5. The Simpsons: Bart vs The Space Mutants/Barts Nightmare/Virtual Bart
There are a huge amount of Simpson's games that have been released since the shows inception. It is after all probably the world's most famous animated series. The best game that the series spawned was definitely "The Simpson's Arcade Game," which has already received a modern re release on Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. The arcade game allowed for up to four player multiplayer, allowing players to take control of each member of the Simpson's family, each with their own personal attacks and playing style. In the early days of the show, Bart was mostly deemed it's most marketable character and so the majority of the games of the era almost all featured him heavily as the main character. Bart vs the Space Mutants was one of the first and came out on Game Gear, Genesis, NES and PC. "Space Mutants," proved a difficult game at the time, but mainly due to its heavy controls. The storyline was that Bart is only one who knows about alien invasion, due to his They Live style X Ray specs letting him see the aliens for what they really are. Because of this, Bart has to stop them from collecting the parts for their ultimate weapon. Each level is then made up of said parts, which are the strange collection of random purple objects, hats, balloons, exit signs and nuclear rods. Its awkward approach to platforming turned up the difficulty, which can put most people off, but once you get used to it and know what you're doing it was a pretty decent game. Presumably a modern day adaptation could fix these bugs and improve the already interesting premise. Also on Sega Genesis, was the game "Bart's Nightmare." In it, Bart falls asleep and wakes up to find his homework has flown out the window, having to track them all down to complete his work. Why Bart suddenly cares about schoolwork I don't know but it makes up the story of this game. To get back his homework sheets, Bart must travel down a side scrolling street just waiting for pages to blow past which can sometimes take ages. This portion of the game acts as a sort of hub world filled with obstacles, which leads to the games real levels when Bart finally catches a page. Upon catching a page, the player is given the choice of two random doors, which lead to one of the games five mini game levels. The games themselves were all completely different in style, but almost none of them were any good with a temple of Bart level and a trip through Bart's blood stream being particularly awful. On reflection, the only mini game among them worth playing is the "Bartman," level which is a side scrolling flying level taking control of Bart's super alter ego. Running out of "Zs" in either the Hub world or the mini games ended the game, with Bart receiving a grade for his work based on how well he did in completing the mini games put in front of him. Virtual Bart was also released in 1994, and followed almost the same blueprint as Bart's nightmare. This meant that it was another game mainly made up of smaller mini games only this time without the HUB world between games. Instead, Bart is strapped to a Virtual Reality machine and is randomly inserted into these levels based on the choices of a roulette wheel. Again the 6 levels were pretty awful, including a bad Road Rash clone, a dinosaur level with poor controls and a horriblly sloppy level featuring Bart as a pig trying to escape from a pork factory. The only saving grace was a basic but fun level in which all you had to do was throw tomatoes and eggs at people in school to ruin their class photo. Bart's Nightmare and Virtual Bart were poor games with interesting concepts. Although not worthy of a remake on their own, perhaps a combination of both ideas would result in a decent game. The best mini games from both, along with improved versions of the others and good new levels could make a Simpsons mini game collection a fun and interesting release worth releasing in the modern era.