Are you already running out of ideas? Marge's spanish voice actress died It would be more interesting to know the impact of The Simpsons around the world. more than this video with a very strange and unnecessary topic
I wonder if you're aware there's an actual playable tank in a fighting game. I think his name is Blitztank, but he's from an obscure fighter a while ago. He made a guest appearance in Blazblue Cross Tag Battle.
Once met a guy who painted his SNES as Super Intendent Chalmers. Didn't know the joke at the time and just assumed the dude was a super fan of Chalmers lmao.
Hold on, I just realized something big. Crunchy, overly pixely graphics, but decent sound sampling? Asking you to press numbered buttons? Pointedly unpopular with nobody buying it? Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge is 100% an Atari Jaguar game.
In Italy everyone remembers that game because it is translated as "Ammazza che mazza", which gets kinda lost in translation but it's a genius version of "Damn, what a club!". It's a joke so amazing that many people I know that aren't into the Simpsons at all remember the name from when they were kids lol
My favorite detail is that Homer name drops Wario, but is confused when Lisa brings up Mario Kart, implying Homer is a Warioware fan. Or even more legendary, a Wario Land fan! Or maybe he knows him from Mario party. IDK.
@@ArsonRaboot Tbh I can kinda see Homer being a WarioWare fan, I feel like it'd jive with his sense of humour. I can definitely see Bart loving all the Wario games lol, they're perfect for him
"That weird street fighter game where you fight a tank for some reason" Dang I can't believe they predicted Akatsuki blitzkamf. The simpsons truly predict everything.
I wonder if its a reference the tank man from Tiananmen Square. Seeing as the game seems to be of Chinese influence as its depicts a martial arts fighter and all.
When the brainwashed princess draws her sword to defend the wizard (this is the screen before the key) just open your character sheet at the right time and you can go to the exit and immediately beat the game. You'll get the bad ending for not lifting the curse, but it can be done.
You have no idea how excited I was when I first saw “Dash Dingo” as a hardcore Crash Bandicoot fan when that episode first came out. “Game over, MAAATE!”
what i find particularly amusing is the giant head guy was seemingly both a helper and an antagonist somehow which, ironically, reflected Cortex's role in Crash 2, which is what they're referencing with him
That Sonic billboard is all over the place - the whole "Sonic Says" thing was in the DIC/Mediaset-produced Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog from '93 (which, fun fact, predated Sonic CD by a few weeks, with that game - and Amy - debuting in late Septermber '93 in Japan), so it's a reference to that, yet that Amy design is obviously the modern one, with the dress, boots and her quills combed downwards.
I feel like it's done less out of dealing with licensing issues and more out of not wanting to upset the billion dollar companies with their harsh jokes, despite said jokes being about as "satirical" as a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up routine.
The Simpsons has been around so long that one episode made fun of Apple Computers, and another topically made fun of the Newton tablet, and later praised the same company with their crappy 'Mapple' moniker.
Fun fact, someone actually made a playable version of "Kevin Costner's Waterworld." Well, maybe playable isn't the right word, cuz you will die extremely often and have to deposit 40 (digital) quarters everytime.
The thing this retrospective made me realize is that the show gradually started putting much less effort into their fictional video games over the course of the sixth and seventh generations. Prior to that when they featured fictionalized versions of actual video games they'd usually put a little bit of work into making their version feel distinct from the inspiration - Dash Dingo is very clearly inspired by Crash Bandicoot, but it deviates enough from its inspiration to not feel like they wanted to use Crash Bandicoot but couldn't get the rights. Their one-off video game parodies also tended to feel like there was more of an actual joke behind them rather than just being a reference to an existing video game. It's like the main video game joke on The Simpsons pre-8th gen was including video games that were utterly ridiculous on a conceptual level (My Dinner with Andre, Water World, Escape From Grandma's House) or that were broader pastiches of video game trends and culture (Bonestorm, Pac Rat, Time Waster). Post 8th-Gen it felt like the joke was more often just "Get it, it's like that actual game that exists". And post 8th-gen a lot more of the video games that were featured were just actual games but with parts of the names swapped out for synonyms and no real further joke (Tunnelcraft, Halfmonth, Boblox). It feels more like they just wanted to use the actual game, but couldn't get the rights so they had to change a couple of details around to be legally distinct. I also feel like that's something that's affected the show's referential humor from that time period up to the present: Their fictionalized versions of media properties feel less like distinct, comedic properties with actual jokes baked in and more like bootleg versions of actual properties. Just take a look at stuff like Mapple (Ugh) or that really lame Avengers knock-off they keep featuring post-Disney acquisition and compare them to stuff like Itchy and Scratchy or Radioactive Man, which felt like broader parodies of actual things that had their own fictional mythology within the world of the show.
I mean, that is pretty much the status quo of the Simpsons past season 15ish. Even TV and movie references became way more about referencing real stuff than coming up with bizarre concepts or spoofs of popular genres
Heck, I never played Crash Bandicoot, so I mistook Dash Dingo for a parody of Banjo-Kazooie! That also had a talking head taunting you throughout the game, you know?
I think after they established Itchy & Scratchy, Radioactive Man, McBain, and Happy Little Elves, the Simpsons crew decided that was it for in-universe works of fiction being fleshed out, which is understandable but lame. When they wanted to elaborate more on in-universe fiction, they'd just dig up one of those instead of going in-depth with Dash Dingo or something.
6:07 As you can see, the tiny "s" on NUKEs is meant to slightly come off the cabinet, so it's very plausible that the "s" fell off due wear and tear at one point and had to be re-attatched
I had honestly never noticed the little "s" before researching this video and am now obsessed with it. It is such a weird detail for the background artists to include (but only sometimes?)
Something I think you'll be able to appreciate, Jims, with that Subspace Emissary Avatar you've had forever. Leading up to Brawl's release, back when's Sakurai was running the Smash Dojo site, and posting something new every weekday. I remember fondly when he revealed Fox's Final Smash. The Landmaster Tank. The first thing that popped into my mind was literally the Bone Storm commercial. I was like; holy crap, I'm already hyped through the roof for this game but now I'm literally going to be fighting my friends with a tank in a fighting game, lol.
I think it’s worth noting that in the Moaning Lisa commentary, when the producers talk about the video game B-plot, it’s mentioned in passing “I’m kinda surprised they’re still around”. It’s interesting to me how it was likely written with the expectation of video games being a fad of the late 80’s. I suppose going off of precident, it figures though, since video games, at that point, would be looked at as a weird experiment of the late 70’s and early 80’s.
The crash of 82 would have been pretty recent at the time the first season was produced. Videogames had been a fad, and went out. I'm not an experts on fads in general but it has to be said they don't always vanish after the crash. There were "craze" periods for things like yo-yos and hula hoops, after which the fad popularity peaked and they were no longer national sensations. But there are still, to this day, hula hoops and yo-yos to be found for sale.
Something I noticed in the commentaries myself, there's a big difference in how video games are treated by some of the staff. Bill and Josh gush about finding Frostillicus in the Kwik-E-Mart in Hit and Run, talking about how cool it was to discover something from their era in-game like that. Meanwhile there's another instance of Hit and Run being mentioned in a commentary, I forget by who but it was definitely someone older. They read in their cheat sheet for the commentary about how Hit and Run references something from the episode they're on, and just about everyone in the room is like "wait what???"
In Bart's defense, arcade cabinets were often made more difficult to eat more quarters. Check out videos talking about how Mortal Kombat 2 was programmed, and you'll see how they genuinely programmed the computer opponents to cheat.
My favorite one is with NBA Jam. The programmer is a Detroit Pistons fan, so he programmed the Chicago Bulls to whiff last-second shots when they played against the Pistons.
Hockey Dad remains my favorite concept for a fighting game, especially since it is also a time capsule of stories that trended in the news at the time.
See I read that it was a kids game where they would both hit a peg into the dirt with knife handles and who ever lost had to chew on the dirty peg. That was around the depression so I wonder if those kids grew up to be the future soldiers that moved from the consequence being a little dirt in your mouth to a military war like level of pain.
