| Bart's Nightmare | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Sculptured Software |
| Publisher(s) | Acclaim |
| Designer(s) | Flying Edge |
| Platform(s) | Mega Drive/Genesis, Super NES |
| Release date(s) |
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| Genre(s) | Platform |
| Mode(s) | Single-player only |
| Rating(s) | ACB: G VRC: GA |
| Media/distribution | 8-Megabit Cartridge |
Bart's Nightmare is a 1992 video game developed by American company Sculptured Software based on the television show The Simpsons. It was released to the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
Contents |
Bart Simpson falls asleep while studying and wakes up in a strange universe where TVs and fairies roam the streets. The player must find Bart's lost homework and progress through the various levels to keep the homework pages and eventually return to reality.
The game is split in two parts. The first is set on a street (probably Evergreen Terrace, but referred to as Windy World). Bart walks around and has to find pages of his homework while avoiding enemies such as living post boxes and various characters from the show. Bart can collect his skateboard, which acts as a power-up and temporarily increases the player's speed. Jimbo and his gang would coerce Bart into strolling with them, to which Bart would lose control of his movements and have to move with them, even having to take damage. Lisa Simpson with pixie wings would sprinkle fairy dust on Jimbo and his gang and transform them into rats, freeing Bart. However, if Bart is by himself, the Lisa pixie would turn him into a frog, where the frog Bart could not attack. If Bart caught a kiss blown to him by an old lady, it would revert him to his human form. Bart would also have to use bubble gum to blow a bubble to repel enemies as well as collect floating Z's. An important trick would be to catch Z's at opposite ends of the game screen which served as "goal posts", thus extending the level of play in the game.
Principal Skinner occasionally appears and tries to dress Bart in his Sunday school suit. If the player walks into Skinner, Bart will change appearance and become very slow and not be able to fire at enemies; however, the suit will also protect Bart from all enemies and he will not take damage.
When a page is found in Windy World, the player must jump onto it, where Bart will shrink down on the page, and the player has to choose one out of a selection of two randomly chosen mini-games. The player must point Bart to one of the two color-coded doors to play a mini-game and retrieve a lost page of Bart's homework (if the player does not choose, Bart will automatically select the left-hand side door). The doors and games are:
The mini-games can be played in any order; the pages awarded will be 1 through 8 depending on the order they were retrieved.
Upon either losing all the lives in the respective mini-game (and not getting the page back) or completing the mini-game (and receiving the page as a reward), the screen will flash back to Bart's room at night, which shows the amount of points the player has and the number of pages collected, while Bart snores. Once a minigame is completed, it will not resurface later in the game. If there is only one mini-game left, both doors will be the same color.
The game ends when Bart dies (thus ending his dream) by losing all of his Zs (Windy World will be covered in a white fog, suggesting Bart is about to wake up) and taking damage one more time, or if he accomplishes all the mini-games. The first shot is a pic of Bart asleep at his desk in his room; if not all pages are recovered, Bart's homework will end in a scrawl, but recovering all pages will have the words "THE END" written on Bart's paper. Depending on how many mini-games Bart finishes and how many points he gets, he is awarded a letter grade. Bart will hold it up for the player to see, and then the different endings are shown where the players sees the Simpson family's reactions to Bart's grade by having the paper affixed to the refrigerator, which is strikingly similar to the final scene in Bart Gets an F. An "F" grade, the worst ending, would have the entire family upset at him, but a slightly higher grade would cause at least Homer to be pleased with Bart's work. Lisa would be annoyed with Bart's work unless the player manages to get Bart an outstanding grade.
If one manages to beat all the mini-games and thus collect all the lost pages, the aforementioned room will turn from night to day, Bart will wake up on his own and the proper "ending" is shown.
This mini-game oriented gameplay gave the game an arcade style. Although much of the game could be categorized as platformer, some of the mini-games could fit in the shoot-em-up genre, particularly the Bartman and Bartzilla stages.
Company meddling during the development of the game prompted Bill Williams to leave the video game industry.[1]