The Simpsons was released in April 1991.
This video game is based on the prime-time animated series of the same name created by Matt Groening.
The Simpsons and "Aliens" arcade machines can be seen in the background of the 'Moe's Tavern Stage'. Ever wonder why the Aliens arcade game makes a cameo appearance in The Simpsons? It turns out that both The Simpsons tv show and Aliens (the movie) are made by 20th Century Fox (and of course, Konami got the rights to make the arcade games for both franchises).
Some stuff related to the TV series :
* In the character profiles, Lisa is said to be age 7. In the TV series, she is 8 years old.
* In the Character profile, Homer's age is 35. His real age is 36. Konami goofed that one.
* Bart wears a blue shirt in this game. In the series, he normally wears an orange shirt. The blue-shirted Bart appeared on various T-shirts and other Simpsons merchandise. This was even referenced in one episode of the series. Homer was waving Lisa (who wears a red dress) around to attract a bull's attention. Then Homer says 'Now for some calming blue', and reaches for Bart. Seeing that Bart is wearing an orange shirt, he says 'Where's your blue shirt?'. Bart replies, 'I don't have a blue shirt'.
* In some parts of the game, the bow in Maggie's hair is pink. Other times, it is the correct blue color.
* The rabbit characters that appear in various places in the game are from Matt Groening's comic strip, 'Life in Hell'.
* Smithers is much more evil in this game than he has ever been in the show. In the series, Smithers is (as Burns himself put it) 'the sober Yin to [Burns'] raging Yang'. In this game he is depicted as a cape-wearing, bomb-throwing psycho. Smithers' voice is wrong - Smithers is colored wrong. The color scheme used in this game appears to be based on the episode 'Homer's Oddysey', in which Smithers was colored incorrectly. In this episode, his skin color was also incorrect : instead being yellow, it was a dark pink color. Also, Smithers has never worn a cape, as he does in this game (Perhaps he has an evil twin who is a cape-wearing mad bomber!).
* Mr. Burns' voice also sounds wrong, except when he says 'Excellent'. The 'Excellent' voice sample was taken directly from the show and the rest of the lines were recorded by a different actor.
* SPOILER ALERT! : After Mr. Burns has been defeated, his eyes turn into Xs as he is lying on the ground. In the series Bart's eyes were drawn as Xs in a dream sequence, when Bart was imagining that school bully Nelson Muntz had beaten him to death and the school nurse had reconstructed his face for his funeral.
* In this game Sideshow Bob helps you by giving you food that restores your health. Since a first season episode where he framed Krusty the Klown for armed robbery and his plans were foiled by the Simpson kids, he is normally a villain. It seems that this game was made before the first season was finished (Or at least the people who worked on the game hadn't seen all of the episodes yet).
* The 'Moe's Tavern' stage in this game does not look much like it's TV counterpart. In this game it seems to be underground and only accessible by hidden elevators (One of the elevators is in a fake 'Krusty' grave in the cemetary stage, the other in a wall of rock in the 'Springfield Butte' stage). Of course, in the series it is just a regular building with a regular door that people walk through off the street.
* In this game, Barney's hair color is the same color as his skin (yellow). He appeared this way in a few early episodes of the first season, but later his hair was colored brown and only the Simpson kids have hair that is the same color as their skin.
* Channel 6 (Stage 7) : The anchorman in this stage is the same one that appears in the episode 'Call of the Simpsons'. In that episode, this anchorman sounds just like Kent Brockman, but looks completely different. The anchorman's hair was colored gray in the episode, but in this game the anchorman is colored like Scott Christian (Early on in the series, an anchor named Scott Christian would frequently be 'filling in for Kent Brockman', the regular anchorman. Eventually Christian was dropped from the series and they just used Kent Brockman). This anchorman is neither Kent Brockman or Scott Christian. If you stand in front of the anchorman, he will get mad. If you jump up on the anchor's desk, he will shrug his shoulders.
In Stage 7, in the scene where you fight ninjas, the sign reads 'kabuki'.
Michael Jackson used to own this game (4-Player model, serial number: 072251). It was sold at the official Michael Jackson Auction on April 24, 2009.
