1. Bart Simpson Skateboarding
2. The Simpsons Skateboarding All Characters Names

One of the biggest television shows since television began is that funny yellow family we all know and love, The Simpsons. They have just recently been renewed for 2 new seasons taking it up to season 32. Through all the seasons we have had a multitude of merch that stems from alarm clocks, soaps (on a rope sometimes), figures, foods, drinks, doormats and even actual real life Duff beer!

Not all of it was good however, especially in the interactive form! Join me on a journey as we go through The Worst Simpsons Video Games!

Sep 18, 2009 I was very surprised my favorite character Chief Wiggum was in a game like this. There are a variety of Simpsons characters to choose from and my favorite chief made it. Watch me grind the. Emulating the formula first introduced by the Tony Hawk franchise, The Simpsons Skateboarding is exactly what its title implies; a skateboarding game featuring characters and locales from the popular TV show. The Annual Skate Tour has arrived in Springfield, and everyone in town wants a crack at the 99-dollar grand prize. Dec 11, 2014  Topping it all off is some really vicious and sporadic slowdown, which brings the game to its knees. The only positive thing to say about this game's graphics is that the levels are large and the draw distance is unnoticeable, but these merits hardly make up for the rest of the visual deficiencies in The Simpsons Skateboarding.

The Simpsons Skateboarding (PS2, 2002)

EA make a lot of questionable business decisions when it comes video game creation and publishing. From the opening of The Simpsons Skateboarding, which plays a bastardised version of show theme, you can tell you are in for a bad time.

If you are wondering why characters like Homer, Marge & Krusty are skateboarding, the only story structure you receive is from the blurb: “The Annual Skate Tour has come to Springfield! Bart, Homer, Otto, and other Simpsons characters have their eyes on the $$Mega-bucks$$ prize of $99.”

I mean a whole 99 dollars! Hilarious! Safe to say this will not be remembered for its storytelling.

In a time where Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater exists it is sad to see a video game as bad as The Simpsons Skateboarding. Here you will find a badly handling, badly designed video game with repetitive voice clips, limited skateboarding tricks and just an all around bad time. If you are a Simpsons Mega-Fan, this will even test your patience. Not only is it the worst Simpsons video game, but it may be up for one of the worst video games in history.

The Simpsons Wrestling (PS1, 2001)

The year before we received The Simpsons Wrestling, we were given two professional wrestling games - the WWF Smackdown series by Yuke’s. These were not exactly the best of wrestling games but it was still a fun time together with friends. The Simpsons Wrestling isn’t the best wrestling game to grace our gamepads and that’s ok, no one expected it to be, unlike the WWF games however it is not fun to play with friends either.

Twelve playable Simpsons characters and the only game to feature an unlockable Bumblebee Man! Locations feature the Simpsons' house & the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, not that it matters much as you just see an oversized ring with badly animated characters looking like a shell of their former selves. The gameplay consists of a simple stamina and health system, but you will find yourself button mashing more often than not as you can win a match by spamming the same button over and over.

Critically panned for being an ugly mess on the PS1 with choppy graphics, not holding any proper wrestling cache and being a bit of a button masher. Just like The Simpsons Skateboarding, it is regarded as one of the worst video games of all time. So whilst E.T may be the real “worst video game of all” its nice to know that everyone's favourite yellow family has two strong contenders to rival it.

Bart’s House of Weirdness (MS-DOS, 1992)

A release only available on MS-DOS. Not a lot of people have played this Konami published game maybe because it has such a generically forgetful name (seriously Bart’s House of Weirdness is a bad name).

For it’s time the art style is something to behold, the game looks impressive despite not being faithful to the Groening style that we have all come to admire, and the sound design was praised when it was released. The problem wherein the game falls apart however is its ridiculous difficulty (back then and even more so now). Objectives are not made clear and from the word go you do not know what you should be doing. There is always something going on(some may say too much going on!), and the busy screen will confuse your senses more than overwhelm.

Upon entering the kitchen you’ll find butcher’s knives falling from the cupboard and bombs rolling across the floor which detonate when you try to avoid them. This will cause you so much frustration you may not even notice that Scratchy is above you with an oversized mallet ready to pounce on your freshly exploded corpse!

Bart vs The World (Multiple Systems, 1991)

It is weird going back in time and seeing how much emphasis the creators had pushing Bart to the forefront before the shift to Homer being the main lead of the show. Perhaps if Homer was the lead all along then we may have been spared some bad video games.

Another bad game featuring Bart, sees him travel the world whilst Mr. Burns’ agents try to hunt them down and murder him (with cameos from the family of course).

This is an 8-bit platformer in which Bart travels across the world to places like China & the North Pole. Each stage has a final boss based upon that location, for example Fu Manchu Burns in China. Yes it is as cringy as it sounds.

The biggest problem with Bart Vs The World is that it’s just quite basic. The simple controls see you throwing things at creatures, collecting squishees to restore health and occasionally grabbing a cape to turn into Bartman and flying for a short time which fails to keep it interesting. Additionally, just look at the sprite of Bartman. You tell me that belongs to a good game.

