Hey folks, it’s time again to get impossibly nerdy and talk wrestling and video games all at once. As I mentioned in previous Game vs. Reality articles, wrestling games were once locked into covering a specific, narrow chunks of whatever promotion they had managed to license — a game that came out around Christmas might, if you were lucky, be based on the characters and storylines from the first three-to-six months of that year.

So, rather than simply reviewing old wrestling titles, I’m going back, comparing the wrestling game to the specific time period it was covering, and declaring an ultimate and definitive winner. The soul-wrenching decisions continue…

• The Simpsons Wrestling is a licensed wrestling game with bad graphics and mindless button mashing. Its only saving grace is the voice acting.
• Apr 13, 2001 the Simpson's are the best on t.v. But i can't believe they could release such a bad game. I realise that this was made back in 2001 but back then they still had better graphics than this. They don't look like they are fighting, they look like they're having a cat fight. The game play is terrible and the special moves aren't so special as they don't have much affect on your opponent.

Before we begin, make sure to hit those share buttons. Old wrestlers! Video games! And this week, The Simpsons! You know you like all this stuff, so do it up!

I thought I’d mix it up a bit this week and look at a wrestling game that doesn’t feature any actual wrestlers. Of course there’s been countless unlicensed wrestling games made over the years, but it’s hard/impossible to do the game vs. reality comparison thing when a game’s based on nothing. In the case of The Simpsons Wrestling we at least have an established license to compare to, so to hell with it, let’s haul ass to Lollapalooza!

There have been a boggling array of video games based on The Simpsons extruded over the years, and with one exception (the original Simpsons arcade game) they’ve pretty much all been lousy. Even when The Simpsons was great the games were awful. No, trust me, go back and play that game you’re thinking of bringing up in the comments — without those rose-colored ’90s glasses you’ll realize I’m right. The Simpsons Wrestling was no exception to this rule. Boy howdy, was it no exception to the rule.

Yes, these are the game’s actual graphics.

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Now, I’m not quite sure why they decided to make a Simpsons wrestling game. I suppose it was 2001, pro-graps was still popular, but some of that Attitude Era stink had wafted away, so it was okay for a respectable media franchise like The Simpsons to associate with wrestling. Also, making a skateboarding game probably would have been too hard.

The game had a passable roster of 16-characters featuring the expected faces and some quirky choices like Bumblebee Man and Professor Frink. Sadly George H. W. Bush isn’t in the game so you can’t recreate the best fight scene in Simpsons history. Also, I don’t think you can make this happen…

Even more painful than it looks.

…so we’re off to a bad start.

The game’s graphics are astonishingly bad. They characters look like they’ve been rendered by a five-year-old who may have never watched The Simpsons. Take a second to rubberneck at this roadkill…

To put that eyesore in context The Simpsons Wrestling came out in 2001. Halo came out in 2001. Soul Calibur came out in 1999.

The game’s controls are the opposite of most bad wrestling games, which tend toward the clunky and unresponsive. No, The Simpsons Wrestling is far too responsive, with a light brush of the d-pad sending you hurtling legs and arms akimbo across the ring. You basically have three levels of striking attacks, which you’re allowed to spam ad nauseam. I believe you can do a small handful of grapple moves, but good luck pulling them off, since they’re incredibly slow and can be interrupted by a simple punch. Ultimately though, the best move is the jump, which immediately fires your character 10-feet straight up in the air, where you’re free to treat your opponent like a big, jaundiced Koopa Troopa by bouncing on their head indefinitely. So yeah, not great, but between the uncontrolled barrelling around the ring and constant erratic jumping, it’s a pretty decent Kofi Kingston simulator.

Sorry Kofi, but I had to make at least a glancing attempt to tie this back to real wrestling.

The game does feature the real Simpsons voice actors, but they neglected to also pay any of the writers, so their lines are as generic as possible. They even got the legendarily cranky Harry Shearer, and a desultory “excellent” is all we get from Mr. Burns. What a waste.

Modes? Haha, come on now. There’s only two — a basic single-player tournament and two-player exhibition matches. It’s a near 100% sure bet you’ll run out of patience before you see everything The Simpsons Wrestling has to offer, but still, the lack of content is pretty galling.

Simpsons Wrestling Download

So yeah, this game was a particularly dark mark on The Simpsons’ already badly smudged video game legacy. This game is what people who don’t play games, but hate them anyway, think video games are. This is a game so bad not even prime-era Simpsons could properly make fun of it.

Also, why didn’t they just make a Bonestorm game? Why did they never make a Bonestorm game?

