S1E9 - The Simpsons Skateboarding

Welcome back to another episode of history air, the podcast where every week we dive into the extensive and fascinating library of the greatest selling video game console of all time, the PlayStation two. I'm Derek Kicker.

I'm Ian Golding.

And this week we're ripping and shredding with Simpson skateboarding.

Don't have a cow, man.

Don't have a man cow.

Don't have a man cow. It's something.

It's a game. It's a game. You can play it if you want. I wouldn't. This game was released on November 12, 2002. It was the second Simpsons game released for the PS two after Simpsons road Rage, which is much better than this, though not also not a great game.

But also not hit and run. You're thinking of hit and run, and it's not that.

It's not hit and run, and it's not the Simpsons arcade game from Konami, which is also great. Of the 30 or so Simpsons video games, most of them are not good. This one, though, might take the crown for being the worst. This game was published by Fox interactive and EA, everyone's favorite company, and nobody ever complains about them and was developed by a British company called the code monkeys. Now, if you've never heard of them, that's because they went tits up in 2011 and mainly did ports to mobile and licensed stuff in the 90s.

So they got really on the mobile thing.

Yeah, it seems like most of their catalog was handheld stuff, and then they did this for some reason.

For some reason they had their reasons.

Yeah.

So you just name your company that like, right away you're setting a baseline, I'd say.

Yeah, a baseline that you I don't know, though, because there are some bad developer names.

Joke. Give me a couple of lists.

I think silicon knights is like a stupid name.

I feel like it's a little like they really think more of themselves than a lot of people. Or the silicon knights.

The Nights of Silicon Valley. Yeah, but yeah, code monkeys is bad. Yes, but again, they started making games in the early ninety s. I guess back then it was more of like a goofy thing. And now all of the developers today are like, super serious. Like obsidian. Yeah, obsidian. Bethesda.

Bethesda respawn. That's not a good one. Trayarch. Yeah, everything's named all like yeah, everything's.

Named, like what someone would engrave on the side of a gun. I guess they were a little more free spirited back then. They owed monkeys, but ironically, they didn't go bankrupt. It says that they decided to wind down the company, I guess go out.

On top in 2010 after doing a fucking port of something for the mobile. Yeah, that's it. They're like, yeah, we're good. We hit it, guys, we nailed it.

But we're getting past ourselves. Let's talk about Simpson skateboarding.

Let's do it.

So this is a game that I never played nor knew it even existed when it came out.

I never heard of it.

I was a big fan of Hit and Run huge. I liked Road Rage more as a child than I do now.

Maybe you would as well.

I was a big Simpsons fan as a kid, and somehow this managed to slip by me, even though I was well versed in Simpsons wrestling, which is not as bad as this, but still pretty bad.

Were you a skateboarder at this time?

I wasn't, but I loved skateboarding games. I was a huge Tony Hawkhead.

Fuck yes.

Tony Hawk One and Two on PlayStation One were classic huge for me. I loved all the PS Two games, basically played all of them up until maybe the second Tony Hawk Underground. And I would say I was pretty decent at them. Not like these people getting million points, trick combos on YouTube. But I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on skateboarding. And I love the Tony Hawk remake they just did.

It was amazing.

But I think I went into this with very low expectations.

I did, too.

Super low. And I was like, okay, I'm going to give it a fair shot. I'm going to play it normally, I'm going to watch the cutscenes, I'm going to do this tutorial stuff, I'm going to be serious about it. And I did this tutorial stuff and I was like, this doesn't seem that bad. There's a short tutorial in the beginning of the game where it shows you how to do grab tricks and flip tricks and grind. Yeah, and I thought the controls were gonna be I thought it was just going to be terrible. And it doesn't have great controls.

No.

It is stealing a little bit from the Tony Hawk school of how you make a skateboarding game with, I think.

Some well, correct me if I'm wrong here, because you're probably more familiar with the Tony Hawks. I'm not out at the tutorial. They don't really explain. You said they tell you how to do tricks. Their understanding of what to put on the screen is not correct.

