Please DotEmu, make a spiritual successor to The Simpsons Arcade Game…

One of the greatest arcade games of all time is no doubt Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. It was the best use of a license. It was beautifully animated and fun to play along with some really deep cuts and easter eggs for fans of the original cartoon of the time. I still have the Super Nintendo version and fire it up from time to time.

Dotemu, a developer that basically specializes in games that evoke a lot of the games from the late 80s and 90s era of video games (often with straight-up remakes, remasters, or sequels) recently dropped a trailer for what would be essentially a spiritual successor to Turtles in Time, and it looks like the sequel anyone who was a fan of the original has been dreaming about for over 30 years:

The important thing to note here is that this is not some straight port of an older game, or a remastered version of one either. This is a game that looks to have old-school look and feel, but with more modern sensibilities and not meant to simply eat your money like the arcade games often would.

As a huge fan of the Turtles, 90s arcade beat-em-ups, and Turtles in Time in particular, I couldn’t help but think of all the great times I had playing games of this style in my teen years both at home and in the arcades. There were many that I’d love to see either brought to modern consoles or given similar treatment, but only one sprung to mind as an absolute must: The Simpsons.

The Simpsons have had a number of video games based on the popular long-running cartoon during its history-making 32 seasons and counting (it just got renewed for two more), but most are incredibly bad. Even the more well-received games have just been ok or fairly limited in scope. Still, one of the most fondly remembered and popular remains one of the earliest, The Simpsons Arcade Game. But even that on many levels is a disservice to the show for one primary reason: It was simply made too soon.

Though The Simpsons had been around since 1987 starring in animated shorts on The Tracey Ulman Show, they didn’t really skyrocket into popularity until they had their own show that debuted 1989. The Simpsons Arcade Game came out in 1991, even with a relatively quick development time that means that developers Konami only had the earliest ideas of what the show was from the first few episodes, at most the first season. The Simpsons had evolved quite a bit even by the time the game was in arcades and being played regularly, and quite a bit so as time went on. While not a bad game and mostly on par with arcade beat-em-ups of the time, it just wasn’t very representative of the characters as they would become fully formed or the show as it really found its stride and identity.

Now here we are, three decades later, and though the Turtles have had many incarnations since then, much like The Simpsons the popularity is enduring and the history is deep. What better time to make a new game that truly captures the spirit of the show and really lives up to the potential the arcade game of thirty years ago showed hints of? I mean just think of what a new side-scrolling beat-em-up starring America’s favorite animated family would like done in the style of Shredder’s Revenge…

So, in closing: I am a huge fan of the arcade beat-em-ups of the 90s, a huge fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and am super excited for Shredder’s Revenge, but I also really, really REALLY would love Dotemu to give the same treatment to a new Simpsons game in the near future that evokes the feeling of the original arcade game while incorporating all the things it just didn’t have the time to do.

That’s all for now, see ya real soon!