Bart & The Beanstalk (Game Boy, 1994)

The Game Boy was a glorious machine! It brought us classics like Tetris, Super Mario Land and of course Bart & The Beanstalk. This carries on the tradition of games with Bart’s name in the title being bad. The premise is simple: a parody of Jack & The Beanstalk with a Simpsons twist, Bart being Jack and Homer being the giant (unsurprisingly).

In this single player Game Boy game you control Bart making his way up the beanstalk. You can fend off enemies by using the trusty slingshot or choose to turn Bart into a murderer by using the dynamite which kills everything on the screen at once.

Bart Simpson Skateboarding

Much like Bart’s House of Weirdness the game is just too hard, frustratingly so. Enemies appear out of nowhere and help you die quickly because of the cramped screen, and the poor design of the slingshot does not help matters. It feels like a basic action game with the Simpsons slapped on top of it. For a game about a boy and his beanstalk you feel like you are having more of a frustrating time then a fairytail time.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it the worst video games featuring The Simpsons. If you are sharp eyed you may have noticed that these games were released within the first 13 seasons of the show. The irony here of course is that some people believe it was around this time the show started to decline in quality whilst the video games improved in quality. Come back in a few weeks time when we will be looking at the better games featuring The Simpsons here at Upside Down Shark.

Craig

The Simpsons Skateboarding is an extreme sports video game based on the animated sitcom The Simpsons. It was released for the PlayStation 2 in North America on 11 November 2002 and Europe on 6 December 2002. The game was developed by The Code Monkeys and published by Fox Interactive and Electronic Arts. The story and dialogue were crafted by writers from The Simpsons, with all character voices supplied by the actual cast.

This game has been given largely negative reviews and is considered one of the worst games ever made.

Gameplay

Springfield has been converted into a skate park for the Annual Skate Tour, full of skate-able objects and landmarks from the television series. Players are able to choose one of the nine characters available to compete for the grand prize. All of the characters' voices were recorded by the actual voice actors from The Simpsons. Each character has over forty unique moves. Players can test their skills in either a two-player head-to-head skate off, or in one of the fast and furious modes: Freeskate, Skate Fest, Trick Contest, and a game of skateboard H-O-R-S-E, unlocking additional characters, locations, and skateboards. Players can also choose to learn all the skateboard moves and tricks before they begin the actual game in the Skillz School mode.

Why it Sucks

1. Extremely weak plot; the prize for winning the skateboarding contest is $99. Which is a small amount of money when you think about it, because how are you supposed to buy a Ferrari? Or pay for a month's rent? Even the easiest objective in THPS2 pays more than this!
2. Every time you pick a character, you have to wait for that character to finish talking to show his/her stats.
3. With almost every challenge, you get rewarded with only $0.10 initially.
4. Clumsy controls don't fully copy what Tony Hawk's Pro Skater does, making the game extremely frustrating to players used to the controls in that series.
   • The worst offenders are the left analog stick used for forwarding movement which just doesn't feel natural nor even comfortable, and the L1/R1 buttons used for spinning which doesn't even work most of the time. Instead of being tight and responsive, the controls just feel slow and sluggish. The physics also don't help the least bit.
5. Poor level design that does not take combo potential into consideration. Going back to Tony Hawk, the levels had set pieces that were subtly integrated into their designs and they felt natural as a result; here though, rails and ramps are randomly plastered throughout the map with very few combo opportunities.
6. Only a handful of tricks that you can perform; there's no wallride or reverts here to extend your trick combos in any way, for example.
7. Grinding is far too easy as the balance meter will stay at the dead center as long as you don't move to the left or right while you're actually on the rail.
8. The ollie height is very inconsistent, making even simple flatland tricks hard to pull off.
9. Lengthy load times that almost veer into Sonic 06 levels (no pun intended) of long.
10. Many unoriginal goals. Like getting Ralph's golf ball out of the water.
11. Many bugs and glitches such as passing through rails.
12. The game's overall tone tries way too hard to be hip and cool, including pluralizing everything with a Z (as Caddicarus said: 'Make it more hip')
13. Kent Brockman never stops talking. For example, he constantly says the name of every trick you do. Some of his other lines are unfunny (ex. 'Somebody get a really big band-aid!')
14. Very poor graphics, comparable to an early Dreamcast game. Jet Set Radio looked better than this!
15. Poor lip-syncing.
16. No GameCube, Xbox, or PC versions exist despite the other 6th gen Simpsons games being multi-platform, not that they are missing anything from this game!
17. Recycled voice clips from Road Rage.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The voice acting is good, backed up by the actual Simpsons cast.
2. Good soundtrack.
3. You can turn Kent Brockman's voice off.
4. You can upgrade your character's stats from the Pause menu, something that even Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and 3 didn't allow you to do.
5. Easily the best out of all of The Code Monkeys games, as at least this, along with Shrek: Treasure Hunt, is at least playable (even if it's broken) and slightly enjoyable compared to theirlater'games'.

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Hayden B.

The Simpsons Skateboarding All Characters Names