The Simpsons: Bart vs. The Space Mutants
Nintendo Entertainment System
This is a game I've been wanting to review since I created this blog back in 2015. Bart vs The Space Mutants was a big part of my childhood. It was the one and only Simpsons game I had. I was ten years old. I remember being perplexed by this game's difficulty and its odd gameplay quirks. But ten year olds back in the early 90s didn't have much to do. Whenever I got a new video game, I was going to sink a lot of time into it whether it was good or bad.
To this day, I still don't really know if this game is good or not. I know that I pumped a lot of time into it. I know that I eventually became quite good at it - to the point where I considered beating the game to be easy. One specific childhood memory I have is of a family reunion where there were kids visiting from sides of the family I didn't even know existed. I started playing this game on one of the TVs, and a bunch of kids started to gather and watch. Most of these kids had probably never made it past the first level of the game. And here's me, zipping my way through the levels and beating it easily in front of everyone. I remember so many minds being blown that day. Even the bigger kids were impressed. I usually don't play for an audience, so this memory always sticks out to me quite fondly.
It wasn't long before I stopped playing this game and I moved onto the next big thing. When it was time to move onto the 16-bit era about a year or so later, my mom sold off all my NES games (a decision I still rue to this day). I would never play Bart vs. The Space Mutants again. Until now.
That's a 33 or 34 year gap in my life where I did not play the game. I had plenty of opportunities to. I remember my friend Brett giving me a physical copy when he moved away to Colorado in the 2010s. I think I put it in to see if it was working, but I never actually played it. There were a few times in the late 2010s I flirted with the idea of playing the game. I remember mentioning it to my friend Rita at work and she had fond memories of the game also, so I ended up loaning it to her. But I still didn't play it myself. Finally, here in 2026, I decided to just go ahead and find a rom of the game online since lugging the NES out of storage and hooking it up to a TV that doesn't have the proper inputs is so inconvenient these days. Plus: save states. The idea of being able to save a game at any time and reload it when you mess up is something I live for these days. I don't have time for all that trial and error, and restarting from the beginning of the game anymore.
Playing this game again unlocked sooooo many core gaming memories. I remember the first stage fondly, but nothing much past it. But holy cow. The more I played, the more I kept remembering. The mall where you knock hats off people. The crazy difficult jumps. The museum. Jumping from bone to bone over the mud. The Aztec statue things. The amusement park. Shooting balloons and playing carnival games. The maze-like power plant. I had completely forgotten about ALL these things.
If there is one game in the whole history of this blog that benefits from rose-tinted glasses, it is this one. Like I said, I still don't even really know if this is actually a good game or not. But did I have fun with it? Heck yeah. I've blathered on long enough. Let's dive into the full review.
Story:
Aliens have invaded Springfield. They are taking over the bodies of its inhabitants one by one. What is fueling their invasion effort? Purple colored items. Yeah, you read that right. Purple colored items. Playing as Bart, the first level consists of running around the streets of Springfield spray painting all purple items red. The story continues. Oh, would you look at that? Now guess what is fueling the invasion effort? Hats. You have to go through the shopping mall and collect hats so the aliens can't use them. Then the aliens pivot to exit signs (yeah really). So you have to collect those. And then balloons. Finally, at the power plant, Bart collects a bunch of plutonium that drives the aliens away. The end.
The plot isn't very deep or interesting, but it is fun and I like seeing the cutscenes with the aliens in between stages. The game is funny and offbeat, and it captures the early 90s feel of The Simpsons well.
Gameplay:
This is the most contentious thing about the game: its gameplay. To me, this is the most important aspect of any game. Who cares if it looks or sounds good if it isn't any fun to play? That's what it all boils down to. Is Bart vs the Space Mutants any fun to play? Well, yes. At least to me it is. But I have no problem admitting that this game is not for everyone.
It takes a while to fully understand the controls. A jumps. B uses whatever weapon you happen to have on you. In the first level, it is the spray paint. In order to run, you have to jump, hold A, and then continue to hold it after you hit the ground to keep running. If you want to do a long jump, you have to jump using A, and then quickly hit and hold B as you also hold the direction you want to jump. It's really janky, and takes a while to get used to.
