I find that I'm kind of the weird kid on the bus when I talk about this, but I actually kind of liked Bart vs. The Space Mutants. Now I will admit, it definitely wasn't the best game for the NES, but I wouldn't say it was so bad that it was Angry Video Game Nerd worthy. Sure, the idea of aliens fueling an evil weapon with purple objects may seem kind of ridiculous, and it is, but I don't really care about the story when I play games. I like how there is a whole lot of strategy and figuring things out involved. Like when you figure out to buy a wrench and use it on the fire hydrant, you feel good when you find something out like that. Sure, it's controls are awkward to anyone who's gotten used to Super Mario Bros. mainly because you have to tap then hold A to sprint instead of holding B, because that B button is used for spray paint. A lot of people will poke fun at the controls, but to be fair, they only had 8-buttons to work with, and half of them had to be used to move. Of course, I could just be saying this because this was the first game I got for Christmas with my NES. (I got it used so no Mario for me.)
It was too damn hard for its time, and too damn hard for its license.
Tons of dangerous objects on the screen, and you can get hit 8 times before it's Game Over.
Guide-dang-it moments all over the place.
Bad controls, hold A to run, or hold B to do running jumps.
And this was just a description of Level 1. Not too many people beat Level 1. Later levels were much harder.
I don't think you were alone, especially pre-internet days I remember everyone liking the Simpsons games. But we all recognized the problem with the controls, and that can make or break a good game.
But what really killed it for me was that damn dinosaur.
I remember being sooo exited the first time I played this game!!
Unfortunatelly, this game just kicked my a** back in the day.
I liked the Bart vs the World more, and was able to finish it!
Sometime later I got Bart vs the Space Mutants as a gift for MegaDrive.
I wasn't able to finish it either, the most far I got was the 2nd stage.
By the way, does Bart really says "Eat my short" or "Eat my shot"?
I think I had heard the second insult on Road Rash 3D, wich kind of makes sense to me...
As a kid I finished both this and vs. the world, so it certainly wasn't too hard. There were many games I couldn't finish. Maybe loving the simpsons gave me the will to persevere.
He says "eat my shorts" as in season 1 episode 2. Most things from season 1 ended up on the early games, such as this one and the arcade game.
I played the Genesis version when it came out. I considered it an okay game, but didn't get very far. The first time I played the NES version I found it really ugly... Now that I think of it, I guess this is something all Simpsons games on the NES have in common.
nesrocks wrote:
He says "eat my shorts" as in season 1 episode 2.
Well, this was probably dubbed into something completely different in portuguese that didn't have the same impact. In addition to that, "ay, caramba" is an expression commonly used in portuguese too, so Bart didn't really appear to have any catch phrases to us.
It's funny how this game has a reputation for being a shitty game nowadays, but I share the same experience as Jedi Questmaster. My friend and I loved this game as kids, and we weren't even Simpsons fans (I think we were just a few years too young to appreciate it), and didn't understand any of the English text in the game.
So getting anywhere in the game took ages, like just figuring out the objectives was a hassle. But there was something really appealing about the game, like how the developers put a lot of strange ideas into it instead of just making a straight up platformer painted with a Simpsons-theme. I remember we would consistently make it to the final stage, and always get stuck there because we had absolutely no idea what to do, and would just walk around in circles.
I would love to pick the game back up and give it another chance.
DementedPurple wrote:
I wouldn't say it was so bad that it was Angry Video Game Nerd worthy.
I'm not sure how and why he picks the things to complain about that he does. I am sure that it's entirely more about entertainment than it is about accurately identifying hard and bad games or parts of games. I disagree with him quite often.
Yeah, people tend to forget that it's a show, not necessarily objective opinions.
Games like Fester's Quest and, obviously, Castlevania 2, has their qualities in spite of their flaws. Turtles is a great game, even, and so is Battletoads. Silver Surfer, while not particularly great, is nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be in his episode about it.
I grew up with Bart vs The Space Mutants and Bart vs The World on NES, and I didn't really get past the first stage in either game until I started playing them in Nesticle. Neither is a bad game at heart, but there's definitely some flaws that could've been worked out. For example, Bart's amazing disappearing nose.
