When I was a little kid, I had to go to a ton of birthday parties at the local Long Island roller rink called Hot Skates. Being the fat, immobile, lazy child that I was, I had no desire to skate around on those wood-paneled floors and fall hard on my behind, so I spent most of my time in the arcade section. This was the late 90s, a time when arcades could still make a lot of money from entitled brats like myself.
Before my mom would drop me off, she would hand me a few dollars worth of quarters and I would just spend as much time as possible on whatever arcade game had the most people around it. That was usually Samurai Shodown, Metal Slug or my personal favorite, The Simpsons game. No matter how many hours or dollars spent, I never managed to beat the best game about a family since Home Improvement on the NES. Beating it alone is impossible and getting four other kids to stick around through the amusement park level was impossible, so I never beat the arcade game.
At PAX East, The Simpsons arcade cabinet stood in front of me in all it's glory, but rigged so that you’d have unlimited credits, i.e.unlimited lives. Bart’s face on the side was as crisp as the day the decal was applied and the buttons actually worked. This machine hasn’t suffered hours of rough playtime from sweaty nerds in the back of a Brooklyn bar. My editor and I queued up five lives and got to work.
The first two levels were a breeze, we zoomed past the boxer and giant Krusty balloon with ease. We got to the camping grounds, then the cave, then the movie studio and a few other bystanders joined in. It seems like a lot of people have only played the first few levels of The Simpsons Game and never had the capital to beat it. Finally, our group of four ragtag strangers playing as America’s favorite yellow family, got to to the last boss, Mr. Burns. With Maggie held hostage, the “excellent” robot shot its hands through Homer’s face and Marge’s vacuum, hoping to deplete our 99 lives.
It took 63 lives (each) and over 30 minutes of pulse-pounding gameplay, to defeat Mr. Burns and return Maggie to the Simpson family. Beating The Simpsons felt more cathartic than it had any right to be, like I was closing a chapter in a book that I stopped reading around season 13. I give the Simpsons game 14 pantyhoes out of six doughnut holes. Bird up!
