The newest addition to Temple mall's new arcade reincarnation is based on the popular prime time cartoon. At first glance, I thought I was watching the cartoon. It started with started with the familiar Simpson's logo popping out of the clouds, with an impretion rendetion of the theme song beating in the background. After watching the intro, I just HAD to pop in a token.
The concept of the game is simple: someone has kidnapped baby Maggie. The family teams togethor to hunt her down. You can be any of the characters; I picked Bart. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. You have to battle all the familiar Simpsons fiends, from Homer's boss to the principal, to horrors of all horrors, Lisa's saxaphone! Luckily, you have more than you're bare arms to work with. Bart has his skateboard, Lisa her jump-rope, and Marge, her vacuum. Also, along the trial you can pick up all sorts of items, ranging from slingshots to tin cans.
You're characters have a cross between the "life's blood" and multiple-dudes life system. You start out with three dudes, each with a finite amount of 'life'. Each time you're hit, you loose life that can be replinished by food you find sitting around in places ranging from a bar to a trash can. Some enemies do more danger than the other. I had Bart yell "I'm toast man" a couple of times while facing the fire breathing monster at the end of one level. But you need not worry, you can keep on pumping tokens into the machine and not worry about loosing a step.
Once you complete a couple of levels you get to the prized bonus round. Calling back all the button pressing agility you mastered in "Track and Field", you wait for the go, and just start pumping up that balloon as fast as you can.