Other than that, the games just get way too hard past the first stage, which is a shame because some the game's graphics are pretty impressive later on. It definitely feels like stage one of Mutants is the most thought out and developed, with the others (save for the carnival stage) lacking. World needed a better ice cavern stage that wasn't just ladder jumps, and needed to do away with the entirety of the coffin-wall jump stage. On the upside, it was pretty unique to have each zone consist of minigames as well as the sidescrolling segments.
I also had Escape From Camp Deadly, but it's been too long and I don't remember much from it.
Nesrocks is correct!!
The "eat my shorts" quote is in season 1, episode 2.
I found a clip with the original voice acting
here.
In portuguese it was dubbed as
"Ah vai ver se eu tô na esquina!", wich is something like "Ah, go see if I'm in the corner!", totally different!!
Sorry for asking, but are you brazilian too, Nesrocks?
Besides that excellent Super Pitfall hack, I saw portuguese translation of it.
I haven't tried your Adventure Island hack yet
.
I have got this game in a lot I bought a while ago.
Looks like it's time to pay it a serious revisit!!
Here's a pic of the lot, just try to guess wich is the Simpsons cart:
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About the Nerd's episodes I found them to be solely made reflecing the opinion of the staff.
I usually don't take it as a serious game review, just as a game show made for you to watch and laugh a bit remembering of the past.
Fisher wrote:
Ah man, Bart's voice from season 1 brings back so many memories! Bart's had so many voices in portuguese that I had totally forgotten about the very first one. Such a contrast from the original voice acting, that sounds pretty much the same to this day!
"Eat my shorts" was considered Bart's "catchphrase" throughout most of the series as far as I'm concerned. I'm guessing the term got popular in pop culture, and the series embraced it. Whenever used in the series since its first occurance it's often done with some sort of ironic twist, lampshading the status as a catchphrase in almost fourth wall breaking ways, such as the in-universe T-shirt with the slogan printed on it, which reflects T-shirts that obviously existed in real life too.
Eat my shorts!
Don't have a cow, man!
Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger!
Also Bart having a blue shirt.
I did a quick play on it last night.
Definitely it's not a bad game!!
It's really difficult if you don't know exactly what/how to do.
I think I understood the disapealing nose, it's like Bart's looking at the camera when stopped and looking to where he's going while walking.
They should had added a delay/transition between the two, but I guess it wasn't an easy task back in the day...
Only when rewatching the first season recently (with audio in english) I realized how many sound clips are taken directly from the cartoon and inserted on the arcade game (there are many). Now I would assume it was the case with the NES game too. But back then I didn't need to recognize that, it was enough that it was a simpsons game to get me hooked. You kids were spoiled to play games that had text you could understand. Not only did I not know that 'eat my shorts' was a catchphrase, I didn't even know what those words meant.
Yes, I'm from Rio too.
nesrocks wrote:
You kids were spoiled to play games that had text you could understand.
I remember playing point-and-click adventures such as Day of the Tentacle without understanding a word of english, based purely on trial and error, and somehow still loving the game!
Same. Well, DOTT was late enough that I was beginning to get it, but it would probably not be far off to say that I actually learned my first bits of English from Monkey Island.
You fight like a dairy farmer.
I did a quick test here about that idle pose.
I agree that the game often is panned as just another bad licensed game. But if you put some effort into the game it's actually quite playable and not a bad game. There's certainly far worse released for the NES. I think the high difficulty and lack of any easy mode tends to turn many players off. Maybe people expected it should be an easier game.
Dwedit wrote:
You fight like a dairy farmer.
How appropriate, you fight like a cow!
Love this game. I've finished it a gazillion times and I explored it so much that I found many of the
"mystery items" by myself back in the early 90s.
It's silly but until very recently I used to dream that I've found completely new secret stages on this game (these dreams finally stopped after reading about all existing secrets on TCRF).
tokumaru wrote:
Ah man, Bart's voice from season 1 brings back so many memories! Bart's had so many voices in portuguese that I had totally forgotten about the very first one. Such a contrast from the original voice acting, that sounds pretty much the same to this day!
In fact only 2 actors played Bart in Brazil: Peterson Adriano and Rodrigo Antas.
A good number since we already had 3 Homers, 3 Lisas and 4 Marges since the show started here, back in 1991.
tokumaru wrote:
I remember playing point-and-click adventures
I remember I've played Full Throttle back in the day!!
I didn't had much access to PCs at the time, but I just loved that game too!!
Nesrocks: Nice to find more brazilians here!!