Correct. And it is very easy to fall off your skateboard in those games.

Incredibly, problem number two is, again, correct me, I'm wrong on Tony Hawk, did Tony Hawk have a button to put your foot down and make yourself go faster?

So this was the first concerning sign is in Tony Hawk, you kind of are just going constantly. The game constantly wants you to go. And you're right about the button thing. If you don't have the muscle memory of Tony Hawk, the trick combinations, which aren't incredibly complicated, are weird. Weird, but they are very Tony Hawk esque. But yes, in Tony Hawk, you just are constantly moving. That's the whole game. That's the game. You're constantly moving. You have to hold a button to stop. In Tony Hawk.

Yes.

This is the opposite. If you are not pressing a button in this game, you're not moving.

Correct.

And that is infuriated. Yes. Because normally anyone who's played any skateboarding game before understands that you hold down what's going to be your ollie button and that speeds you up.

Yes.

Except for in this game, if you just hold it down and you're not also pressing forward, you just stoop like you're trying to take a shit on the side of your skateboard and it's infuriating. So you have to press forward, which is already makes it difficult to maneuver well.

And let's compound the problem. If we're the code monkeys yeah. So you have to push forward to go, I'm involved, I'm there, I'm ready for it. Except then you get to the lip of a ramp, and if you don't let go of forward just before you actually don't do the ramp, you kind of vault over it. You go straight instead of going straight in the air and doing a trick.

Which, again, was the opposite of the Tony Hawk. There's gonna be a lot of Tony.

Hawk comparison as well. There should be.

It's the golden standard of skateboarding as well. Name me one better skateboarding game and all you Skateheads out there 720, the Arc. All you people who who think skate is better than Tony Hawk, feel free to angrily DM man.

Yeah, DM is both.

But Tony Hawkey was the opposite. Right. It was sometimes kind of difficult to hop out of a bowl. The game was designed to be efficient. For you to do tricks in this game is not that this game barely knows what it is. I think it's because there's probably not a huge skate culture in the UK. Right. It's too foggy or whatever played Tony Hawk. Yeah. When do they have the time? Between high tea and afternoon or whatever. The crumpet? Yeah.

Going after the Brits.

I'm doing accents.

I just lost their region and now we're fucking going after them. Good. Finally.

So, yes. So I'm in this tutorial and I'm not completely lost on it. I'm like, okay, these controls are a little clunky, but overall, I kind of get it. And this doesn't seem too bad. I thought it was going to be unplayable. Yeah, it's not unplayable and that's not the case. But then you get to the levels and it is so blatantly a Tony Hawk riff off, which is fine. I don't think that copying a good game normally doesn't make a terrible game. But you have objectives. You got to make Skinner instead of skate, like you would in every Tony Hawk game. You have to catch the kids who are truant from school. There's like a trick time trial thing.

And then get the points. You get the little clock. You have a minute.

Yeah.

200,000 points.

Yeah. Tricks, which is 2000 points. And it's awful because it's not impossible to do any sort of fucking combo in this game. No, you can like, you do one trick. You do one trick and it's not satisfying. Nope, it doesn't look good. All the characters kind of play the same and bad. And before we get more deep into the gameplay, let's talk about the characters they let you play, because I feel like they really botched an opportunity here because, I mean, Tony Hawk has tons of characters. Like, there's tons of pro skaters. And then even in the later Tony Hawk games, they added things like, you could be a Ninja Turtle, you could be Wolverine, you could be Spiderman. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun to unlock things. This game's lineup is not very good. No, it's not. I mean, to start out, you can play as Homer or Bart or Marge or Lisa, which I mean, come on. Look. Give me Maggie. I'll play as Maggie.

Just sitting on the board. Second airfare passport. That would be great. That would have been fun.

