My Gaming Audio History: The Simpsons: Bart vs the Space Mutants (1991)

Honestly, this game reminds me of Atari's ET.  Bart vs the Space Mutants was incredibly difficult-- I could never beat it and don't remember getting past the museum level ever.  The gameplay was also awkward; I couldn't consistently jump over the aliens... ever.  And also, the music was just mediocre.  But, everyone bought it because it was "The Simpsons," and you had to have that.  I mean, the game starts with you as Bart Simpson spray painting things.  For a kid, it doesn't get much more awesome than that!  

The main question I have at this point...  Was this pushed out for a certain release date?  My thought process here is that it simply doesn't really compare with other games of this NES era.  This is beyond the golden years of the NES, by '91, the SNES had come out and attention was shifting there. Perhaps, then, this answers my own question about a rushed release.  In any case, the game has only about 2 minutes (!!!) of music.  Two themes within those minutes: the main TV theme composed by Danny Elfman theme and a second theme.  All the battle music, lose a life, level restart, end game music... all the rest is reusing bits of the main theme or is simply the main theme.  Two minutes of audio is even less than Super Mario Bros, one of the first games for the NES.  By now, it seems much more common to have ten or more minutes of music.

One of the coolest parts of the game audio I remember from my youth are the vocal samples of Bart saying "Cool man!" and "Eat my shorts!"  The quality of these samples is abysmal, yes, but also bear in mind that NES games really didn't use much spoken word, so it was awesome to hear something in the celebrity voice, period.

After I watched this longplay, I listened to the Genesis version to see if it had better sound and it does, but the music is totally different for that game.  The Amiga version also has much better sounding music and is similar to the NES game audio.  However, it only uses the first level theme song music, it never varies to a second tune as the NES does.  I'm shocked by the small amount of music in this game.  I don't know if I ever thought about it as a kid because it was so hard I never played it for that long, but it's kind of embarrassing.... Tetris for Gameboy has more music than this NES game!

The in-game credits list original score material by Mark Van Hecke.  If what VGMPF says is true, Mark often wrote music for tv conversions to games where the music "sounds rushed."  Audio Engineer is Alex de Meo if you're curious.


Here are my usual notes on the game.  Not much to say here because there's not much audio and the quality of it is pretty lacking.  These notes were made using this soundtrack.

Title theme: 80 sec.  C major--> Db major.   Similar form to the TV theme.  A set of variations and various keys for the main theme.  Literally simply plays itself and ends then restarts.  5 sec intro doesn't repeat in the loop.
Stage 2: 43 sec.  F# major.  Like jazz solos over a vamp.  Intro (4) A A' A'' (in E) A''' (4)