I say the same to Macbee!
Is my theory about Bart's nose correct, or not so??
Fisher wrote:
Here's a pic of the lot, just try to guess wich is the Simpsons cart:
Attachment:
16602875_1258472724259660_8716528830958869713_n.jpg
Speaking of which, I wonder why Brazil is so big on piracy. I can understand why China is, because they used to be a communist country and they had a ban on video game consoles up until 2014. But I don't know what's up with Brazil, does it have a ban on imports or something? If so, I don't know why they couldn't have a Brazilian company sell their systems like they did in Korea.
From what I understand, importing goods into Brazil tends to be prohibitively expensive.
A Brazilian company would still need to import the integrated circuits, and the import duty would be added to that. My first guess is that Brazil has adopted a policy of
import substitution industrialization, which places prohibitive tariffs on imported goods as an incentive to foreign companies to instead, for example, set up a chip fab in Brazil to serve the Brazilian market.
Brazil was under a military dictatorship until the early 80's, and I believe that had a great impact on the importing of merchandise. Even to this day, import taxes are extremely high, presumably to boost the national industry.
From what I've heard, companies were in fact trying to make deals with Nintendo to officially release the NES here, but Nintendo was very hard to please and they couldn't reach an agreement for several years. In the meantime, several companies decided to make money off clone systems. The technology was still quite new back then, so I don't think there were many laws preventing companies from selling counterfeit cartridges either.
The Atari 2600 was officially released here, so clones of that system weren't as abundant, but the cartridges were so easy to copy that I and almost everyone I knew only had pirate cartridges. But with the NES there was just no option, few people would import an NES privately when even renowned hardware manufacturers were releasing their own clone systems, such as Gradiente's Phantom system or CCE's Turbo Game. Most people saw these as legitimate products, AFAIK.
tepples wrote:
set up a chip fab in Brazil to serve the Brazilian market
I don't have a big knowledge of the case, but I think you're right.
Maybe to cut costs some manufacturers agreed to share resources.
This would explain the Megadrive joysticks and the MasterSystem lightgun on the Gradiente's console.
tokumaru wrote:
import taxes are extremely high
I really don't understand much of these taxes politics... Isn't the
Laffer curve a valid and known concept in our country?
tokumaru wrote:
Most people saw these as legitimate products, AFAIK.
Yes, I think these clones were taken as legitimte consoler here back in the day.
As long as the companies payed the taxes, our law woudn't bug them.
Speaking of stuff being imported to other countries, in Korea, they had a ban on imports from Japan, so in order for Japanese companies like Sega to sell their consoles in Korea, they gave Samsung the right to sell their consoles, which lead to a SMS clone called "The Gam Boy"
Totally original guys!
Well at least the processor is almost right: both the Gam-Boy and the Game Boy use 8080 variants (Zilog Z80 and Sharp LR35902 respectively).
If only Samsung would sell an official controller for its current game system (Galaxy S series)...
The NES was the Hyundai Comboy in Korea. It seems the Korean naming sense is fairly distinctive... yeah, that must be it...
tepples wrote:
If only Samsung would sell an official controller for its current game system (Galaxy S series)...
It does actually.The discussion of this thread has more or less steered off topic though, so should we split it into a discussion about foreign (licensed or not) clone systems/pirated carts/whatever or is it okay to continue? (The original topic was some what casual talk though, so I think it's not bad even if we don't split the topic.)
tokumaru wrote:
Brazil was under a military dictatorship until the early 80's, and I believe that had a great impact on the importing of merchandise. Even to this day, import taxes are extremely high, presumably to boost the national industry.
What are your import taxes at now?
60% of product + shipping, I believe. Packages cheaper than US$50 are supposedly free of this, but the customs don't always respect that. They'll also tax packages based on how much THEY think the items are worth, if they suspect the declared value isn't correct.
I think they were able to get away with that name because Samsung was not only working with Sega but also with Nintendo, so they had rights to both the Sega Master System and Game Boy.
Gilbert wrote:
The discussion of this thread has more or less steered off topic though, so should we split it into a discussion about foreign (licensed or not) clone systems/pirated carts/whatever or is it okay to continue? (The original topic was some what casual talk though, so I think it's not bad even if we don't split the topic.)
I think there's enough to discuss on this topic to give it its own thread, so I made one to reply to the most recent message.
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15907