Oct 1, 2007

There’s never been a game that truly captured the The Simpson’s essence. Not that that’s stopped them from being successful - Hit & Run was one the all-time biggest selling PS2 games. So when The Simpsons Game’s Executive Producer Scot Amos began work on EA’s first crack at the license, he knew that the only way forward was to rip up the yellow rulebook and start again.

“Two years ago, we sat down with some Simpsons writers and asked them, what can we do that’s original, that’s new, that’s epic with The Simpsons. And the answer came, ‘What if The Simpsons realised they were in a videogame?’ So that’s the whole concept. In the opening moments of the game, Bart finds a videogame manual and realises he’s in the videogame of his life. As soon as that happens, we just go open season on making fun of every videogame ever.”

Just looking at the 16 episode titles included in the game is enough to give you an idea of how deep the piss-taking hole goes - with names like Bartman Begins, God Of Wharf and Grand Theft Scratchy. Written by three members of the Simpsons’ writing staff - Matt Selman, Tim Long and Matt Warburton - Scot has tried to make sure that the script is as authentic as possible. “They’ve written over 8,000 lines of dialogue, and we’ve got all six cast members in for voice work. We finished the script in February and Matt Groening (Simpsons creator) loved it, so we’re just tweaking it now.”