I mean, sitting on the board. It's not honestly is not a bad strategy for this game because you'll get about as far yeah, exactly. And then you can unlock Nelson great. Which is a good auto, of course.

Of course.

Professor Frank, which is a hilarious character, but kind of odd when I feel like there's so many other people that you would pick before him. Yeah.

And you also just get them on a skateboard.

Yeah.

He doesn't have like a hoverboard.

Yeah. Nothing.

Yeah.

And then crusty.

Sure.

Which is great. And Chief Wiggum, which I don't know if I like, I feel like this was a prime opportunity for them to do some blatant stealing from Tony Hawk. Because the unlockable character, of course, in the first Tony Hawk game is the cop.

Yeah.

So it'd be very funny if Chief Wiggins just like a round, like, telling you not to skateboard during the game, which could have been great. And then you unlock him as, like, the final unlockable character. But I mean, where's where's everyone else? There's a million. Where's Al?

Poo poo. Where's Alpu apu would be great.

Where's Principal Skinner? Yeah, I'll tell you exactly where Principal Skinner is. I know where he is in every level, naming every trick after you fucking do them. So you do a kick flip, and it's like kick flip.

Or in the training level, because they don't really explain that a kickflip is just done off an alley and not out of the bowl. He just says, late kick flip until you're ready to throw your controller across the indigrab.

Indie grab. Indie grab. It's funny to make him repeat over and over again. Shove it, shove it, shove it. Yeah, it's very bad.

Nose grind. Nose grind. We're number one. We're number one. That's the old college grind. Crooked slide. Crooked grind. Nice five old grind comment.

But I will say one thing that I do like about this game is that they did get all the original voice actors. They did all the original voice actors do the voices in this game which is good, I guess. I wish they were saying something better.

Yeah. And not the same like every time you fall. Skinner says maybe some homework would help. Come on. I've heard that there's not a lot of variety, but it is great hearing the real voice.

Yeah, it's great hearing. Obviously, I'm in danger.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah. That's what you want from this game. And as far as I can tell, in the modern, pseudo modern era, they've kind of come back for most of these games.

Yes.

Which good on them. I mean, get that bag, cash them checks, maybe, for their show. That's been running for as long as I've been alive.

Literally.

Yeah, literally.

Yeah.

But this game has some very rough edges to it. It kind of feels incomplete. It seems rushed. It seems unfinished. It seems like it could have had some more time in the oven and been a better game. Because this seems like a slam dunk. Right.

100%.

I mean, you make Tony Hawk and just skin it with Simpsons.

Yes.

And everyone would love it.

Everyone would play the shit out of that.

It'd be a great game.

Yeah. Get the Tony Hawk development people involved.

Yeah. It seems like it'd be really easy.

And I'm not even talking about the controls. And they were like the creative people who came up with all the extra shit, the unlockables, the fun extra stuff to do is fucking boring. Like, oh, find truant kids. Why am I I'm Bart. I know I'm a Homer or Lisa, but everyone's going to start with, oh.

I played as Bart.

Yet of course, everyone starts his Bart. Why would you be telling Truant Kids to go back to school?

What the fuck? Though I wouldn't will say in the canon of the show, homer might be the better skateboarder. He did jump the Golge. He jumped the golch. I think the trimming Kids thing is the most egregious objective in this game because it is impossible to catch them. Because controlling yourself on a skateboard is impossible. In the first level, Ralphie is down in this sewer. For some reason, that's down a hill. And you cannot skate up the hill. No, you cannot get back up the hill. So which means you have to take this weird slot to get back up to the very top. And it's all timed. The second you start an objective, it's timed. Which, again, is I mean, I don't hate that idea of, like, it being more open world instead of being like Tony Hawk, where it's like a timed. You have two minutes to do the fucking as many objectives as you can. But that lends to its replayability with Tony Hawk yeah. Is you're redoing these levels a million times. This, I wanted to be done after five minutes. I forced myself through it. But it's very difficult to control the skateboard. It's very difficult to do tricks. It's impossible to catch these kids as they're running away from you. And I think the developers knew this because there are some kids, like Millhouse, who kind of doesn't run, and you could just run right into him and it doesn't really matter. He just stands there and takes it. But then you get the twins, which I'm drawing a blank on their names right now, but they like, run around this fountain and it's like, I can't control this skateboard well enough to catch them.

