Last week, we talked about fictional video games we would love to play. While all of them were pretty sweet, one in particular stood out above the rest: Bonestorm, from The Simpsons. While Bonestorm is easily the most recognizable fake Simpsons game, the series has featured dozens of fake games in its decades-long run. Almost all of them exist as parodies of existing games, and usually just as a one-off joke. Here are our favorites:
Lee Carvello’s Putting Challenge
We’ll start with the other fake game from the Bonestorm episode. Marge, feeling bad for Bart, finally decides to buy him the game he has been pining for. The only problem is, as any gamer with a clueless mother walking into GameStop can sympathize with, she ends up buying the wrong game. Lee Carvello’s Putting Challenge is a parody of golf games – the single most boring genre in the entire video game spectrum (sorry, golf fans!).
Touch of Death
Bart convinces his family to send him to karate lessons in order to become a kick ass martial artist, but immediately finds the class boring and difficult. So, he bunks off every class in order to play “Touch of Death” – a Mortal Kombat-style fighting game rip-off. When queried of his progress at karate class, Bart attempts to utilize the “Touch of Death” on poor Lisa.
Escape from Grandma’s House
Escape from Grandma’s House‘s aim should be fairly self-explanatory: you play the role of a young boy forced the spend the afternoon with his overbearing grandmother, and you want out. Bart played this game in the episode Bart Gets an “F”, and it appears to be a parody of 16-bit platformers/beat-em-ups like Final Fight.
Kevin Costner’s Waterworld
Kevin Costner’s Waterworld takes a not-so-subtle dig at the crazy amount of money Costner sunk into his flop of a movie. Of course, the only Springfield resident gullible enough to spend forty quarters to walk a single step would be poor Millhouse.
Dash Dingo
This one is basically direct parody of Crash Bandicoot, replacing the Bandicoot with a Crocodile Dundee inspired Dingo, and is the game that Lisa becomes obsessed with after being forced to stay home due to the flu. I think we can all relate to her…
Grand Theft Walrus
One of the more ludicrous entries on this list, this one featured in The Simpsons Movie. A clear parody of everyone’s favorite “steal cars and shoot people simulator”: Grand Theft Auto, GTW replaces the main character with a Walrus, and his innocent bystander victims with penguins.
Disemboweler IV
Much like Bonestorm, we never actually see Disemboweler IV being played. Bart describes it as “The game where condemned criminals dig at each other with rusty hooks,” and really, do we need to know anything more than that?
Billy Graham’s Bible Blaster
Of course, the only video game Rod and Todd Flanders are allowed to play would involve “blasting heathens” with bibles to turn them into honest, God-fearing Christians.
So what do you guys think? Are you disappointed other classics like Triangle Wars and Hockey Dad didn’t make the list? What are your favorite fake Simpsons games? Let us know in the comments!
