10 Awful Video Games Based On TV Shows
3. The Simpsons Skateboarding
In the past, games based on Springfield’s finest have been a bit naff – Virtual Bart and The Itchy & Scratchy Game will attest to that – but in recent years the likes of Road Rage and Hit & Run have shown that in the mitts of the right developer (Radical, in these cases) a Simpsons game doesn’t have to be a clunky mess. This notion was lost on The Code Monkeys, who when tasked with producing a Simpsons sports sim that preferably wasn’t as dire as previous genre mate The Simpsons Wrestling – amusingly developed by Big Ape Productions, not a relative – ended up absolutely bailing with this one.
The premise is pretty simple: the Annual Skate Tour is in town and this means that everyone from Lisa to Otto are grabbing a deck and hitting the halfpipe. So the name of the game is to rack up a top score.
Although the promise of each character having around 40 moves to show off make this game an appealing prospect, gameplay is messy, with it difficult to pull off tricks, plus the iffy sound mixing that needs to be heard to be believed. This one makes Tony Hawk: Ride look like gaming par excellence.