The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man (1992, NES) by Acclaim

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I had high hopes for this one.  I really did.  Upon watching the AVGN’s episode for this game, I truly thought that perhaps this would be better.  Bart vs the Space Mutants is such a phenomenally bad game, there’s no way Acclaim would mail it in and put ABSOLUTELY ZERO F’ING EFFORT into improving The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man… right?  Well… there’s no need to answer, because here we are.  This game fucking eats my goddamned shorts, man.

Aye, carumba!  Where do we start?  Presentation.  Yes, let’s start there.  Graphics?  They look like 1987.  THIS GAME WAS RELEASED IN 1992!  (to be fair, so was Rocky and Bullshittle, but holy crap!).  I will say this looks much better than the 2 previous Simpsons games on the NES.  But that’s not saying much; they’re pretty archaic.  The sound effects are, once again, recycled from previous games (this is the THIRD game in the Trials ALONE that uses them, alongside Bart vs the Space Mutants, and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York). And, though the music isn’t terrible, the Batman-inspired riff gets HELLA old and repetitive, fast.  There’s literally 3 stages; the 1st stage is like a bazillion years long while the 3rd can be beaten in about 3 minutes.  This is a badly designed shitfest, with plenty of repetitive areas, an auto-scroller that is just repeating waves of enemies, RNG-riddled bosses that make no sense at all, and of course, the controls.

OOOH THE CONTROLS, where do I start?  This is Kid Kool levels of shit.  Absolutely as bad as Bart vs the Space Mutants, this game uses A to jump AND run.  Yes, you read that correctly!  At least they eliminated the awful super jump mechanic from the predecessors, but instead brought absolutely gigantic hitboxes, input lag, and eaten inputs galore.  Bart feels like he’s dragging a weight behind him, moving so slowly and suddenly a burst of momentum!  Acclaim did, at least, make this game easier than the others, with 5 hit points and tons of extra lives.  That’s not a good thing, however.  This is a concession of a poorly-designed game with too much difficulty, but thank the GODS they at least salvaged this from becoming an unplayable mess, like BvtSM.

This is still bad.  Awful.  Terrible.  You’re better off playing any other side-scrolling game on the NES.  Well, besides the other two Simpsons games…