You'll notice you have a number of items on you. You can scroll through them using the select button. To use the item, you have to hit start. It's kind of weird. For example, let's say you select X-Ray specs. You hit start, and when you see a civilian walk by, it shows if they are secretly an alien or not. If so, jump on its head to defeat it. You can do this to collect letters that spell out the name of someone in the Simpsons family. In the first level, it is M-A-G-G-I-E. If you collect all of them, that character appears during the boss fight to help you out. If you don't collect them all, you have to defeat the boss on your own.
Each level has a purpose. In the first one, it is to destroy or paint over 25 purple things. This is where the game is at its most creative. Use your spray paint to paint over signs and fire hydrants. You can buy bottle rockets at the store to shoot out purple windows. Go up on a clothes line and cover up purple laundry with other clothes. A memorable moment early in the game is when you put a coin into the pay phone at the phone booth. You perform a prank call to Moe's (and there are several different jokes you could wind up hearing). An angry man comes out of the bar and you spray paint his purple shirt red. Long story short: you have to get rid of everything purple - and it is hard. And you have to really be clever. I remember when I first discovered that you could wait outside the movie theater for a kid to appear that you have to spray paint. It was one of the first ever "lightbulb" moments I can remember as far as puzzle solving in a video game.
The action continues in the second level, which has you going through a mall and collecting hats. The third one has you in a museum collecting exit signs. The most fun level in the game, at least in my opinion, is the amusement park. You can shoot down balloons, and participate in carnival games. The whole setting of the level has always been really fun to me. The last level is one that takes a lot of memorization, as it is an enormous maze full of passwords you have to memorize.
What most people remember about the game is the difficulty. And it is absolutely brutal. Like I said before, I used save states to make my way through the game. I don't know how I did this as a kid. I was an ace at this game. I did put a lot of of hours into it. I can't imagine how many times I had to restart the entire game trying to nail the difficult jumps in the mall level. I remember the museum being difficult also, jumping on the skeletons over the quicksand. There are no continues in this game. If you run out of lives, you have to start the whole game over again. I don't really have the time to pour into this game like that as an adult. That's why I don't feel guilty about using save states and cheesing my way through the game.
If I did have the time and patience to become good at this game, I think I could have done it. The controls are very difficult, and I hate the way you long-jump and run in this game. But I would have started to nail it eventually. I think it would have taken me a good week or two on original hardware to beat the game, depending on how much time I put into it each day. But it could be done.
Presentation:
The game may not look too great by today's standards, but as a kid back in 1991, I had no complaints. It looked very simple, but it still managed to capture the look and feel of the Simpsons quite well. The title screen by itself was enough to get me pumped up to play the game.
There are many locations from the show included, such as Moe's Tavern, the Kwik-E-Mart, and the Jebediah Springfield statue. The music is essentially the Simpsons theme on repeat. It may get annoying after a while, but hey at least it is always clear what game you're playing at all times. You could never forget you are playing a Simpsons game with the music and all the Simpsons stuff crammed into this game.
Don't let the very basic look of the game fool you. There's a lot more depth to things than initially meets the eye.
Overall:
I'm glad I finally came back to play this game. 33 years is quite the long gap between playthroughs. I can't tell if the nostalgia I have for this game is the reason I like it, or if I like it because it is actually a good game. I know the controls are not very good. And I know that the difficulty is brutal. There is a lot that could be done to improve this game. Can you imagine this game with good controls, a user friendly menu system, and updated graphics, like they did for the Ducktales remaster? That game would be incredible.
But this game. This game has a lot of areas it could improve. It is not a perfect game by any means. It is not even a serviceable game for a lot of people. I know that there are droves of people that dislike this game and found it too difficult. I'm sure 70% of the kids who got this game back then never even made it past the first level. I can totally understand why people may not like this game. Which is why I'm conflicted. I understand it's not a great game, but at the same time, I still really like it.
So I'm going to just toss aside what "everyone else" has to say, and just go with my gut. I like this game. It's either a good game with a lot of flaws, or it's a crappy game that I still find enjoyable for one reason or another. Either explanation works.
THE GRADE:
B
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