The Simpsons' History of Video Games

Get out those joysticks and Wiimotes, The Simpsons are about to do some video gaming.

Music Selections:
0:57 “Together Again” (Animal Crossing: New Horizons) by Just Coffee

2:50 "Dream Fighter" (Punch Out) by Scott Peeples

7:32 "Mercenary Boxing" (Street Fighter II) by Malcos

10:51 “Serenity” (Final Fantasy VII) by Mustin

14:11 “Like a Dream” (Dark Souls II) by RoeTaKa

18:06 “Bossa de Moga” (Monster Hunter Tri) by Jamphibious

21:04 “Funky's Tricks” (Donkey Kong Country 3) by Malcos

24:18 “Dan's Ice Cream Truck” (Street Fighter Alpha 2) by Joshua Morse & posu yan

26:49 “Chasing Waterfalls” (Donkey Kong Country 3) by Blue Magic

29:14 “Treehouse Campfire” (Donkey Kong Country 3) by Level 99

#thesimpsons

[TheRealJims]

Needless to say, I vastly underestimated how many video games are in the world of Springfield 😬

[basknrobin]

I love it when Lisa failed a test because she played a Crash Bandicoot knock off lol

[ArsonRaboot]

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.

[RedEyesBlackKnight]

I'll forever associate the SNES with "super Nintendo Chalmers".

[theamazingyoshi]

8:50 They didn't want Yoshi on screen because whenever Yoshi wasn't on screen, everyone else would be asking: "Where's Yoshi?"

[OH_MY_DOGGG]

He's the calmest gamer you ever heard
He's the simpsons video game nerd.

[VelvetTeacake]

Lee Carvello's Putting Challenge is so memorable for such a short joke.

[etheweirdo_art]

"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.

[AllG]

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!”

[Nerfyboy]

It's my headcannon that Milhouse's gamertag is
ＴＨＲＩＬＬＨＯＵＳＥ

[tazelwurm]

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.

[SSDante]

I maintain that the "My Dinner With Andre" joke is the best videogame-related media joke of all time.

[i.l.l.l.l.]

Bart and Millhouse were definitely Sega kids.

Martin was a Nintendo kid

[darkninjafirefox]

It still blows my mind that they referenced Polybius, probably my favorite video game background gag

[SouprSpookr]

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!!!

[sweetpea]

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?

[DrWattson]

The Funtendo and Mapple era is a very low point for parody names in The Simpsons

[MarxForever]

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.

[Vince__]

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.

[cousinted]

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.