I think that the joke when mentioning polybius in this vid was "what is this (important piece of culture with multiple mysteries and theories back in the day) crap?"
They actually referenced that scene with Bart and the other game characters in the game Lego Dimensions When you have Bart in your party, Lego Dimensions being a big crossover game between a bunch of different franchises, and then switch one of your characters to Sonic, Sonic says a line of dialogue referencing that scene
That is perhaps one of my favorite interactions between characters in Lego Dimensions! It’s too bad that Bart is silent though and Homer and Krusty just use recycled lines from the show.
I am genuinely impressed at how accurately E.T. for the 2600 was depicted, and I think it would be fun to see what the retro computer space looks like in Springfield.
It's so funny to me how it is obvious that the writers didn't "get it" video games and how that changed over time with new people joining the writing room with the parodies becaming more specific
No, it's that the Simpsons writing became utter dogshit, and they had to lean on, 'You like ? We like too!' pandering to their audience of morons more and more.
Also, arcade games were still massive well into the mid-1990s. Really, it's the Playstation era that put arcade gaming into decline, and even then, it was still big into the 2000s.
They did this again in 24 Minutes with the air vent thing, and arguably in You Kent Always Say What You Want with the first-person perspective of Marge jogging. All Season 18 episodes fairly close to each other, too. Seems like it was either a reference, a little style experiment, or both.
My bad memory wants to say they've done a more direct Doom reference, I think when Homer was at collage or something, but again, bad memory. Maybe I'm just crosswiring with the Halo gag.
I can't believe you overlooked "Dig Dug Revelations". I know it's just a one-off banner, but the pictures that puts in your head, man! I wanna play that game so bad I wanna *make* that game just so I can play that game.
They namedrop "Nintendo" a few times over the years, too. There's a line in "Deep Deep Trouble" ("A fist fight or two on Nintendo for cash"), plus the "Coconut Nintendo system" line in Das Bus. There's also the hilarious cut in syndication scene in "In Marge We Trust" where Marge tells the Sea Captain that his "Game Boy is gone. It's at the bottom of the ocean" I've also said this before, but it's interesting how in Season 7 we get a Mortal Kombat reference from Oakley and Weinstein, but in Season 8 we get a Donkey Kong reference from Jean and Reiss. Feels like two entirely different generations.
The Simpsons also has both Star Wars and Cosmic Wars. And they did a joke about this sort of thing when the family goes to Blocko land, then in the car he asks, "Ow. Why did I buy an entire shirt made entirely out of Lego?"
Inside Out 2 made me realize just how universally understood the idea of fighting games are to non-gamer audiences. Like there was speculation among Disney/FF?KH fans over a supposed PS2-era JRPG character from Riley's past only for it to turn out said character was from a fighting game.
That's because of how influental Fighting Games were in the arcade era at its most popular. Street Fighter 2 was everywhere, and every developer was making their own fighting game to take advantage of the hype. I'm sure a lot of young writers grew up with that era and wanted to refrence it in the show.
@@ArsonRaboot Kingdom Hearts was pretty big with girls back in 2002 from I understand. I still say that game was single handedly responsible for the 2000s nostalgia trip Nightmare Before Christmas had.
You should make a video similar to "Ralph the Viking" but with Hank Scorpio asking Homer if he's ever seen Homer throw a shoe and Homer replying "Yes, once."
A lot of the other video game references from that era are pretty generic but the creative staff really did their homework for Dingo Dash. I especially appreciate how the Dingo Dash music sounds like actual Crash Bandicoot music.
@@elizabethopoussm The memory addresses still exist though. If you use Cheat Engine on the Lion Browser version you can poke bit 0x5333 on the 64 bit version to enable it.
An amazing timeliness of how the Simpsons Parodies of pop culture went from brilliant to beyond lazy over the course of 35 years. MAPPLE?! That was the BEST they could do!? What were you thinking!!
The modern simpsons references just feel lazy. In gravity falls you have the pixel guy meant to be someone from an arcade beat-em-up. The simpsons would've just left it there and maybe misused the reference by having the fighter get video game points, but gravity falls made his animation choppy, they made his pixels have that bright LED backlight that made him seem like he was from a CRT. They gave him fighting moves that looked like they came from a fighting game, the amount of detail in it is so much bigger than anything from the simpsons.
I definitely agree. Watching this video made me cringe hard with how out of touch a lot of the references were and how evident it was that this was the perspective of an outsider looking in.
I wanna add, gravity falls got the guy who did the sprites for the scott pilgrim video game... Also fighting games really did use to have points, at least arcade ones did.
One of my favorite jokes is when the bullies put on a play where they’re streamers playing fortnite, there’s not even a parody game and hearing them say chug jug is just wild
Something worth noting in The Simpsons Game from 2007, it has references to pretty much every era at the time, but there is a whole level that is just a big GTA San Andreas parody which despite being 3 years old it was very topical given the Hot Coffee lawsuit was still going on at the time, it wasn't even halfway done
Speaking of PC games, The Simpsons kinda tackled that even sooner - it turns out that at least Bill Oakley and David X. Cohen were big fans of the 1993 PC game "Myst", because Homer walks past the library from that game in the Homer3 segment of Treehouse of Horror VI. And it's not just a simple reference, it's the actual 3D model Cyan used when making the game, as well as the music in the background! As an early Gen Z'er, seeing the amount of crazy games on the "Zii" is incredibly funny because they're all punching well above the Wii's weight.
Jims, Jims, Jims. The Genesis and SNES’ debut years were those of their releases in Japan. Both of them didn’t come to America until 90 and 91. It’s no wonder the show wouldn’t have covered them in its first couple of seasons - no one in America had heard of them yet
This is my favorite topic you’ve ever covered. I have a huge special interest in video games, especially fake video games within fiction. I could listen about your alternate universe’s list of games all day, your fake consoles and arcade games and history and developers…Augh. I love fiction within fiction so much. You’re right on the money in that childlike sense of questioning the games, how they’d work in real life. There used to be this guy on Newgrounds that’d try and remake all of the Simpsons arcade games in Flash and it was really cool, even if they were never actually fun to play. My only real thought is why they didn’t go harder into wittiness with their fake consoles, there’s some really funny arcade games but you just call it the Funtendo Zii? In a story I’m working on, the Nintendo Entertainment System /NES became the Nitrondus Potentially Video Game Adjacent System, or VAS for short, and I dunno, I like to think that’s funny. But then again, they probably just want shorthand so everyone can recognize what they’re parodying, but it’d be nice if they had a little fun with it.
I really love you doing this, it's funny how that Dash Dingo game always stuck with me because I felt like it was a sign the series was recognisable to non-gamers if it was on the Simpsons. You're right it was less common for Videogames to be referenced on tv back then which I think knowing me probably made me enjoy the Simpsons more at the time even if I definitely didn't understand the show's humour back then.
9:15 Angus Podgorny was a character from an extended Monty Python sketch from the first series. LSS, he becomes the first Scotsman to win Wimbledon....15 years after the events of his story. Caber tossing is a Scottish sport, and it was referenced in the episode as well.
They do have a few Switch references in there. They never refer to it by name, but I can list one example: In Poorhouse Rock, when Marge is chasing everyone out of the living room so she can watch the raunchy GoT show with her girlfriends, the "'video game" she gives Bart is clearly a Nintendo Switch or Switch-knock-off.
Thanks for reminding me of this. I was wracking my brains because I could have sworn I had seen some kind of Switch like console. But kept Googling and couldn't find a lead. This was a tough one to research with the random unnamed references
@@TheRealJims Rewatched that bit as a refresher. She doesn't even call it a video game- she says "here's a distraction for each of you" while giving Bart the Switch (green and purple Joy-Cons), and he goes off-screen almost immediately so they can show the cover of Lisa's book.
28:29 I get the feeling either someone in the staff plays that Wario alt in smash, or they googled him real fast and that outfit came up. Honestly i hope it's the former.