The Simpsons Wrestling came out April of 2001, which means its release coincided with season 12 of the TV show. Of course it takes around a year to make a video game, so it’s doubtful the developers were inspired by anything past the 11th season.

Not to get too dramatic or anything, but, ahem, the 11th season of The Simpsons is, without a doubt, the worst…season…ever. Okay okay, there’s probably been some completely unremarkable season in the 14-years since season 11 that was ever worse, but I’ll never hate a season quite as much as season 11.

I actually physically morph into Comic Book Guy when thinking about season 11. It’s not pretty.

This was the season where you can palpably feel the writers are not only burnt out, but have really come to resent the world they’ve created. During seasons 10 through around 12 all the major Simpsons characters transmogrified into twisted fun-house versions of themselves and they haven’t turned back since. Homer went from a simple-minded everyman, to a superpowered, job-swapping, violent asshole. Lisa went from sweet, smart, misunderstood little girl, to a shrill 50-year-old liberal scold in an 8-year-old’s body. Bart went from a clever, fast-talking underachiever to a childish booger-lovin’ brat. I could continue, but suffice to say, every major character changed so radically that most ended up literally the exact opposite of who they were during the show’s glory years.

Of course we were still only two or three years removed from said glory years back during season 11, so the writers could still pick their asses up off the ground and do a good episode if they wanted to — Take My Wife, Sleaze (the biker episode with John Goodman) and Behind the Laughter are classics. Unfortunately for every good episode there were two or three all-time sh*t bombs. Like, what about that episode where they get a horse (for the second time)? Or the one where they kill Maude Flanders for no good reason? Or that awful episode where Lisa’s the president that’s so bad it makes all the past “speculating about the future” episodes look worse by association? Or that spring break episode? Ugh. Uuuuuugggghgghh.

Season 11 of The Simpsons?

Tough call, but ultimately I have to go with the one that makes me less sad. The Simpsons Wrestling was tripe, but I’d been swallowing Simpsons video game tripe for a while. Season 11 of The Simpsons was the death knell of a show I worshipped. A show that shaped my sense of humor and is largely responsible for this whole writing snarky things gig I’m doing today. The Simpsons Wrestling was a travesty, but Season 11 of The Simpsons was a tragedy. Another verdict well-rendered…

The Undisputed Unified Champion (This Week):The Simpsons Wrestling

Anybody else subject themselves to The Simpsons Wrestling or want to reminisce about lousy Simpsons games in general? Just want to fill the comments section up with out-of-context Simpsons quotes? Have at it!

Overview

Aliens from another planet have challenged Springfield to a wrestling match! As unbelievable as it sounds, it is not another story from I. P. Freely or one of his friends. It’s assumed that the aliens spied upon Jebediah Springfield years ago when he wrestled that bear but because their planet is light years away they haven’t been able to get here until now to present the challenge. Now it’s up to the townspeople to find someone that can wrestle like Jebediah to take that challenge.

The Simpsons Wrestling is really nothing like a traditional wrestling match other than the 3-count pin to finish the round. Like other aspects of The Simpsons, this game is totally wacky and promises to be a lot of fun for fans of TV show. Join up with the whole Simpson family as well as other characters to duke, rake, Chihuahua, Skateboard, Belch, and Squishee it out to see who will take on Kang and Kodos and save Springfield.

Gameplay, Controls, Interface

Simply put, this is a fighting game with simple controls that will make your fingers very tired. Although it is called The Simpsons Wrestling, it’s not really too much like wrestling at all since it seems any sort of objects are legally allowed in the ring and anything goes. For instance, Groundskeeper Willie will use his rake to 'garden' you up whereas Bart can ride his skateboard and Mr. Burns will even throw in some explosive radioactive material while Smithers takes you on. Although each character has different and unique attacks, they are all controlled pretty much the same and seem to have the same amount of toughness (I guess it would be a bit too easy for Bumblebee Man to take on Lisa otherwise, don’tcha think?).

When you start the game, you have Homer, Marge (with Maggie), Bart, Lisa, Groundskeeper Willie, Apu, Krusty the Clown, and Barney to choose from. Each character can jump and has three main attacks: low, medium, and high power. You have an energy bar that determines which attacks you can execute and as you attack more the bar will deplete. You can also grapple your opponent and use one of the attack buttons to do a different style attack and bouncing against the ropes and hitting a button at the right time will execute a third set of attacks. There really are no actual combos aside from one that will knock over your opponent with four quick low power attacks in a row. In addition, you will receive one letter in the word 'Taunt' which shows up by your energy and health bars. When 'Taunt' is full you can execute a taunt which makes you invincible for a short amount of time. There are power-ups that appear in the ring from time to time that can restore partial or a big chunk of energy or health or give you a 'Taunt' letter or speed you up. Each match consists of three rounds (this can be set in the options menu for more or fewer, though). The best of the three wins the match. Like normal wrestling matches, the round is won when you pin and hold your opponent for a count of three. Since there are no referees the character him/herself will do the count.

