Konami caught up to all The Simpsons madness with a side-scrolling cabinet for the arcades. By the time this came out, the show was still going pretty strong for Fox but I think the wave of knock-off T shirts had ended. I imagine the development cycle for Konami was pretty easy and rushed. They just took their hit Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles product, swap out all the Simpson characters for the turtles and then make some generic-looking Groening style people as the fodder with some others as the bosses (Krusty). The game reflects how far the cartoon would come as Smithers is the main villain. Today, the man best known as Mr. Burns’ main toady and secret admirer would never do such a thing. The family may annoy him, especially Homer and Bart, yet I’m confident he has no malice toward Maggie despite her being the one who shot his boss.
Thankfully, Pinballz has an operational one hanging on with its struggling CRT. I should just load up a card with about $50 to see how the game ends. I could search through YouTube but there’s no fun nor surprise in that tactic. I wonder if this was ever ported over to the consoles like my PS4.
The ad is more amusing for the fashions worn by the hired family enjoying the game. The colors, especially the youngest wearing neon green, and the hairstyles. Their look is certainly toned down from how loud things were in the mid-Eighties but you can tell this was the world before the Grunge/Look-Like-a-Hobo trend would take over into the mid-Nineties. Today, the dad would only be sporting a shirt with a collar if he just got done from a job requiring it; now he’d probably have a printed T-Shirt. The mom is wearing low heels in a casual setting? Not likely, sensible shoes will always be timeless.