The Waterworld game costing 40 quarters to play and immediately asking for more was a riff on the then-infamously inflated budget of the Waterworld movie.
100% we need a video about the history of real-life Simpsons video games! AVGN did a fun video on the NES games, but a video going through EVERY single game across every single console would be 🔥
The cool thing about making a video about the real Simpsons games is that it won't be outdated for years, since we haven't had a new game in over 10 years ☹️
Larry the Looter is in Level 1 of The Simpsons Hit & Run as one of the hidden gags you can find. I remember reloading the level a bunch as a kid because for some reason I was CONVINCED that there was a way to survive the shotgun guy.
The Marge Gamer episode is legitimately one of the best Silver age episodes, seeing her get so into Earthland Realms was such a new look at her character dynamic we rarely see now.
9:08 this is funny considering Will Wright is a boss in The Simpsons Game and he's enacting a genocide on old obsolete video game characters, including pixel Simpsons. Wonder If they planned that lmao
I was visiting a big second hand game store in Minnesota recently that always has the Simpsons playing on a TV, and they had some commisioned custom boxes for Bonestorm and Lee Carvalo's Putting Challenge sitting on a display shelf. Officially licensed by Nintend'oh and everything.
also: why do they NEVER get it right? there’s no cheat codes to get past bald bull, the homage to the training scene was “so retro” incarnate, and the “music from nintendo punch out” BIZARRELY uses the (royalty free mockup of the) ARCADE sounds!
They did a Tecmo Bowl reference one time, where they just used some TH-camr's footage of the game and passed it off as their own. Then the TH-camr's video got hit with a copyright strike by Fox.
3:19 also worth mentioning, the boxers seem to be modeled closely after NES/Famicom character designs/sprites, with being restricted to only 3-4 colors, and even using colors reminiscent of the NES's hardware palette
The Sonamy billboard is so funny to me, not just because of Amy's design clearly being her modern one, but anyone knows Sega would never go that far with them. They vetoed the comics from having Sonic blush while being hugged by her, no way they'd show him proposing marriage 😭
I think my favorite one is the ninja snowboarding game with the Street Fighter/MK-esque shouting and random effects, it really nails the "video games as Dad sees them" feel
What I've learned is that when the show makes up its own in-world games, it's fun, I like the bit of worldbuilding it adds, even just seeing the titles in the background. But when they reference specific games/consoles, it's OK at best and toe-curling at worst. No animated series has tackled gaming as well as South Park. Some of my favourite episodes are the ones that seamlessly tie the plot into whatever the newest release is at the time.
Please do a video on the real video games of the Simpsons too! I definitely want to see that! However this was a very nice idea too! Your channel is always a special delight for me when I’m on TH-cam!
Yeah I remember new video games being very expensive in the 1990s. We either got our games used, traded or rented. I recall Super Mario Brothers 3 being like $75 or $80 when it launched. My Mother still played video games then and the entire family had spent hours playing the NES together so it was an easy sell, but we had to get it on lay-a-way at my local Kmart and I remember it taking almost two months before it was paid off. My Mom worked nights and ended up picking the game up while we were at school, I remember being so pissed off coming home and seeing she didn't wait to play with us. New memory unlocked: Super Mario Brothers 3 was a big fucking deal, at least in my area. I remember the news actually having this whole big thing while they waited for midnight to strike so they could get a copy. They were running Mario Brothers stuff all night up until it launched. I don't think I ever saw anything like that ever again.
Could be interesting to do a video about "parody brands" in the simpsons, like which ones have stayed consistent and which have been changed over the years.
14:58 The "blowing up humanity in level 1" is played for laughs because of how exaggerated it is, but that's exactly how Darksiders starts, and that's a very nice game XD
24:55 I don't know why you're shocked Nelson's here. He saw there was money to be made on video games back in Season 1. Little story called Bart The General, if you never heard of it.
When Ralph says "Super Nintendo Chalmers" (mentioned in other comments), he plays on a Coleco computer. There is also a scene in another episode where Homer says something like "This is where all those hours of Tetris come in handy" when packing a car, with the Tetris music playing and the items and kids taking shapes of the Tetris blocks.
The point of the E.T. joke is that the game was so bad and so few people played it that it contributed to the video game crash of the 80s and Atari buried all the copies in the desert. Games like these are referred to as "shovelware" as companies at the time just kept producing more and more garbage games with licensed titles. Thankfully Nintendo came along and helped revive the industry.
I was hoping there was already a comment about ET. When he said that ET was before his time and that there were probably a bunch of Gen Xers who played it all the time, I was like, “Um… actually, ET was so bad that they dumped a bunch of copies in a New Mexico landfill and buried it under concrete. They excavated it ten years ago.”
apparently the game sold quite well i sometimes find them on the flea market but they literally made more copies of the game than the amount of atari2600 console that were out there so it was still a flop
That Waterworld joke is a reference to Dragon's Lair. It was the first game to cost 50 cents a play, due to its groundbreaking use of Laserdisc. You were basically playing a cartoon movie. But, those 50 cents only got you one try and you would die a lot before memorizing it all to beat it. Also, because it was so popular, arcades would often crank up the cost to play on it. I remember it costing $2 to play at my local arcade back in the day, which made it completely insane to even attempt. You would get to see 30 seconds of Don Bluth animation before dying. While around the corner, those two dollars would have gotten you like an hour of lives in Gauntlet.
Obviously, the S in NUKES is actually a Fridge magnet that Apu puts there to make it look like he has a new game, but because it sits so far on the edge, it tends to fall off.
It cannot be stressed how amazingly rare Mario references were back in the 80's and 90's. Then again, if you look at the cartoons based on video games made then, you can tell there wasn't the nostalgia or reverence that we'd get nowadays. Sure, you'll get an oddly accurate Mega Man episode in a Captain N, or have Stanley the Bugman in an episode of Saturday Supercade Donkey Kong, but everything was about building a show around the characters, rather than around the games. I'd say, maybe after the 90's, we'd get the generation that grew up with and loved these games referencing things to the point of overreference. Everyone has done a Mario parody/reference/background gag at this point. I will say I was impressed at The Simpsons giving us Wario Homer. I'll always appreciate a shout out to my dude. Well, maybe not that SNL skit where he was played by a certain person that makes Wario look like a saint with high moral standards... but I DID find the Wario Lopez joke in Boardertown better than the rest of that series.
Very true! Video games have become so widely accepted and are such a major medium now, it's sometimes weird looking back at the time when they were just seen as a silly children's fad and a lesser medium to film and television. Back then it was amazing when a favorite show even acknowledged video games. And you never expected them to be accurate and up to date with their references at all. You'd see them playing a bizarrely inaccurate 16-bit fighting game parody with Atari 2600 controllers and just be glad they were making the effort. lol
@@TetsuDeinonychus A lot of those cartoons came out just AFTER the crash, and it was fresh in everyone's minds that it was a fad. We, in the future, know better and have grown up to the point of very specific references. The Mega Man 3 level select screen on Cyborg's display in an episode of Teen Titans Go, Mordecai and Rigby playing with Sega Master System controls through the entire series, for example. Mario to the point of over reference.
@@mightyfilm Well, the crash happened in 1983, and the Simpsons started in 1989 (or 87 if we're counting the Tracey Ullman show shorts). So it wasn't *right* after the crash, and in-between the NES came out and was huge, making video-games more popular than ever. And, I'm not sure how much the baby-boomer and silent gen writers were aware of either of those things. I'd say it was just the general perception of the time that video games were a toy for children and not a "serious" art/entertainment medium. But, I guess maybe the 1983 crash played a big part in creating that perception among the older generations, despite Nintendo sweeping the nation for the past few years and the 16-bit console war being just around the corner.