They actually catch them.

Yeah. Like, it took me, like, 30 minutes to like and multiple attempts to actually catch these fucking kids.

It just felt like the skateboard was wider, the turning radius was low. You couldn't stop on a dime. You couldn't turn on a dime. You couldn't really do anything. It just feels like you're in fucking molasses.

Yeah. It's like driving a big rig.

Yeah, exactly.

Perfect. It's just not good. It doesn't feel intuitive, it doesn't flow. And I mean, even this is the PlayStation Two we're talking about. There are games on this console that look incredible.

Yes.

There are games on this console that look like absolute trash. And this is a trash game. It looks bad. And it does. The cardinal sin of Extreme Sports games in the early, which is the entire soundtrack, is SCA music.

Yup.

Which was I don't understand the soundtrack of Extreme Sport. I was around back then and SCA was not a big deal.

There was one ska song, and I forget what it was, and it was big. And then is that real big fish? Yeah, that's the one.

Yeah. But why would you score? Like, Tony Hawk has an incredible soundtrack. And I understand that it's probably unfair comparing this game to Tony Hawk, but it is the standard by which skate games are set. And one of the things it's known for is it's soundtrack. And you don't have to try that hard to make a decent skateboarding soundtrack. But having it be I mean, I don't even know if there's the Simpsons theme song in this game, right?

When you boot it up, that's it.

In the first cut scene, that's it. There's like, nothing. And then it's just scaw music. And skin are going 50 50 grind. 50 50 grind.

Shove it.

Yeah. And the audio quality isn't great either.

No, they sound is not good.

It took me a minute to figure out if it was Principal Skinner or Kent Brockman, but then he said, Mother's not going to enjoy this. And I was like, oh, it's Skinner.

Perhaps some homework would help.

Yeah, and there's no Easter eggs in this. And look, I'm not one of these nerds who thinks that everything has to be connected. No, I'm not the person watching she Hulk to see if they mention fucking the flying ass cheeks from Comic Book Three, Two, One, or whatever.

I'm not sure they did. And there's some problems with that.

But where's the steamed hams reference in this game. Where's the steamed hams? Where's Bumblebee, man? Where's Duffman?

Duffman. Duffman flying a game?

Where is it? This game seems to have no reverence for skateboarding games or the license it's using. No, it doesn't care about Simpsons. It doesn't care about skateboarding. It kind of doesn't care about anything.

Yeah, it was like the developers never watched the Simpsons. They only looked at the merchandise and then saw a few butterfinger commercials, the ones with bart, you know what I mean? And they're like, I think we got this. We know what this is about.

I don't know if I ever heard him say calabunga.

I'm not sure he did.

Yeah.

Holmer says dope. Don't worry, audience homer says don't.

He definitely says dope.

In fact, he says it the first time when you don't have a memory card format. Yeah, the second you turn, you get a dough don't. So you're fine if you're looking for a dough. And he's going to say some do.

Yeah, if you're if you're a dough head.

If you're a dough head.

Yeah, if you're a dopene. I probably played 3 hours of this game. I probably played about that, and that was, like, my limit. I was getting frustrated. It felt like a job. I was like, this is tough, but we do it for you.

Do it for the people. The moment where I was over it, but I kept playing was first level, getting up on the jungle gym or whatever, but it was a spiral.

I gave up on that. Absolutely, you did. Okay. Could not do it. Could not do it at all.

The fact that they were fucking with us because they were, like, four ways up there, and there's no way, because the camera controls are so bad, to see which one it's on was dry. I eventually did it because I don't give up. But I was just like, fuck this game and fuck this.

