Developed by Konami and first distributed into arcades in 1991, The Simpsons is a scrolling multiplayer beat ’em up based on the award-winning animated series of the same name. You can play as either Marge, Homer, Bart or Lisa and must rescue Maggie, who’s been kidnapped by Mr. Burns and Smithers after a diamond heist gone wrong. The game features the show’s original voice actors: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith, reprising their roles as the Simpsons family.

Two different cabinets were produced for this game; one catering for two-players and the second allowing for up to four players. Each of the four player characters has their own distinctive attack style: Homer punches and kicks, Marge swings a vacuum cleaner, Bart wields a skateboard, and Lisa attacks with a skipping rope. Two characters standing close to each other can also mount a combo attack, such as Homer and Marge holding each other’s ankles to roll around the screen and knock down enemies, or Homer putting Lisa on his shoulders so they can strike at different heights.

Each player has a health meter which decreases when they’re hit by enemies. Food items can be picked up to replenish it. Players can also pick up and throw/swing items such as hammers, bowling balls, and mailboxes as melee weapons. A life is lost whenever the health meter empties, and when all lives are gone more credits can be inserted within a time limit to continue. Players can enter the game at any time by adding credits and pressing start.

The Simpsons has eight different stages, punctuated by animatic cut scenes and the occasional button-mashing bonus stage, and at the end of each there’s a boss battle with a larger, more powerful character. In the final stage you must first beat Smithers, and then Mr. Burns, who uses a large mobile battle suit equipped with a variety of weapons.

The game has some neat touches, like Marge getting her hair caught in the vacuum cleaner; Lisa getting tangled in her rope or skipping over it when she jumps; certain boss’s pants falling down; and nods to classic fighting games like Double Dragon.

The Simpsons was a significant commercial success in its first year of release and was among the three best-selling arcade cabinets of 1991. Playing the game now, it’s fairly obvious why it was a hit, and it remains great fun to play to this day. The Simpsons is chaotic, hilarious and a superb party game for multiple players. If you’ve never played it before you’d be well advised to seek it out and assemble some friends to play through it with you.

Ports of the game were released for the Commodore 64 and PC MS-DOS, and in 2021 Arcade1Up released a three-quarter-scale 30th anniversary edition home arcade version.

Note: the Japanese version of The Simpsons features a number of differences to the worldwide release. These include: throwable nuclear bombs that clear all on-screen enemies; a life bar that can accumulate three levels by eating food beyond the first full level; the player’s remaining health is turned into bonus points after they complete a level, and is restored when the next level begins; there are hidden items (food and weapons) that appear when the player hits specific places on the screen; also, in the Japanese version the scoring system is different: each defeated enemy character gives the player a certain number of points, while in the worldwide version the player only earns a single point.

More: The Simpsons on Wikipedia