Like the gameplay, the controls are also fairly simple. There are three attack buttons (one for each attack), a jump button, grapple button, and pin button. There aren’t any button combinations aside from jumping and using an attack button and no secret special moves to figure out, which really makes this game quite accessible to beginner players as well as the more seasoned wrestler. The controls are reasonably responsive and easy to manipulate which is a huge plus in my book as so many of these types of games require super fast reflexes and well timed button presses to pull off particular moves.

Don’t get me wrong, though -- just because the controls are fairly simple for this style of game, it doesn’t mean the game is easy. There are three difficulty levels: New Challenger, Defender, and Champion Circuits. The Defender Circuit is locked out until you defeat the Challenger one. Likewise the Champion will be unlocked after defeating the Defender Circuit. The differences between these can more or less be rated as easy, medium, and hard by an average gamer’s standards. As you work your way through these circuits you will fight and unlock some hidden characters such as Bumblebee Man or Moe who can be used in later matches.

Although the game supports the vibration function if you have a Dual Shock controller, it is off by default and when I turned it on, I rarely felt anything at all which was disappointing. In fact, I even went back to the in-game options and main menu options a couple times to confirm if it was on at all. There is an interesting feature related to this, however, which is that you can turn the vibration on, off, or on for only player one or on for only player two. The other options include setting the number of rounds, loading up unlocked features, checking out the credits and adjusting the game’s various volumes for effects, voices, and music.

Please note that due to the characters available and the nature of this game, there are some potential matches that may seem to promote domestic violence (Homer vs. Marge for example).

Multiplayer

Simpson College Wrestling Roster

The Simpsons Wrestling has two-player support as long as you have a second controller. It will not allow you to even set up a two-player game unless the controller is attached.

Graphics

This game looks very true to form for a Simpsons title -- it is very cartoon-like in nature and the graphics reflect this. The characters themselves are fairly large at all times and are rendered with great detail (which may be a little too much to ask when looking at Groundskeeper Willie without his shirt on!!). One of the big plusses about the characters is that they do not look very blocky or polygon-like at all. The animation is nice and smooth. As you move around in the ring the camera will follow in a strafing fashion and will zoom in or out as necessary to keep you both on screen at all times.

There are several different rings and backgrounds that you can fight in, from Evergreen Terrace to Moe’s to the nuclear power plant to the Kwik-E-Mart and several others. Unfortunately you don’t always get to see the background as the camera is focused more on the action in the ring, but when you do you will see well done renderings of various parts of Springfield. The characters standing in the background are more two-dimensional than those wrestling.

Audio

This is one of the best parts of The Simpsons Wrestling. The sound effects are pretty average for a PlayStation game. Some of the music sounds just like that from the TV show (and probably is taken straight from it, to boot). It’s the voices that are king in this department, though. All of the voices in the game are from the original voice talents on the TV show, which is a huge plus in my book. Nothing is worse than getting a game based on some of your favorite cartoon characters and having the voices sound nothing like the TV show. Each wrestler has his or her own phrases and taunts and some are even tailored to their opponent. In addition, some of the characters in the background will say something now and then as you get somewhat close to them.

Documentation

Standard issue stuff here, you may want to take a look over it to get the gist of the controls and get an explanation of the various power-ups. This is also the only place where you’ll find the story behind the game.

Originality / Cool Features

I don’t know that I can say that The Simpsons Wrestling is so much original because if you strip out all the great graphics and sounds all you have a simple fighting game with no timer. Fortunately since the great graphics and sounds ARE there, you do have a fairly original theme slapped on a genre of games that has countless clones. Like many other fighting games, each player has his or her own pseudo-special moves but I liked the general simplicity of the controls and that you don’t need to execute some difficult controller combination to execute a cool looking maneuver.

Bottom Line

Overall I found this to be a fun game. If you are a fan of The Simpsons and of fighting or wrestling games then you’ll very likely want to check this out. There’s a good chance that people who don’t like fighting games much but that DO like The Simpsons may find some enjoyment with this game too if for nothing else than the funny taunts and such. Just don’t touch it at all if you can’t stand The Simpsons (but if that’s the case, why are you still reading this anyway?). It’s fairly simplistic controls and great artwork, sounds, comments, taunts, and varied attacks between characters contributed a lot to my desire to go back for more and made the game accessible to a wide variety of skill levels which is why I give this game a score of 85.