The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man (1992)

Beat, mostly on normal speed, slowing it down for the latter part of under water stage. It controlled a lot like the space mutants game, with the same awkward jumping and same sound effect from taking damage which paused the game for unnecessarily long. This was a huge improvement though because there was proper platforming, combat and power ups. Bart began with a basic punch, which could defeat some enemies. Others could not be hit by anything for some reason (too low to the ground with no down aim) and others came back even after being destroyed, like the things jumping out of tires. Powerups included temporary flight and limited ammo short range laser eyes, and long range cold blast. It would have been better design if all 3 of these abilities were inherent to the character with a way to swap and pickups being just ammo. He had 5 bits of hp but I found that many hits did not reduce hp at all. I honestly wondered if some kind of cheat mode was in my rom. I have no idea if some things just pretended to do damage, or if different things did different damage, or if hp pickups increased it beyond the 5 displayed. The stages were somewhat large and open with multiple paths. In stage 1 I found a thing that sent me to a black and white bonus world. This place had pickups and moving platforms that changed direction when I jumped on them. Hitting the top or bottom of the area sent me back to the normal stage with no powers, so was that a death? Standing on a stationary platform for too long made him fall through so I save state scummed to move around and run down the timer. I was then in a sewer, which was somewhat jarring and I later discovered that was the next stage. The sewer had more annoying platforming and more open and confusing layout. Then was the boss fight which required creating platforms by freezing the stuff dropped by the boss. Next was underwater, which was a lot better because it was like having infinite flight. The next stage was inside a ship wreck or base or something, and it was pitch black with a light moving around. Getting hit by the crosshair in the light hurt so this stage was immensely annoying. Early on I spied a bonus stage entry and put all my efforts into getting there, where I ran down the timer to skip to the next stage. This one was no longer under water and I had to restart it due to off switches. For some reason the 1st switch required standing on it for an oddly long time, which I gave up on and soft locked myself. The crab boss here was more like a mini game and it took me several tries to figure out what to do. Instead of punching or shooting, Bart only did an uppercut. I had to punch the boss from below, and when he went through the wall I had to follow to a new room to repeat. Worst designed boss in the game. The next stage was underground with lava. The stupid snakes were one of those too low to hit enemies despite looking big enough. The main gimmick here was falling down narrow shafts and using attack to slow your fall to avoid spikes. The final stage had a large maze of doors to navigate, then the boss was about timing cold shots to freeze water dripping from the ceiling onto the boss. The timing was really tough. Then the final boss actually had some interesting design, because your shots bounced off the boss. You had to time it so the bounce hit radioactive man flying above who then sent it to hurt the boss. The fight was over fairly quick and did not expand on this beyond the boss's basic shot and jumping around.

Still a fairly boring and not well designed game but way more playable than all the other Simpson's games I have played.

5.3/10