A Terrible Game | The Simpsons Wrestling on the PS1

As a property, the Simpsons doesn’t have a good track record for video games. Developers didn’t seem to know how to translate the cartoon into a video game. The only game I can remember as good was the arcade game.

The Simpsons Wrestling wasn’t a bad idea. The series has a ton of characters, and you could do a lot with a story for the game. This game could’ve been a fun and over-the-top, but it wasn’t.

I didn’t like this game very much. The visuals and the gameplay are horrible. The game has so many issues that it will take some time to get through, and I’m unsure if I’ll find them all.

TLDR: Awful. Visually Appalling, Horrific Gameplay, Boring.

Gameplay

The Simpsons Wrestling isn’t a good game. It is playable, but I’m not sure why anyone would want to go back and play it unless you’re curious about it. The controls are simple, but everything feels off. Like your trying to play with the broken controller your dickhead friend makes you use.

It feels like the game changes the hitboxes at random. Your character can jump, which makes everything more annoying than it needs to be. The computer will spend much of the first part of each match jumping around and then will just stand there and let you punch them in the face. It is a confusing thing to explain without showing the footage.

It isn’t all bad. Well, it is mostly bad. Once the novelty of having The Simpsons characters beating each other up wears off, there isn’t much else to do.

This game has a small roster. While having eight wrestlers worked for games in the mid-90s, it is rather pathetic for a game in the early 2000s. It wasn’t like there was a shortage of Simpsons characters or anything like that. Anyway, here is the list:

• Barney
• Krusty the Clown
• Apu
• Groundskeeper Willie
• Homer
• Lisa
• Marge
• Bart

There are four unlockable characters. You need to enter codes to unlock them. The codes are Circle, Left, Up, Left, Down, and one of the following: R1, L1, R2, and L2. You need to enter these codes on the start screen. Here is a list:

• Bumblebee Man
• Flanders
• Frink
• Moe

Matches are 2 out of 3 falls. Your character has three meters. A stamina meter, a health meter, and a knockout meter. It took me a while to tell what was going on. The stamina meter controls what attacks you can do, which is different. It isn’t much fun, but it is different.

There are a decent number of game modes. It gives me the illusion that this might be good! Here is a list of them:

• New Challenger Circuit
• Defender Circuit (Locked at first)
• Champion Circuit (Locked at first)
• Continue Tournament
• Practice Game
• VS Match Game (Why is it written like that? Also, Two Player only.)

Hitting your opponent is way more complicated than it needs to be. Not only are you hamstrung by the stamina bar, but you’ll also struggle to know if you’re hitting anything. You’ll end up missing your opponent more often than not because of the lousy controls and the way the enemy A.I. has them jumping around at the start.

Overall, I think this game is a miserable experience. The controls are bad, the A.I. is cheap, and the game is terrible. Once the novelty of playing as a character from The Simpsons wears off, you’ll look for another game.

Visuals

It is just an awful-looking game. It looks like the developer tried to go with a cell shading art style, but it didn’t work out. This really sinks the game as it impacts the gameplay.

It looks like they were trying to go for something closer to the cartoon. This wasn’t impossible in 2001, but it would’ve been better looking on the PS2. For a late release on the PS1, I was expecting it to look much better.

It can be hard to tell if you’re hitting your opponent. The three bars you need to pay attention to are shoved to the bottom of the screen. They don’t help much.

You can visually see which attacks are available to you, but that raises more questions than answers. Those questions are about the gameplay. The biggest thing that keeps coming to my mind about this game is how busy it is.

I found it hard to focus on things with the camera zooming in and out. The background is extremely busy sometimes, distracting you from what you’re trying to do. It is another thing that points to this being a bad game.

Overall, I don’t like the execution of the visual style. I understand what they were trying to do. It looks like they were trying to make this like the cartoon, but it doesn’t look very good.

5/10. You can play this game, which is the nicest thing I can say about it. The gameplay is bad, the graphics are bad for a 2001 PS1 game, and there isn’t much of a reason to come back to play it unless you want to see how bad it is.

Pros

• Decent Roster
• A good number of game modes
• Lots of things to unlock

Cons

• Gameplay is bad
• Graphics are bad
• Boring

Conclusion

I don’t think this was a disappointing game. This game was released at a time when a licensed game was usually terrible. There are exceptions, but this isn’t one of them.

Finding something I could say was good or decent about the game was a struggle. The few that I could point to aren’t all that good. They’re features that would be standard in other wrestling games from this time.

A part of me thought this was trying to be like the arcade wrestling games I liked from the SNES and Genesis. That would make sense, but the execution wasn’t there. The developers tried to make a good game, but it didn’t work out.