The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare

The Good
The Simpson's television series comes to the Sega system! Or at least that was the initial excitement when Acclaim, as Flying Edge, started making games for both the SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive.

To be fair, this game does a pretty good job recreating the look of the series on the 16-bit hardware.

The idea of levels designed after Bart's dreams is also a good idea, especially when you consider the imagination of the young juvenile, who has been raised on popular Culture.

The Bad
Bart is annoying character to manipulate, which adds to the level of difficulty in the game. Picking up important objects in the game or using the dream doorways never seems to work consistently.

A lot is going on in the game, early on, and not having solid control mechanics makes it difficult to progress in the game, even if you can figure out what you need to get Bart to do.

The game attempts to mix in adventure game-style puzzles and mini-games with more traditional side scrolling action. While I can appreciate wanting to offer more then just a platforming, it does not work in this case.

Here young Bart is not easy to control as the hero in an adventure or in a platforming game. Hit detection, grabbing pieces of homework and anything else you need to do, becomes needlessly frustrating. Beyond that, Bart's dreams are rather dull.

Fans will recognize many of the game's locations and enemies, but if you are going to set a game in the dream world, maybe it would be best to take full advantage of the situation.

Why not have Bart be his favorite superhero in his dreams? Why not create levels that Bart wouldn't be likely to visit when he is awake? It's great to set a game in a dream world, especially when it's the Simpson's, but this game rarely takes advantage of the opportunity.

The Bottom Line
Bart's Nightmare is a nightmare for gamers due to its subpar game play mechanics and often dull dream world scenarios. Fans of the Simpson's would do better trying to play the Simpson's arcade game.