technique outdo yours by an ungodly margin.

For me, this particular part of Bart vs. the Juggernauts coincides with another review I read for this game, which states that this is a good game to stick in the ol' Game Boy if you have 15 minutes to blow. I would like to meet this reviewer in person and shake his or her hand firmly, for anyone who can beat the four events I speak of in a quarter of an hour is, quite frankly, a gaming god(dess).

Unless you are the very patient type, BvJ is, like most other Acclaim titles set in Springfield, a waste of your ever-lovin' time. End of story. It takes a hardcore type of gamer to enjoy this game - one who likes sporting titles, no matter how off-the-wall, a whole lot or still has enough faith in the Simpsons license to trudge through another one hoping it will somehow be different from all the others. If you can be open-minded enough, then it is. Otherwise, turn your attention to another battle of the bulk - dare I say, the real American Gladiators for NES? Keep dreaming.

Bart vs. the Juggernauts displays the graphic style reminiscent of the initial seasons of the Simpsons. All the drawings are more crude and caricaturish rather than adopting a style of their own, which translates to some interesting character models on the GBA. Everyone looks as they should, however, and the game is set up nicely for such a cookie-cutter license milking. Also, the game has no problem moving fast or slow as necessary. There's no slowdown on the skateboard; in fact, objects are a blur on the dream speeds attained by Bart's board. Everything is constantly in motion, and you find yourself impressed by the game's ability to know when to kick it up a notch and learn when to slow down to a calmer pace. Black and white suits many of the events rather nicely, providing clear opposition and even serving as a warning of sorts on games like the basketball electroshock challenge.

BvJ has a theme song you'll be hearing a lot because you will consistently be losing your allotted stock of lives. It's nothing the old monochrome clunker is loath to process, and Rachmaninoff would be laughing in his seat in front of his grand piano, but it gets the job done and segues into the familiar Simpson jingles - you know, the theme song that plays as gray clouds bow to sunshine and the camera pans past the power plant, a couple of recognizable ditties that play for four or five seconds here and there. Exaggerated sound effects balance out the primarily low-profile tunes, such as the arc of a flying Bart coming off a steep skating surface and the bouncy punts of basketballs hitting the turf and buxom bodybuilding lasses beating your frail frame out of Moe's wrestling ring. None of it bears worth muting your Game Boy, but little of it does anything exciting to stand out in the canals of your patient ears.

The game as a whole seems to be a pleasant surprise wrapped up in a fun silicon package. The control eases you in at the outset by being shockingly agreeable for an Acclaim-made Simpsons release, the music and sound effects and fun to hum along with and mimic from time to time, and you get the feeling that a decent effort was put into the graphics. Though all of this eventually lets its guard down at some point and settles back into the rut Acclaim is both famous and infamous for, first impressions do count for a lot with just about any game you play. If you don't like a game, are you going to spend hour upon hour of time better spent doing a research paper on the works of George Orwell seeing what it holds for you on down the line? Of course not. Admittedly, though, when a Simpsons game impresses you - and that's not just something you yell out loud in public - there's a lot of ground you have to cover to get others to favor that opinion as well. While the fun you will have with Bart vs. the Juggernauts is still heavily limited when compared to all other video games, it does an above-average job of being a Simpsons game, which is a bear of a task in this mean old discriminating gaming world and is the one element worth elevating any game of this license to the higher echelons of GameFAQs integer scoring.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/06/03, Updated 04/06/03