Side By Side: Bart vs. the Space Mutants (Genesis vs. NES)

[Melf]

Ay carumba! So many different versions of Bart's first console game to choose from! Which is the better game, the NES or Genesis version? Well man, you'll just have to read our complete side-by-side to find out!

[Waterfaller]

Funny, I was just wondering about the differences between these 2 versions the other day. I sorta assumed the Genesis version would be better... lol

[Phantar]

Nice article, but I'm kinda at odds with the final statement:

It’s worth playing on Genesis because every game with a bad reputation should be judged by oneself.

That's a strange sentiment. I can understand that one shouldn't automatically believe that a game is bad just because a certain angry nerd on the internet said so. But sometimes, a game has a bad reputation for a very bad reason. I think nobody, not anybody should ever have to play Dark Castle for the Genesis, for example.

Also, being able to play every Genesis game to judge for him- or herself is only possible because roms are pretty much readily available nowadays. But also, there are hundreds of games out there, dozens of which have a bad reputation. If one doesn't know what game to play, a bad reputation a game has might save a lot of time (and with games not readily available on the net a lot of money, since reputation is a deciding factor whether or not I should by a game).

I'd rather say: The game isn't as bad as it's reputation suggests. Give it a try and see for yourself.

Though I wouldn't share that sentiment in this case. I think the game's bad. Not as bad as a certain video game reviewer makes it out to be, but compared to other platformers even released around the same time, it just doesn't cut it. And if the NES version is the better one, this doesn't really speak all that well for the Genesis version...

Nice pointing out the differences in the releases though, I didn't even know the Genesis version had different revisions... is there a complete list of changes available anywhere?

[StarMist]

Nice pointing out the differences in the releases though, I didn't even know the Genesis version had different revisions... is there a complete list of changes available anywhere?

I never looked but considering how ill informed most sources were on the game I doubt you'd find much of use, not at least w/o more effort than it'd be to just look for yourself with a Game Genie and emulation. But I can confidently say there won't be many since I did play both versions looking for differences...of course fatigue, repetition, and juggling save-state files may have caused me to overlook something... and the licensing pretty much evaporates after lv 1. The game progressively has less to do thematically with the show from lv 2 - 4 (5 is the nuclear plant, though a very generic one) so there's less to have been altered. The Genny games on the whole are less faithful to the show than the NES game is--as I tried to demonstrate in the article--and listing those differences would exceed a page just as a dry list w/o explanations.

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[goldenband]

That's a strange sentiment. I can understand that one shouldn't automatically believe that a game is bad just because a certain angry nerd on the internet said so. But sometimes, a game has a bad reputation for a very bad reason. I think nobody, not anybody should ever have to play Dark Castle for the Genesis, for example.

Well, conversely, I actually enjoyed beating Dark Castle (even on Hard!), so I'm glad I didn't let the negative reviews keep me away. I mean, it's a terrible port of a very dated game, and it's impossible to play in any kind of natural, intuitive way. But unlike some other games I've encountered, it is actually playable, doesn't cheat, and up until the last stage (which is completely screwy) it has consistent "rules" that can be figured out. The fact that it's such an unforgiving bastard of a game made it all the more satisfying to beat it.

But I've never been big on "worst game ever" received wisdom, anyway, maybe because I was raised on games of the 1980s and a lot of "worst game ever" picks use that mid-1980s computer gameplay style, which comes fairly naturally to me (unlike, say, FPS games).

@StarMist: I love this kind of concrete, detailed comparison -- thanks for writing it. I actually have a case and manual sitting on my shelf for this game; I suppose I could just EverDrive it, but I'm holding out for a dirt-cheap loose cart.

[Contra-God]

Nice review. I can say this is one of few games I never want to play again. This and Home Alone are the only two games I had when they were new that I absolutely hated (Sonic spinball as a close third).