@@TetsuDeinonychus Well, yes and no. Arcades really weren't seen as a kid's thing, but rather a sleazy hangout for older teens and 20 somethings. I don't know exactly when they became a kid friendly hang out (Noiseland looks especially rough). But other than that, there's always been a strong generational divide between the writers and the generation of what they're trying to reference or parody. Something that looks quaint, if not cringy in retrospect when having knowledge of what survived pop culture and what didn't. Look at any cartoon from the 60's talk about Rock N Roll before Elvis and The Beatles became cultural icons. Same thing applies to video games. Lack of foresight and not having a nostalgic connection to something doesn't give you the understanding you'd get otherwise. Plus, I'm shocked it took them over 20 years to make a TMNT reference. The Simpsons and TMNT grew up together, and the second TMNT movie at least had a dig at Bart Simpson.
I love how the graphics of these games in many early episodes are angular, rather than blocky like the games the era actually were. It's almost like they were a few decades early, and were depicting polygon graphics, rather than sprites.
Everytime the Simpsons references or tries to parody something now I just groan, it’s like when your parent sends you a meme they just discovered that was really popular a year ago but now everyone is sick of
The "Street Fighter game with the tank" is actually Mortal Kombat 2. That background is straight up based on the Kombat Tomb from MK2, and the downed fighter in it is probably meant to be Liu Kang, given the red and black outfit. A tank in a fighting game might seem weird, but look up Blitztank. Blazblue Cross Tag has an actual tank character that has a skull head on a long neck, and it's hilarious.
@@RadiaUmbra Given the age and apparent video game knowledge of the writers, my guess is this is COLECO/Intellivision reference mixed with how they felt games were probably like at the time after all the fancy technological advances.
@@horgh_japan its got to be a jaguar reference since i think this episode came out at the time the jaguar was out. or maybe its just some random thing they made up because the screenwriters were born in the 1950s and think all video games are too complex for them. even ones were you only got 1 button and a joystick it feels like programming in c++ to them
Fun fact about the 'Just take it' bit in Marge Be Not Proud. Both Sonic and Homer are playable in LEGO Dimensions and if you have them together Sonic might do the bit (though telling him to grab a Chaos Emerald instead of Bonestorm. Another bit of flavor dialogue has him think Homer is Eggman after he shaved off his stache.
The only thing I noticed wasn't mentioned in this is probably one of the weirdest. In Season 17's "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story" during the showdown in the cave, Snake's son asks Bart, "Do you like Xbox?" When it cuts to them again, they are playing what I can only describe as... video Battleship. A single device with two buttons on each end and a shared screen in the middle.
Needless to say, I vastly underestimated how many video games are in the world of Springfield 😬
I was expecting Hit and Run lol.
Next you should talk about The Simpsons' history of making fun of/parodying Disney frorm the beginning, to Disney acquiring FOX, & to today.
Are you already running out of ideas? Marge's spanish voice actress died It would be more interesting to know the impact of The Simpsons around the world. more than this video with a very strange and unnecessary topic
16:51 damn I was hoping you would make a better joke about Polybius here
I wonder if you're aware there's an actual playable tank in a fighting game. I think his name is Blitztank, but he's from an obscure fighter a while ago. He made a guest appearance in Blazblue Cross Tag Battle.
I'll forever associate the SNES with "super Nintendo Chalmers".
Or makes me think of super pretendo From doug
I love SNC games!
Once met a guy who painted his SNES as Super Intendent Chalmers. Didn't know the joke at the time and just assumed the dude was a super fan of Chalmers lmao.
@@amelialonelyfart8848 my eyes! the gigggles do nothinggggggggg
Man, no joke. "The Simpson Arcade" should have gotten a *SNES* port 😕
I love it when Lisa failed a test because she played a Crash Bandicoot knock off lol
Honestly the most I've related to her when I was a kid. Although my Crash was Spyro.
Nuke Canada Simpsons predicted a 2019 South Park joke
Most relatable moment to me of Lisa :p
Classic bootleg game
Dash Dingo 2 was the best imo
It's my headcannon that Milhouse's gamertag is
ＴＨＲＩＬＬＨＯＵＳＥ
Thrill ho
You mean T H R I L L H O
ＴＨＲＩＬＬＨＯ
@@Zkeleton969Oh yea... No wonder he was the dud
M I L P O O L___
Hold on, I just realized something big. Crunchy, overly pixely graphics, but decent sound sampling? Asking you to press numbered buttons? Pointedly unpopular with nobody buying it?
Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge is 100% an Atari Jaguar game.
Nah, 787 is fighting game notation for upback, up, upback.
@@austinreed7343and that’s why you’re the thrillho and we’re the duds…
"Where did YOU learn how to putt?"
Let's play some Jag!
Lee Carvello's Putting Challenge is so memorable for such a short joke.
It's amazing that a short memorable joke was based on a real SNK arcade/nes game, Fighting Golf or Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf in the U.S.
@@MegaMet98 with the number pad joke I thought it was a atari jaguar joke but what you said is intresting
So memorable someone made a whole point and click parody of it
In Italy everyone remembers that game because it is translated as "Ammazza che mazza", which gets kinda lost in translation but it's a genius version of "Damn, what a club!". It's a joke so amazing that many people I know that aren't into the Simpsons at all remember the name from when they were kids lol
POWER DRIVE
Bart and Millhouse were definitely Sega kids.
Martin was a Nintendo kid
Everyone else was a PlayStation kid
Nah. Martin seems like a 3DO or Jaguar kid.
Martin had an Amiga and you can't tell me otherwise.
ralph is also a nintendo kid obviously
Nelson was a TurboGrafx kid.
My favorite detail is that Homer name drops Wario, but is confused when Lisa brings up Mario Kart, implying Homer is a Warioware fan. Or even more legendary, a Wario Land fan!
Or maybe he knows him from Mario party. IDK.
@@ArsonRaboot Tbh I can kinda see Homer being a WarioWare fan, I feel like it'd jive with his sense of humour.
I can definitely see Bart loving all the Wario games lol, they're perfect for him
wario just looks like homer
Homer being a wario fan is pretty fitting
8:50 They didn't want Yoshi on screen because whenever Yoshi wasn't on screen, everyone else would be asking: "Where's Yoshi?"
The Yoshi expert is here
Yoshi died on his way back to his island
heh heh
you got the dud
I maintain that the "My Dinner With Andre" joke is the best videogame-related media joke of all time.
“Tell me more!”
_Bon Mot_
Trenchant Insight
Fully agree it makes me laugh every time lol
I don't get it
"That weird street fighter game where you fight a tank for some reason" Dang I can't believe they predicted Akatsuki blitzkamf. The simpsons truly predict everything.
Bartztank has some insane tech ngl
I was about to make that comment.
Waiting on someone to draw Homer as Akatsuki.
Yeah a Street Fighter game where Liu Kang fights a tank.
I wonder if its a reference the tank man from Tiananmen Square. Seeing as the game seems to be of Chinese influence as its depicts a martial arts fighter and all.
He's the calmest gamer you ever heard
He's the simpsons video game nerd.
"You have more control over this city layout than you have control over this game"
Excuse me, Mr RealJims.. On the Itchy and Scratchy CD-ROM, is there a way to get out of the dungeon without using the wizard key?
Dang it, I totally forgot to include that in the video, lol. This was a really difficult one to research, I'm sure I missed a bunch of references
What the hell are you talking about?
@@TheRealJims I guess you can't get fired for that blunder, but TH-cam might ban your channel for no reason or something.
thank god you're here, homer, these Q&A sessions are murder
When the brainwashed princess draws her sword to defend the wizard (this is the screen before the key) just open your character sheet at the right time and you can go to the exit and immediately beat the game. You'll get the bad ending for not lifting the curse, but it can be done.
29:04 I cannot believe my art made it into a RealJims video this is insane lol. Thank you for featuring my art in the video!!!
You have no idea how excited I was when I first saw “Dash Dingo” as a hardcore Crash Bandicoot fan when that episode first came out. “Game over, MAAATE!”
what i find particularly amusing is the giant head guy was seemingly both a helper and an antagonist somehow
which, ironically, reflected Cortex's role in Crash 2, which is what they're referencing with him
It still blows my mind that they referenced Polybius, probably my favorite video game background gag
It’s perhaps my most favorite Simpsons video game joke too.
i think you have to be a video game junkie to understand that reference
Yeah! I thought it was the coolest thing ever as a kid. And still do now lol
And that it also says "Property of U.S. Government" too.