I absolutely gave up.

Good.

Almost immediately, I would say I spent about three minutes trying to figure out how to get up that jungle gym and was like, I'm okay. Yeah, I could be fine with this game. I could be fine with the limited roster. I could be fine with the unoriginal gameplay if it just worked. If it just worked as a game. This game just is fundamentally broken.

What about the fact that you can fall, as we said, but you can be going full speed and hit a chest high rail and you just stop? You don't fall. You don't go flying off your board. You fall off your board in so much as you fall foot away from it and then immediately are back on it. But you don't go flying off your board and you have to get up and run. Or even if it magically transport. That's not in this game.

No, there's no physics, which I mean, even physics, you're falling off your board. So much. And again, talking about chest high, like rails and stuff, it's impossible to all lay over those. In catching one of the kids in the first level, she's behind this railing that you can either go around the long way and try to get her, or you can try to hop over this railing. This railing may as well be 600ft in the air, because there you are not getting over it.

No.

And it's at waist level, it looks like. And you can grind it, but getting off on the other side doesn't work. I think it's a bug, to be honest, because I went down and went around and got her, but then I tried grinding it. If I could hop off on that side and it would not let you.

Hop off on that side.

So this game is also full of bugs. There's all kinds of frame rate drops. There's all kinds of glitching through walls. And let's talk about level design. This game looks like shit. It doesn't look like Springfield. No, it looks like.

The schools there.

And kind of there's no landmarks. They make no effort to make this feel like Springfield when this game has no story, really. But the central theme of this game is that springfield has been turned into a skate park. And it doesn't look like Springfield. You could have fooled me. I don't see any really familiar stuff. Also, it's very funny that the cars hit you and it does nothing. Does nothing. It stops the car.

They're only there to slow you down and frustrate you. So you can't be if you're trying to do a big trick off something, that's the only reason they that's it.

It doesn't knock you off your board. It stops the car like you're the incredible Holt.

It's such a swing and a miss, because springfield is not a real place. It's iconic, though. It's not hard to map out Springfield and then put up some fucking vert ramps or whatever they're called in bone domes.

Evergreen Terrace, springfield elementary. The Quickie Mart. There's so many iconic locations and they just don't take advantage of it. They don't take advantage of having all these there's tons of characters in the game. You can't play as them, but they're around and they don't do a lot.

No, they just walk back and forth.

Yeah. In the sewer. Barney is just there going around.

He had some line that I forgot.

Yeah, he is live. Where am I? It's like, what? Yeah, that's it. And then you just run into him and he's like, oh, watch out. That's it. Why is he there? I don't know. Maybe I'm trying to look for too much logic in this no Simpson's escape warning game, but all of it feels bad. This is a game that will not make you feel good. It will make you feel bad. And if you're not a Simpsons fan at all, you probably would shut it off after 30 seconds.

You hear the voice lines. They don't mean anything new. The characters don't mean you turn it off. You think it's a bad skateboarding game.

Yeah, not good. I guess that can lead to a bigger conversation of why is the simpsons such a hard license to make a good game out of? Because there is a ton of simpsons video games and most of them are looked at very poorly.

Yeah, it's garbage.

I think the konami simpsons arcade game is great because it's the same formula they mastered the formula of the beat them up. It's turtles in time with simpson's characters. You just run around. Marge beats them with a vacuum. Fucking awesome. Bart has a skateboard. Homer says doe. It's very simple in that game. There's nothing to that game. And it is an infinitely better game than this.

Yes.

And then hit and run is great. Maybe not great. Hit and run is a good game.

I think it's great.

Hit and run is a good game, and it is the best simpsons game.

And it's one of the earliest. I mean, it's not because of nintendo, but one of the earliest that could look just like the character.

