Tag: Bart vs. the Space Mutants

By Conor Lastowka Hey folks, Conor Lastowka here. Long time reader/DHS evangelist. I’m writing today because I just published my first novel. It’s called Gone Whalin’ it’s about a college student who starts waking up on a whaling ship in the 1800s every other day, and is full of pirates, dogs wearing sunglasses, rum guzzling, ukuleles, sea shanties, and stadium seating couches. It’s guaranteed to be the funniest, least accurate novel about whaling you’ve ever read. You can read the first three chapters and watch the trailer at http://gonewhalin.com and then buy it on Amazon (Just 2.99 on Kindle!) http://amzn.to/1aSFDXd Anyways, after I published the book, I realized I had to find a way to get people to read it. I debated several tactics: an all out media blitz, Google AdWords, Today Show appearances, sending copies to famed literary agents, shamelessly recording attempts at viral videos…But they all seemed like a lot of effort, so I decided to reach out to my favorite Simpsons blog and see if they’d let me write something about Bart Vs The Space Mutants. Charlie said yes, so here I am! Last Friday, November 15th, I sat down at 6:27 to play Bart Vs. The Space Mutants. [Ed note: It took me two weeks to post this because lazy.]  I loved this game when I was nine, but then again I also would have loved an instant read thermometer if the Simpsons faces had been slapped on it. I kept a running diary of the experience, and I hope you enjoy it! 6:27 To start, the family is sitting on the couch watching TV. Maggie’s dress is bright green. Its usual shade of blue is present in Homer’s pants and Marge’s hair, directly next to her on the couch. So right away we’re off to a great start. 6:28 The named alien who is chuckling about earth’s demise is “Zorbo” who never really went on to do much in the Simpsons universe. He’s cracking a beer with Herman somewhere. 6:29 And we’re off! The goal is to collect all the purple objects. Right away, we see a trashcan that we can jump on to get an extra life. A simple enough task, yet it reveals the game’s horribly flawed mechanics. To cover extra ground with a running jump, you have to jump first, since it is also the run button, then hold it to run then press it again. BVTSM took something that was pretty much universal in NES games and managed to needlessly complicate it. It’s like if Ford released one specific type of car that switched the clutch and the brakes for no apparent reason, or if Google decided to completely overhaul or get rid of a perfectly good product that everyone was happy with to for no reaso—Oh… 6:31 The theater showing Space Mutant 4 has showtimes at 2 and 4. I remember that if you wait until the game timer hits these times, a guy in purple leaves the theater and…