[KimbleJustice]

Well, conversely, I actually enjoyed beating Dark Castle (even on Hard!), so I'm glad I didn't let the negative reviews keep me away. I mean, it's a terrible port of a very dated game, and it's impossible to play in any kind of natural, intuitive way. But unlike some other games I've encountered, it is actually playable, doesn't cheat, and up until the last stage (which is completely screwy) it has consistent "rules" that can be figured out. The fact that it's such an unforgiving bastard of a game made it all the more satisfying to beat it.

But I've never been big on "worst game ever" received wisdom, anyway, maybe because I was raised on games of the 1980s and a lot of "worst game ever" picks use that mid-1980s computer gameplay style, which comes fairly naturally to me (unlike, say, FPS games).

@StarMist: I love this kind of concrete, detailed comparison -- thanks for writing it. I actually have a case and manual sitting on my shelf for this game; I suppose I could just EverDrive it, but I'm holding out for a dirt-cheap loose cart.

Generally, I think a lot of reviewers tend to miss putting a game in context of what else came out at the time. Take something like Eternal Champions - more and more people seem to hate the game now, but what they forget is that Eternal Champions was pretty much the first fighting game on the Mega Drive that looked like it had anything going for it. What constituted most of the MD's fighting game library before EC? Fighting Masters. Street Smart. *shudder* Slaughter Sport...one of the best pre-EC fighting games was the system's quite faithful port of Pit-Fighter, which was a pretty bad game to begin with. Eternal Champions was certainly quite flawed, but it was a big start and had a lot of promise.

The Nerd that everyone seems to be dancing around here has generally done a better job of providing context and proper analysis as time's gone on (I was somewhat disappointed in his Dark Castle review, though - it's not all that difficult to finish the game, frankly. It's very short, and I don't think he was even able to get one of the items you need for the Black Knight. Of course you can beat Dark Castle in a little over a minute, but that's if you're phenomenally good.) - his Bart vs The Space Mutants review was a bit of a dog though - I don't recall it telling me much at all about the game, but that was when he was still little more than raging compound swearwords guy.

As for the article - an excellent read, beautifully thorough. I haven't played Bart vs The Space Mutants in many years, and this actually makes me want to, just to rekindle my own thoughts on it.

[VGTM]

Here's a better idea: Don't buy Bart vs. the Space Mutants at all!

[NeoVamp]

I hate the game but always liked the art direction, this game would have been much better if it had been some sort of adventure game.
But according to the Sega-16 feature it came out pretty early in the Simpsons life so there wasn't much Simpsons History to base it on yet.

Shame, I would have liked an adventure where you roam around Springfield, collecting items and doing quests for people.

Kind of like the Beavis & Butthead game, with a map and places to visit, like the cinema, school, nuclear plant, moe's tavern,
quicky mart, church, Simpsons home, Flanders home, hospital, comic book guy store, etc etc.

[KimbleJustice]

An adventure game like that would seem to be a no-brainer for the Simpsons. I wonder why that never happened? I'd imagine that someone must have thought it up at some point. There was that "Virtual Springfield" program, but AFAIK that didn't have any sort of plot to it. Whereas Beavis and Butt-Head had two games like that - the Mega Drive game first, then Virtual Stupidity.

[Christuserloeser]

From what I remember the Angry Video Game Nerd's review on this game was rather spot on. He beat the entire game on real hardware and provided the complete playthrough during the show.

I tried the game for like five minutes and I am scarred for life.

[Kollision]

I don't know about you guys, but in my neck of the woods the NES game was huge.

A couple of friends and I raced to see who could beat the game first, and we all thought it was very difficult.
We got help from a gaming magazine for strategies and eventually did it, I just don't recall if I was the first one to suceed. hHAHAHA

Sadly, I never played the Genesis version.

[knicksfan89]

I don't know about you guys, but in my neck of the woods the NES game was huge.

A couple of friends and I raced to see who could beat the game first, and we all thought it was very difficult.
We got help from a gaming magazine for strategies and eventually did it, I just don't recall if I was the first one to suceed. hHAHAHA

Sadly, I never played the Genesis version.

I have played both the nes and the megadrive versions of this and this reviewer in this case sadly is right, the nes wins, the megadrive never did a good simpsons game which is a shame IMO

[sheath]

Well written comparison StarMist!