@@darkninjafirefox I lost a friend to polybius. R.i.p. Jimmy.
That Sonic billboard is all over the place - the whole "Sonic Says" thing was in the DIC/Mediaset-produced Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog from '93 (which, fun fact, predated Sonic CD by a few weeks, with that game - and Amy - debuting in late Septermber '93 in Japan), so it's a reference to that, yet that Amy design is obviously the modern one, with the dress, boots and her quills combed downwards.
Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for THAT blunder…
You really think they'd do the research for accuracy?
@@mitchfletcher2386 I was going for a bit
my brain also lit up fellow sonichead
And pre-Adventure Amy was 8 years old...
My headcanon about the Nuke(s) game is Apu tried to trick people into playing a “sequel” with a taped on S.
No
@@nonixity9346why not?
There actually were upgrade kits for arcade games. For example, Atari's Star Wars could be upgraded to The Empire Strikes Back.
@@KasumiKenshirou Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 always comes to mind.
The Funtendo and Mapple era is a very low point for parody names in The Simpsons
I feel like it's done less out of dealing with licensing issues and more out of not wanting to upset the billion dollar companies with their harsh jokes, despite said jokes being about as "satirical" as a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up routine.
@@conormurnane6457 Hey. Pop-Tarts are funny. Someone should make a 2-hour movie about their birth myth
Sorny
The Simpsons has been around so long that one episode made fun of Apple Computers, and another topically made fun of the Newton tablet, and later praised the same company with their crappy 'Mapple' moniker.
@@TomDavidMcCauleyUnfrosted felt like a fever dream and not in a good way. 90s humor and pacing yet with postmodern everything else
Fun fact, someone actually made a playable version of "Kevin Costner's Waterworld." Well, maybe playable isn't the right word, cuz you will die extremely often and have to deposit 40 (digital) quarters everytime.
It's miles better than the Virtual Boy Waterworld game!
There's also a full Larry the looter game
@@ashitanomightyisn’t it just as rigged though? or was that the virtual springfield version?
Waterworld is on Virtual Boy, which itself is A RIP.
@@masonasaro2118 Yeah in Virtual Springfield you can't go further than as it was shown in the episode.
The Donkey Kong "He's still got it" is just such a good line.
The thing this retrospective made me realize is that the show gradually started putting much less effort into their fictional video games over the course of the sixth and seventh generations. Prior to that when they featured fictionalized versions of actual video games they'd usually put a little bit of work into making their version feel distinct from the inspiration - Dash Dingo is very clearly inspired by Crash Bandicoot, but it deviates enough from its inspiration to not feel like they wanted to use Crash Bandicoot but couldn't get the rights.
Their one-off video game parodies also tended to feel like there was more of an actual joke behind them rather than just being a reference to an existing video game. It's like the main video game joke on The Simpsons pre-8th gen was including video games that were utterly ridiculous on a conceptual level (My Dinner with Andre, Water World, Escape From Grandma's House) or that were broader pastiches of video game trends and culture (Bonestorm, Pac Rat, Time Waster). Post 8th-Gen it felt like the joke was more often just "Get it, it's like that actual game that exists".
And post 8th-gen a lot more of the video games that were featured were just actual games but with parts of the names swapped out for synonyms and no real further joke (Tunnelcraft, Halfmonth, Boblox). It feels more like they just wanted to use the actual game, but couldn't get the rights so they had to change a couple of details around to be legally distinct. I also feel like that's something that's affected the show's referential humor from that time period up to the present: Their fictionalized versions of media properties feel less like distinct, comedic properties with actual jokes baked in and more like bootleg versions of actual properties. Just take a look at stuff like Mapple (Ugh) or that really lame Avengers knock-off they keep featuring post-Disney acquisition and compare them to stuff like Itchy and Scratchy or Radioactive Man, which felt like broader parodies of actual things that had their own fictional mythology within the world of the show.
I mean, that is pretty much the status quo of the Simpsons past season 15ish. Even TV and movie references became way more about referencing real stuff than coming up with bizarre concepts or spoofs of popular genres
Don't forget Mixar...
@@TetsuDeinonychus I've been trying to for the past 13 years!
Heck, I never played Crash Bandicoot, so I mistook Dash Dingo for a parody of Banjo-Kazooie! That also had a talking head taunting you throughout the game, you know?
I think after they established Itchy & Scratchy, Radioactive Man, McBain, and Happy Little Elves, the Simpsons crew decided that was it for in-universe works of fiction being fleshed out, which is understandable but lame. When they wanted to elaborate more on in-universe fiction, they'd just dig up one of those instead of going in-depth with Dash Dingo or something.
6:07 As you can see, the tiny "s" on NUKEs is meant to slightly come off the cabinet, so it's very plausible that the "s" fell off due wear and tear at one point and had to be re-attatched
Trueee and it’s possible it falls off during robberies too
I had honestly never noticed the little "s" before researching this video and am now obsessed with it. It is such a weird detail for the background artists to include (but only sometimes?)
I like the idea that somebody keeps sticking it up there, the name is just NUKE.
@@TheRealJims I think when it's missing, for similar reasons as all the misspelled named of games next to Bonestorm.
@@TheRealJims my first thought was the lettter S was a name added for the sequel / or update. Like Super Street Fighter.
Something I think you'll be able to appreciate, Jims, with that Subspace Emissary Avatar you've had forever.
Leading up to Brawl's release, back when's Sakurai was running the Smash Dojo site, and posting something new every weekday. I remember fondly when he revealed Fox's Final Smash. The Landmaster Tank. The first thing that popped into my mind was literally the Bone Storm commercial. I was like; holy crap, I'm already hyped through the roof for this game but now I'm literally going to be fighting my friends with a tank in a fighting game, lol.
I think it’s worth noting that in the Moaning Lisa commentary, when the producers talk about the video game B-plot, it’s mentioned in passing “I’m kinda surprised they’re still around”. It’s interesting to me how it was likely written with the expectation of video games being a fad of the late 80’s. I suppose going off of precident, it figures though, since video games, at that point, would be looked at as a weird experiment of the late 70’s and early 80’s.
The crash of 82 would have been pretty recent at the time the first season was produced. Videogames had been a fad, and went out.
I'm not an experts on fads in general but it has to be said they don't always vanish after the crash. There were "craze" periods for things like yo-yos and hula hoops, after which the fad popularity peaked and they were no longer national sensations. But there are still, to this day, hula hoops and yo-yos to be found for sale.
Something I noticed in the commentaries myself, there's a big difference in how video games are treated by some of the staff. Bill and Josh gush about finding Frostillicus in the Kwik-E-Mart in Hit and Run, talking about how cool it was to discover something from their era in-game like that.
Meanwhile there's another instance of Hit and Run being mentioned in a commentary, I forget by who but it was definitely someone older. They read in their cheat sheet for the commentary about how Hit and Run references something from the episode they're on, and just about everyone in the room is like "wait what???"
@@EmmBee27 Definitely the biggest evidence of the age gap. At the time, bill and Josh we're seen as the "young writers"
@@EmmBee27 What? I don't get your second point, it's poorly explained
@@EmmBee27 that's amazing. I love it. I really have to get my hands on the DVDs so that I can hear the commentary.
Fighting a tank in the Street Fighter parody as a reference to the bonus level where you destroy a car.
In Bart's defense, arcade cabinets were often made more difficult to eat more quarters. Check out videos talking about how Mortal Kombat 2 was programmed, and you'll see how they genuinely programmed the computer opponents to cheat.
My favorite one is with NBA Jam. The programmer is a Detroit Pistons fan, so he programmed the Chicago Bulls to whiff last-second shots when they played against the Pistons.
@@ccricers I never knew that. Pretty interesting. I may have to try that out sometime, and see how I do.