Yes. And it would be the next simpsons game they make after this game, which a different developer, but it's a huge swing and a miss, and I struggle to see why it's so difficult. Maybe it's not a world that lends itself to that. I think the beavis and butthead games also suffer from this. Butt head did do virtual stupidity, which is great. Awesome. Virtual springfield, which is a similar thing to virtual stupidity, is also great. You want to live in that world, which I think is why hit and run kind of works too. I think living in springfield is kind of like where it's at, and like, trying to make it some level thing or trying to make it put a sports game into springfield is just not a good call. Hence why this game is truly awful trash. Simpson's wrestling is bad.

Yeah. I don't have to, but I should at some point play that.

Yeah.

The quick little thing. When I told my wife Vanessa, I said, we're playing simpson skateboard. And she's like, oh, I had a tiger games handheld simpson skateboarding, where you were, like, going back and forth with bart. She watched me play this, and she was like, I think that one was better.

Yeah, one of the LCD. It's like a game and watch, basically.

Yeah. And she's like, I think that was more fun. I think I played that for longer than you just played the simpsons skateboarding.

Yeah. Excellent. So let's get into what the critics said about this game, this thing, loosely that could loosely be considered a game.

I cannot wait.

The simpsons skateboarding received unfavorable reviews, according to metacritic. This is our first game that just didn't receive generally unfavorable reviews. Generally just flat out unfavorable.

There's no outlier band like I liked it.

Oh, hey, Mikey. I liked it. Wasn't bad. It was criticized for its chunky graphics.

Yes.

Makes sense. Poorly recorded sound and music. Makes sense. Lack of skateboarding tricks. Absolutely. And poor controls. Whilst the ingame dialogue were mixed.

Again, there are voice actors from it, so it's fine. Yes.

Yeah. Here we go. In fact, they got lit the fuck up by Andrew Reiner of Game Informer, who said, never before have I seen a developer put forth such an effort to secure the worst Game of the Year award.

Well said, Andrew.

I'll even go as far to say that this may very well be the worst PlayStation Two game on the market.

Beautiful. Nicely.

Kevin Murphy of Gamespy also lift their ass up and said that the Simpsons skateboarding should be a case study in bad game design.

Well said. Well said.

It got a 38 on Metacritic out of 100. That's an F. That's a firm F. Firm F. Yeah. EGM gave it a five out of ten, which seems that's high. Insane.

Yeah, that's high.

Yeah. Eurogamer gave it a two out of ten. Game Informer gave it a one out of ten GameSpot. A 3.9 out of ten gamespy gave it half a star.

Good.

IGN gave it a 2.5 out of ten. And of course, those absolute fucking clowns at X Play gave it three out of five stars.

Three out of five stars?

Yeah. Three out of five stars. Maxim gave it five out of ten stars.

Wow.

Absolutely absurd.

That's fucking ridiculous.

Goddamn.

Eat my shorts.

Yeah. So I generally agree with all the publications, and I would rate this game as Dope.

Yeah, I would agree. I have to also rate it as Dope.

Dope. Yeah.

Well, good job.

It's just not good. It's not fun in any way.

No, there's nothing redeeming about it.

I will say it has a good the COVID art is fun.

Okay.

Classic Simpsons.

And if you like SCA, this is your game. Finally. Welcome to the world.

Yeah. If you're a mighty, mighty Bostones fan but hate that they don't sound generic enough, this is the game for you.

They're too unique. The mighty, Mighty Bosstones Way too unique for this game.

Well, thank you for listening, everyone. Please hit subscribe. If you like what you heard, we release a new episode every PS Tuesday. And if you want more content like this, you can find us on Instagram at Discrete error Pod. And you can find me at funeral. Casual games.

You can find me at Ian Golden Games.

You can also find me on whatnot at funeral casual. We have a charity stream coming up on June 4. All the money will be going to the Trevor Project, who provides mental health services for LGBTQ teams.

Yeah. And thanks again for listening. And stay off your skateboard. Maybe some math would help. Remember Skinner said that?

Do your homework. Do some homework.

Get back. Up there.

Worst episode ever.