As The Simpsons take over Fortnite, a designer of 2007's The Simpsons Game argues that it was actually quite underrated.
When someone says "The Simpsons game," a majority of us who are now pushing or have passed the age to put us in elderly status (30) will no doubt think of The Simpsons: Hit and Run, the iconic PS2 game that was effectively GTA: Springfield. Which is funny, because there was literally a game called "The Simpsons Game" released shortly after "The Simpsons Movie" (they were unrelated, however) which released three different versions across six platforms – each with a different box-art (shoutout to the solid DS side-scroller version).
Despite being a licensed game, The Simpsons Game was surprisingly elaborate for something released before the advent of Batman: Arkham Asylum. The game let you play as each member of the family, with them all having specific abilities, like Marge being able to rally townsfolk like Pikmin, while Bart had a more typical action-adventure moveset with gliding and ranged weapons. And while it lives in the shadow of its older brother, one of the game's designers at EA Redwood Shores (the main PS3 / 360 version) says it's actually "underrated."
The Simpsons Game designer, Alex Hutchinson (who would later work as the creative director of Assassin's Creed 3 and Far Cry 4), spoke to FRVR about the game, and recalled how it was set into motion: "The core of The Simpsons Game team was The Sims 2 console team." Hutchinson said that after The Sims 2 was a success on console, "we wanted to do something original. So EA had gone, well, that had made a lot of money, it has been a pretty clean development, so they gave us… the reins of The Simpsons Game."
And while Hutchinson left the project after the initial design where he pinned down the "abilities of the family" to help with EA's life-sim Spore, he said, "the weird thing is that it was exactly the abilities that shipped were exactly the abilities in that first creative brief. So, it was kinda a strange experience as a game developer to fire that off, two years later come back, and play your ideas finished but by someone else."
And almost 20 years later, Hutchinson says, "I think that game is underrated," adding that "I think it came together pretty well, and, you know, being able to walk around a recreation of Springfield was pretty fun in of itself." And considering how well the new season of Fortnite is doing, it's clear that exploring Springfield is still a massive draw, even if Hutchinson had thought the show had "had gone over the hill a little bit" back when the game was in development.
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