My Beginnings As A Gamer - Part 2‏

Asmentioned last week, as a kid I owned a Sega Genesis, but only had 3 games. Of course I rented a few, but the ones I owned made great memories. Today, in this 3-part post, I'll talk about Virtual Bart.

By definition, "great" doesn't necessarily mean good. By that I mean Virtual Bart was great in being horrible at game mechanics. As a kid, you’d just buy your games off cover art, and everyone was a fan of The Simpsons, so I figured, why not? And boy was I greatly disappointed.

The game presents itself as a set of minigames, 6 of them if I recall. Each is horrible in its own right, so I commend the developer in finding different ways of making bad minigames. The game starts off with Bart going to the school’s Science Fair and getting trapped in some spinning wheel contraption, which ends up being a random stage selection. The wheel spins randomly and chooses a minigame for you. Not having the choice already makes me angry.

Jurassic Bart

This was probably the best minigame out of the 6. Bart turns into some kinda dinosaur and your job is to get him out of the level safely. I never beat this one, but I had more fun with it than the other 5. The jump mechanics are poor and Dino Bart ends up sliding around the level. I mostly ended up dying from attacks from other dinosaurs. For some reason Lisa and Maggie are seen, in human form, throwing crap at you. I never understood why, but I hated them even more.

SpiderPig

In this minigame, Bart is now a pig. It’s pretty much exactly the same as the dinosaur level, with a different setting. I think it’s even worse, because pigs aren’t as cool as dinosaurs.

Baby on Board

Bart’s a baby. He jumps even more poorly than in the dinosaur level. You swing on branches and then end up at a carnival. Basically, you have to time and land every jump perfectly. This was easily the most tedious of the 6, and I hated getting stuck with this one. 

Tomacco

Bart basically has a sack of tomatoes, and he’s throwing them at school kids. You select where you throw and aim for someone. The point of the game is to hit everyone except Principal Skinner and maybe a few of the teachers (my memory here is hazy). The problem here is you can’t really tell if your aim will be on target because you can’t choose your distance accurately. Bart is standing, hidden behind a mailbox, and as such, he doesn’t move. This is fine, but what’s horrible is that you can’t determine the angle you throw at, only the distance (the yellow line you see in the pavement in the above image scrolls up and down to determine distance, but not angle).

Hell’s Satans

I guess this is a Road Rash clone. Bart drives a motorcycle and picks up fuel while defending himself from Jimbo and Kearney, as well as buses. I never finished the level because I found the controls too annoying.

Mount Splashmore

Bart goes on a deadly waterslide and you have to avoid people and traps. Again, the controls weren’t tight and the waterslide splits into different paths. Take the wrong path and you’ll either end up dead or the time will run out.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I was disappointed with this game as a kid, which doesn’t say much because most kids wouldn’t fault the mechanics, but rather assume they’re not adept enough to beat the game. I knew the truth because I’ve played through that irksome Battletoads level and lived. Virtual Bart was and still is a giant piece of garbage.

All was okay though, since the 3^rd and last game I owned was the saving grace for my time with the Sega Genesis. 

Till next week.