Hockey Dad remains my favorite concept for a fighting game, especially since it is also a time capsule of stories that trended in the news at the time.
Fun fact: mumbletey peg is a real game that they used to play in WW2 where they'd see who can drop a knife on the ground closest to their foot
Yes... In WW2.... Definitely not today, nobody would do that today!
Some people claim that is the name of the game in which one stabs a knife between your fingers with your hand splayed on a table.
See I read that it was a kids game where they would both hit a peg into the dirt with knife handles and who ever lost had to chew on the dirty peg. That was around the depression so I wonder if those kids grew up to be the future soldiers that moved from the consequence being a little dirt in your mouth to a military war like level of pain.
“This was before blockbuster took over the industry”
Good lord this show is old
Agreed
Polybious is actually a niche reference that i didnt expect from them
I was waiting for him to go in to a bit of detail about that.
I think that the joke when mentioning polybius in this vid was "what is this (important piece of culture with multiple mysteries and theories back in the day) crap?"
They actually referenced that scene with Bart and the other game characters in the game Lego Dimensions
When you have Bart in your party, Lego Dimensions being a big crossover game between a bunch of different franchises, and then switch one of your characters to Sonic, Sonic says a line of dialogue referencing that scene
That is perhaps one of my favorite interactions between characters in Lego Dimensions! It’s too bad that Bart is silent though and Homer and Krusty just use recycled lines from the show.
Don't forget that the Myst library model briefly shows up in Homer³
I am genuinely impressed at how accurately E.T. for the 2600 was depicted, and I think it would be fun to see what the retro computer space looks like in Springfield.
I like the idea that Bart saying "Eat my Shorts" was something he picked up from a video game.
It's so funny to me how it is obvious that the writers didn't "get it" video games and how that changed over time with new people joining the writing room with the parodies becaming more specific
Exactly.
It'll happen to youuuuu
No, it's that the Simpsons writing became utter dogshit, and they had to lean on, 'You like ? We like too!' pandering to their audience of morons more and more.
Also, arcade games were still massive well into the mid-1990s. Really, it's the Playstation era that put arcade gaming into decline, and even then, it was still big into the 2000s.
“Hit the Change of Venue button!”
“Oh no, you’re in Texas!”
Best show ever
I’ve always wondered if the scene where Santa’s little helper goes through the corn maze was supposed to be doom but never felt confident in it
They did this again in 24 Minutes with the air vent thing, and arguably in You Kent Always Say What You Want with the first-person perspective of Marge jogging. All Season 18 episodes fairly close to each other, too. Seems like it was either a reference, a little style experiment, or both.
Could also be a reference to Myst or any number of early first-person games.
My bad memory wants to say they've done a more direct Doom reference, I think when Homer was at collage or something, but again, bad memory. Maybe I'm just crosswiring with the Halo gag.
@@Umbra_Ursus I think I remember there was something like that in the comics, not sure about the episode itself though
@@goombah8771 This is correct, there was a comic with that plotline. Homer and the college nerds make some DooM-style game.
I can't believe you overlooked "Dig Dug Revelations". I know it's just a one-off banner, but the pictures that puts in your head, man! I wanna play that game so bad I wanna *make* that game just so I can play that game.
They namedrop "Nintendo" a few times over the years, too. There's a line in "Deep Deep Trouble" ("A fist fight or two on Nintendo for cash"), plus the "Coconut Nintendo system" line in Das Bus.
There's also the hilarious cut in syndication scene in "In Marge We Trust" where Marge tells the Sea Captain that his "Game Boy is gone. It's at the bottom of the ocean"
I've also said this before, but it's interesting how in Season 7 we get a Mortal Kombat reference from Oakley and Weinstein, but in Season 8 we get a Donkey Kong reference from Jean and Reiss. Feels like two entirely different generations.
Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers!
Hahaha, that's the most obvious and most well known one (for good reason).
Just name dropping the word is ok. But if you're full on showing the game or console, taking creative liberties is needed.
The Simpsons also has both Star Wars and Cosmic Wars. And they did a joke about this sort of thing when the family goes to Blocko land, then in the car he asks, "Ow. Why did I buy an entire shirt made entirely out of Lego?"
"Hey, that's MY novelty flying disc!"
Dash Dingo is My Favorite One! I love the joke about the Seven Crystal Babies it makes me smile everytime.
Inside Out 2 made me realize just how universally understood the idea of fighting games are to non-gamer audiences. Like there was speculation among Disney/FF?KH fans over a supposed PS2-era JRPG character from Riley's past only for it to turn out said character was from a fighting game.
That's because of how influental Fighting Games were in the arcade era at its most popular. Street Fighter 2 was everywhere, and every developer was making their own fighting game to take advantage of the hype. I'm sure a lot of young writers grew up with that era and wanted to refrence it in the show.
It makes sense she knows him from a fighting game (most likely Smash) than a JRPG, because how many teenage girls are into PS2 era JRPG 's these days?
@@ArsonRaboot Kingdom Hearts was pretty big with girls back in 2002 from I understand. I still say that game was single handedly responsible for the 2000s nostalgia trip Nightmare Before Christmas had.
Maybe the character is from an rpg and riley only knows them from a crossover appearance in a fighting game?
@@ArsonRaboot
The game seemed more akin to SvC Chaos from what I saw.
You should make a video similar to "Ralph the Viking" but with Hank Scorpio asking Homer if he's ever seen Homer throw a shoe and Homer replying "Yes, once."
A lot of the other video game references from that era are pretty generic but the creative staff really did their homework for Dingo Dash. I especially appreciate how the Dingo Dash music sounds like actual Crash Bandicoot music.
Fact- If you pause this video at 22.32, spin around three times and say "Argle bargle or foo--farah" you activate Big Head mode.
For anyone who tries this it only works on the Zii version of this video, the other ports never got any of the cheat codes
@@elizabethopoussm The memory addresses still exist though. If you use Cheat Engine on the Lion Browser version you can poke bit 0x5333 on the 64 bit version to enable it.
An amazing timeliness of how the Simpsons Parodies of pop culture went from brilliant to beyond lazy over the course of 35 years. MAPPLE?! That was the BEST they could do!? What were you thinking!!
They could've called it Pine so you get the reference by thinking a bit adding apple to it. And now you want the forbidden ingredient for your pizzas
Real ones remember the actual Bible Blaster game on the old Simpsons website
The modern simpsons references just feel lazy.
In gravity falls you have the pixel guy meant to be someone from an arcade beat-em-up. The simpsons would've just left it there and maybe misused the reference by having the fighter get video game points, but gravity falls made his animation choppy, they made his pixels have that bright LED backlight that made him seem like he was from a CRT. They gave him fighting moves that looked like they came from a fighting game, the amount of detail in it is so much bigger than anything from the simpsons.
my favorite gag from that episode is how the guy can't stand still, he does his idle animation non stop.
I definitely agree. Watching this video made me cringe hard with how out of touch a lot of the references were and how evident it was that this was the perspective of an outsider looking in.
I wanna add, gravity falls got the guy who did the sprites for the scott pilgrim video game...
Also fighting games really did use to have points, at least arcade ones did.
Thats how you notice good writers from lazy ones
One of my favorite jokes is when the bullies put on a play where they’re streamers playing fortnite, there’s not even a parody game and hearing them say chug jug is just wild
I know it’s a dumb throw away pun, but “angry Burns” tickles me
Fr 😭
Honestly Bart playing Triangle Wars was pretty much how I felt playing Asteroids on an Atari 2600 for the first time
The wario joke at the Kart episode got a good chuckle out of me
"It's-a me, Wario! It's all my fault! WAAAAAH!"
Something worth noting in The Simpsons Game from 2007, it has references to pretty much every era at the time, but there is a whole level that is just a big GTA San Andreas parody which despite being 3 years old it was very topical given the Hot Coffee lawsuit was still going on at the time, it wasn't even halfway done
The Simpsons Game is an unjustly forgotten gem that's way better than it has any right to be.
They have some deeper cuts in there compared to the show. There's even a Keyblade in Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game.
"Just a flesh wound! That's a quote from Final Fantasy IX, ha ha"
Missed opportunity to bring up Super Nintendo Chalmers
Speaking of PC games, The Simpsons kinda tackled that even sooner - it turns out that at least Bill Oakley and David X. Cohen were big fans of the 1993 PC game "Myst", because Homer walks past the library from that game in the Homer3 segment of Treehouse of Horror VI. And it's not just a simple reference, it's the actual 3D model Cyan used when making the game, as well as the music in the background!
As an early Gen Z'er, seeing the amount of crazy games on the "Zii" is incredibly funny because they're all punching well above the Wii's weight.
Yoshi-as-Milhouse.
"Ha ha! You got the dud!"
I love the Waterworld arcade game.
Jims, Jims, Jims.
The Genesis and SNES’ debut years were those of their releases in Japan. Both of them didn’t come to America until 90 and 91. It’s no wonder the show wouldn’t have covered them in its first couple of seasons - no one in America had heard of them yet
Bart punching Homer's characters head off in Moaning Lisa predates Fatalities in Mortal Kombat which came 2 years later
This is my favorite topic you’ve ever covered. I have a huge special interest in video games, especially fake video games within fiction. I could listen about your alternate universe’s list of games all day, your fake consoles and arcade games and history and developers…Augh. I love fiction within fiction so much. You’re right on the money in that childlike sense of questioning the games, how they’d work in real life. There used to be this guy on Newgrounds that’d try and remake all of the Simpsons arcade games in Flash and it was really cool, even if they were never actually fun to play. My only real thought is why they didn’t go harder into wittiness with their fake consoles, there’s some really funny arcade games but you just call it the Funtendo Zii? In a story I’m working on, the Nintendo Entertainment System /NES became the Nitrondus Potentially Video Game Adjacent System, or VAS for short, and I dunno, I like to think that’s funny. But then again, they probably just want shorthand so everyone can recognize what they’re parodying, but it’d be nice if they had a little fun with it.
This is exactly the kind of niche Simpsons nerdy discussion that I subscribe for. Thanks Jims!
I really love you doing this, it's funny how that Dash Dingo game always stuck with me because I felt like it was a sign the series was recognisable to non-gamers if it was on the Simpsons. You're right it was less common for Videogames to be referenced on tv back then which I think knowing me probably made me enjoy the Simpsons more at the time even if I definitely didn't understand the show's humour back then.
That deception about Milhouse being Yoshi is so palpable, lol
9:15 Angus Podgorny was a character from an extended Monty Python sketch from the first series. LSS, he becomes the first Scotsman to win Wimbledon....15 years after the events of his story. Caber tossing is a Scottish sport, and it was referenced in the episode as well.
They do have a few Switch references in there. They never refer to it by name, but I can list one example: In Poorhouse Rock, when Marge is chasing everyone out of the living room so she can watch the raunchy GoT show with her girlfriends, the "'video game" she gives Bart is clearly a Nintendo Switch or Switch-knock-off.
Thanks for reminding me of this. I was wracking my brains because I could have sworn I had seen some kind of Switch like console. But kept Googling and couldn't find a lead. This was a tough one to research with the random unnamed references
@@TheRealJims Rewatched that bit as a refresher. She doesn't even call it a video game- she says "here's a distraction for each of you" while giving Bart the Switch (green and purple Joy-Cons), and he goes off-screen almost immediately so they can show the cover of Lisa's book.
@@TheRealJims They also do a joke with Bart playing a virtual reality game in Pixelated and Afraid
28:29 I get the feeling either someone in the staff plays that Wario alt in smash, or they googled him real fast and that outfit came up. Honestly i hope it's the former.
The Waterworld game costing 40 quarters to play and immediately asking for more was a riff on the then-infamously inflated budget of the Waterworld movie.
100% we need a video about the history of real-life Simpsons video games! AVGN did a fun video on the NES games, but a video going through EVERY single game across every single console would be 🔥
The cool thing about making a video about the real Simpsons games is that it won't be outdated for years, since we haven't had a new game in over 10 years ☹️
@@usermcskull4713shut up and enjoy your tapped out slop
he majority of them are awful why would you put him through that lol
@@MarsofAritia There are some gems in there though that might be worth the pain and suffering. And some of the bad games are also kind of interesting
i think it as funny how they made an itchy and scratchy game
My Dinner with Andre video game got me to seek out the movie
“Tell me mooooore”
19:50 Given the white ground and clear blue sky, I'm confident this is a snowboarding game, not a skateboarding one.
Larry the Looter is in Level 1 of The Simpsons Hit & Run as one of the hidden gags you can find.
I remember reloading the level a bunch as a kid because for some reason I was CONVINCED that there was a way to survive the shotgun guy.
The Marge Gamer episode is legitimately one of the best Silver age episodes, seeing her get so into Earthland Realms was such a new look at her character dynamic we rarely see now.
Polybius being a reference is still one of my favorite simspons easter eggs/references of all time
9:08 this is funny considering Will Wright is a boss in The Simpsons Game and he's enacting a genocide on old obsolete video game characters, including pixel Simpsons. Wonder If they planned that lmao
A pixel Homer later appeared in "Into the Homerverse" alongside Princess Homer, Beastkin Homer, Cyber-Homer...
I was visiting a big second hand game store in Minnesota recently that always has the Simpsons playing on a TV, and they had some commisioned custom boxes for Bonestorm and Lee Carvalo's Putting Challenge sitting on a display shelf. Officially licensed by Nintend'oh and everything.
semi related: what's with family guy's obsession with punch out? they did like 5-6 punch out references in the span of a few years
also: why do they NEVER get it right? there’s no cheat codes to get past bald bull, the homage to the training scene was “so retro” incarnate, and the “music from nintendo punch out” BIZARRELY uses the (royalty free mockup of the) ARCADE sounds!
They did a Tecmo Bowl reference one time, where they just used some TH-camr's footage of the game and passed it off as their own. Then the TH-camr's video got hit with a copyright strike by Fox.
That’s just Seth McFarlane, Seth green and other similarly aged staff on that show reminiscing about games and putting it in the show.
3:19 also worth mentioning, the boxers seem to be modeled closely after NES/Famicom character designs/sprites, with being restricted to only 3-4 colors, and even using colors reminiscent of the NES's hardware palette
The Sonamy billboard is so funny to me, not just because of Amy's design clearly being her modern one, but anyone knows Sega would never go that far with them. They vetoed the comics from having Sonic blush while being hugged by her, no way they'd show him proposing marriage 😭
Sonic full on makes out with Sally in SatAM...
THESE SIMPSONS WRITERS DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT IT SHOULD BE AMY PROPOSING
Marriage?! No way!
I think it’s funny it’s sonic preaching consent and waiting for marriage given he’s always running away Amy wanting to force marriage onto him
@@MustacheDLuffy well achually she hasn't done that since like 2003 🤓👆
I think my favorite one is the ninja snowboarding game with the Street Fighter/MK-esque shouting and random effects, it really nails the "video games as Dad sees them" feel
What I've learned is that when the show makes up its own in-world games, it's fun, I like the bit of worldbuilding it adds, even just seeing the titles in the background. But when they reference specific games/consoles, it's OK at best and toe-curling at worst.
No animated series has tackled gaming as well as South Park. Some of my favourite episodes are the ones that seamlessly tie the plot into whatever the newest release is at the time.
Please do a video on the real video games of the Simpsons too! I definitely want to see that! However this was a very nice idea too! Your channel is always a special delight for me when I’m on TH-cam!
Just here to say Angus Podgorny is a Monty Python reference. From the same 1969 sketch with a character named Harold Potter.
Yeah I remember new video games being very expensive in the 1990s. We either got our games used, traded or rented. I recall Super Mario Brothers 3 being like $75 or $80 when it launched. My Mother still played video games then and the entire family had spent hours playing the NES together so it was an easy sell, but we had to get it on lay-a-way at my local Kmart and I remember it taking almost two months before it was paid off.
My Mom worked nights and ended up picking the game up while we were at school, I remember being so pissed off coming home and seeing she didn't wait to play with us.
New memory unlocked: Super Mario Brothers 3 was a big fucking deal, at least in my area. I remember the news actually having this whole big thing while they waited for midnight to strike so they could get a copy. They were running Mario Brothers stuff all night up until it launched. I don't think I ever saw anything like that ever again.
Could be interesting to do a video about "parody brands" in the simpsons, like which ones have stayed consistent and which have been changed over the years.
14:58 The "blowing up humanity in level 1" is played for laughs because of how exaggerated it is, but that's exactly how Darksiders starts, and that's a very nice game XD
24:55 I don't know why you're shocked Nelson's here. He saw there was money to be made on video games back in Season 1. Little story called Bart The General, if you never heard of it.
When Ralph says "Super Nintendo Chalmers" (mentioned in other comments), he plays on a Coleco computer. There is also a scene in another episode where Homer says something like "This is where all those hours of Tetris come in handy" when packing a car, with the Tetris music playing and the items and kids taking shapes of the Tetris blocks.
The point of the E.T. joke is that the game was so bad and so few people played it that it contributed to the video game crash of the 80s and Atari buried all the copies in the desert. Games like these are referred to as "shovelware" as companies at the time just kept producing more and more garbage games with licensed titles. Thankfully Nintendo came along and helped revive the industry.
I was hoping there was already a comment about ET. When he said that ET was before his time and that there were probably a bunch of Gen Xers who played it all the time, I was like, “Um… actually, ET was so bad that they dumped a bunch of copies in a New Mexico landfill and buried it under concrete. They excavated it ten years ago.”
apparently the game sold quite well i sometimes find them on the flea market but they literally made more copies of the game than the amount of atari2600 console that were out there so it was still a flop
That Waterworld joke is a reference to Dragon's Lair. It was the first game to cost 50 cents a play, due to its groundbreaking use of Laserdisc. You were basically playing a cartoon movie. But, those 50 cents only got you one try and you would die a lot before memorizing it all to beat it. Also, because it was so popular, arcades would often crank up the cost to play on it. I remember it costing $2 to play at my local arcade back in the day, which made it completely insane to even attempt. You would get to see 30 seconds of Don Bluth animation before dying.
While around the corner, those two dollars would have gotten you like an hour of lives in Gauntlet.
You didn't mention models from Myst showing up on the 3D Homer Tree House of Horror! When are we gonna get to the Myst Library!?
Obviously, the S in NUKES is actually a Fridge magnet that Apu puts there to make it look like he has a new game, but because it sits so far on the edge, it tends to fall off.
It cannot be stressed how amazingly rare Mario references were back in the 80's and 90's. Then again, if you look at the cartoons based on video games made then, you can tell there wasn't the nostalgia or reverence that we'd get nowadays. Sure, you'll get an oddly accurate Mega Man episode in a Captain N, or have Stanley the Bugman in an episode of Saturday Supercade Donkey Kong, but everything was about building a show around the characters, rather than around the games. I'd say, maybe after the 90's, we'd get the generation that grew up with and loved these games referencing things to the point of overreference. Everyone has done a Mario parody/reference/background gag at this point. I will say I was impressed at The Simpsons giving us Wario Homer. I'll always appreciate a shout out to my dude. Well, maybe not that SNL skit where he was played by a certain person that makes Wario look like a saint with high moral standards... but I DID find the Wario Lopez joke in Boardertown better than the rest of that series.
Very true! Video games have become so widely accepted and are such a major medium now, it's sometimes weird looking back at the time when they were just seen as a silly children's fad and a lesser medium to film and television. Back then it was amazing when a favorite show even acknowledged video games.
And you never expected them to be accurate and up to date with their references at all. You'd see them playing a bizarrely inaccurate 16-bit fighting game parody with Atari 2600 controllers and just be glad they were making the effort. lol
@@TetsuDeinonychus A lot of those cartoons came out just AFTER the crash, and it was fresh in everyone's minds that it was a fad. We, in the future, know better and have grown up to the point of very specific references. The Mega Man 3 level select screen on Cyborg's display in an episode of Teen Titans Go, Mordecai and Rigby playing with Sega Master System controls through the entire series, for example. Mario to the point of over reference.
@@mightyfilm Well, the crash happened in 1983, and the Simpsons started in 1989 (or 87 if we're counting the Tracey Ullman show shorts). So it wasn't *right* after the crash, and in-between the NES came out and was huge, making video-games more popular than ever. And, I'm not sure how much the baby-boomer and silent gen writers were aware of either of those things.
I'd say it was just the general perception of the time that video games were a toy for children and not a "serious" art/entertainment medium. But, I guess maybe the 1983 crash played a big part in creating that perception among the older generations, despite Nintendo sweeping the nation for the past few years and the 16-bit console war being just around the corner.
@@TetsuDeinonychus Well, yes and no. Arcades really weren't seen as a kid's thing, but rather a sleazy hangout for older teens and 20 somethings. I don't know exactly when they became a kid friendly hang out (Noiseland looks especially rough). But other than that, there's always been a strong generational divide between the writers and the generation of what they're trying to reference or parody. Something that looks quaint, if not cringy in retrospect when having knowledge of what survived pop culture and what didn't. Look at any cartoon from the 60's talk about Rock N Roll before Elvis and The Beatles became cultural icons. Same thing applies to video games. Lack of foresight and not having a nostalgic connection to something doesn't give you the understanding you'd get otherwise.
Plus, I'm shocked it took them over 20 years to make a TMNT reference. The Simpsons and TMNT grew up together, and the second TMNT movie at least had a dig at Bart Simpson.
I love how the graphics of these games in many early episodes are angular, rather than blocky like the games the era actually were. It's almost like they were a few decades early, and were depicting polygon graphics, rather than sprites.
Conspiracy time:
Apu himself adds the small "s" at the end of "Nuke" to make it seem like it's a different game.
@@Im2akillerfish That's actually very in character lol
Could also be he added a blackmarket mod.
gonna be honest; waltz waltz revolution got me for some reason
Everytime the Simpsons references or tries to parody something now I just groan, it’s like when your parent sends you a meme they just discovered that was really popular a year ago but now everyone is sick of
The "Street Fighter game with the tank" is actually Mortal Kombat 2. That background is straight up based on the Kombat Tomb from MK2, and the downed fighter in it is probably meant to be Liu Kang, given the red and black outfit.
A tank in a fighting game might seem weird, but look up Blitztank. Blazblue Cross Tag has an actual tank character that has a skull head on a long neck, and it's hilarious.
9:39 The Intellivision had a keypad on the controller.
the atari jaguar did too
@@RadiaUmbra Given the age and apparent video game knowledge of the writers, my guess is this is COLECO/Intellivision reference mixed with how they felt games were probably like at the time after all the fancy technological advances.
@@horgh_japan its got to be a jaguar reference since i think this episode came out at the time the jaguar was out. or maybe its just some random thing they made up because the screenwriters were born in the 1950s and think all video games are too complex for them. even ones were you only got 1 button and a joystick it feels like programming in c++ to them
Fun fact about the 'Just take it' bit in Marge Be Not Proud. Both Sonic and Homer are playable in LEGO Dimensions and if you have them together Sonic might do the bit (though telling him to grab a Chaos Emerald instead of Bonestorm. Another bit of flavor dialogue has him think Homer is Eggman after he shaved off his stache.
Of all of their parody video game names, "Conflict of Enemies" really tickles me something special. It's a genuinely inspired piece of generic naming.
The only thing I noticed wasn't mentioned in this is probably one of the weirdest. In Season 17's "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story" during the showdown in the cave, Snake's son asks Bart, "Do you like Xbox?" When it cuts to them again, they are playing what I can only describe as... video Battleship. A single device with two buttons on each end and a shared screen in the middle.