Indie Gamer Chick recently held a new installment of her #IGCvNES series on twitter, look at the Bart Vs The World and Batman Meets Radioactive Man while talking with developer DanKitchen. We at Real Otaku Gamer have compiled ( with permission) the text and the Q and A held. Have a look below.
@IndieGamerChickWelcome everyone to #IGCvNES Legends Forum with Dan Kitchen, developer of your childhood. Hi @dankitchen!
Released in 1991 for the NES, Dan’s Simpsons: Bart vs. The World was the sequel to one of 1991’s Bart vs. the Space Mutants. A rare NES sequel to get a same-year release! https://t.co/0IrbH4CPJg
@DanKitchen Hello everyone!
@StarkWyvrnGamer While I never played either game, I enjoyed the interview with Garry and ended up transcribing it for Real Otaku Gamer. Really cool seeing into the inner workings of game design. You are a legend sir.
Thank you!
@DanKitchenThank you Indie Gamer Chick for having me part of your stream!
@IndieGamerChick Stream-like Tweet thread 😛
@IndieGamerChickThis is an open forum to ask questions about Bart vs the World, a much more traditional game than Space Mutants. #IGCvNES
So my first question for @dankitchen (and I’m sure @kitchengarry is here too) is “How soon after Space Mutants did you know you’d be doing a sequel?” https://t.co/Xkj1sMM1xi
@IndieGamerChickGarry already told us the entirety of the pitch for Bart v The World was “Bart skateboards down the Great Wall of China.”
Hey, I’m sold.
But did Acclaim or the Simpsons production team have any directions or requirements from you guys? @dankitchen? #IGCvNES https://t.co/uctdh34Jam
@DanKitchenGarry was in those initial meetings with Fox. Garry, did the studio buy off initially on the Great Wall of China idea?
@KitchenGarryYo
@DanKitchen Hi Garry!
@DanKitchenWe’ll After we finished Bart vs. The Space Mutants, Acclaim came to us about 6 months later to discuss a sequel.
@DanKitchen In the sequel, we wanted to place Bart in a more traditional setting. Expand his horizons beyond Springfield.
@KitchenGarryAnd Groening had decided to go with the BART vs. theme of games.
@DanKitchen I recall someone at Fox thought that Bart skateboarding down the Great Wall just something he would have tried.
I have to drop off. Dan, it’s all your’s. See ya Cathy.
Night Garry!
@SolidRoar My question to Daniel:
What was the first personal contribution you remember that you did for this particular project (BvtW)?
@DanKitchen Sitting with our Producer Barry and Garry and brainstorming where in the world could Bart go.
@SolidRoar When Acclaim approached you to do the sequel, was the first game already in the market? Was it a response to good sales? What drove them to make a sequel and release it that fast?
@DanKitchen For the sequel, Acclaim wanted us to pack a lot of different types of game play. Fox wanted us to also work Bartman into the games.
@DanKitchen Yes, I believe the first game had sold very well and the series was becoming very popular.
@IndieGamerChick I want to follow that up, because I touched on this yesterday..
The Simpsons was controversial at the time. It was picketed, Bart shirts were banned in schools, and the President (George Bush) called it out, and I heard Nintendo was nervous.
Any direction on that? #IGCvNES
@DanKitchen Acclaim was initially concerned about how far we would push the humor, but Fox really gave us a green light to bring out Bart’s personality.
@SolidRoar I like that all 3 of the Simpsons games on NES look essentially the same—Bart having the same sprite and the graphical style is the same throughout the series—but I never found myself doing more of the same. Each game was a fresh adventure with new ideas. Was that intentional?
@IndieGamerChick You guys were WELL ahead of the curve here, as “The Simpsons go to exotic locations once every few seasons” is a trope now. And, in fact, they DID go to China in 2005, 14 years after this came out.
Did you guys have more concepts before production began? @dankitchen? #IGCvNES https://t.co/5lBwRGgVBs
@DanKitchen Ha ha. I recall I wanted to put Bart somehow on a Pirate Ship. That was a joke around Acclaim’s dev department. The question was how to place Bart back in the days of the pirates. That’s when the Hollywood level was thought of.
@IndieGamerChick Skateboarding down the Great Wall, I’ve not been there but I’m almost certain it doesn’t just go downwards, nor are there huge gaps in the surface with ramps in front of them 😛 #IGCvNES @DanKitchen
Did you guys play other Skateboarding games? It reminds me of T&C Surf Design. https://t.co/ZhxXDI7aWG
@DanKitchen We did play a lot of skateboard games but David Crane did at one point write Skate Boardin’ for the Atari 2600 when we were making new 2600 games in the late 80’s.
@IndieGamerChick Bart vs the Space Mutants acted as sort of an action-puzzler where you have to clear X amount of objects. Was this ever considered for World?
I’ve also noticed that there’s exotic (cheap) Krusty trinkets to collect. Was that there from the start? @DanKitchen #IGCvNES? https://t.co/Y5ILzhIFbQ
@DanKitchen Initially, Fox wanted the game to highlight Krusty the Clown. Thus all the cheap Krusty merch scattered about. Acclaim wanted the game to be more of a Mario-style “get to the end of the level” game. So we didn’t focus on the puzzle solving aspect.
@IndieGamerChick There IS a Krusty game too, which is, I hear, based on Lemmings. I need to do that next. #IGCvNES
@IndieGamerChick I didn’t bring this up yesterday: in the 90s, comedy in video games was not a major thing. @dankitchen, you guys had to do a show based on a sitcom, and the opening gag (Bart’s awful drawing) is legitimately laugh-out-loud. Did you guys get help from the show writers?
#IGCvNES https://t.co/iXPWT5xJao
@DanKitchen Actually Barry Marx and I came up with the overall story of Bart entering a contest, which he of course would win. It worked out well as a way to reward him with a trip abroad.
@IndieGamerChick Concept of the bosses all being distant cousins (or in the case of the Abominable Snow Burns.. 2nd cousin’s nephew’s son) is something the first game sort of lacked (there’s “encounters” that aren’t boss fights like we think of them). Were bosses mandated, @DanKitchen? #IGCvNES https://t.co/EbvtYSJj21
@DanKitchen Yes, Acclaim wanted the concept of bosses. Barry and I thought it would fit in well with the overall story if there turned out to all be relatives of Mr.Burns
@IndieGamerChick I have to take you to task, @DanKitchen because Bart vs the World is BRUTAL. Here’s where I’m at..
WHY? How could you do this to us?
Was this an Acclaim thing? A ton of their games involve jumping up huge columns of thin platforms. Wizards & Warriors 1 & 2 did it too. #IGCvNES https://t.co/5zJA6sKENb
@DanKitchen Yes it was an Acclaim thing. Back then players wanted the games to be harder. I personally look back on may games I worked on and wish I had tweak them to be easier. I never liked thin platforms and jumps to nowhere.
@IndieGamerChick Called it!
You know what? I remember each of the games in the series to be progressively harder, but I’m proud to say I beat both Space Mutants and World—I honestly can’t remember if I beat Radioactive Man although it was one of the last NES games I ever played.
Radioactive Man is a hard game. That game also had a very short dev cycle and I wish we could have polished it better.
Can you give us an idea of how short? We heard yesterday that Space Mutants went from Pitch to Development to Submission for Approval in 2 to 3 months, an ABSURD amount of time by any era’s standards. Buzz is you had those kind of schedules all the time.
#IGCvNES
@DanKitchen I would say we have 6 months from start to finish for The World.
@IndieGamerChick To clarify, for those that don’t know..
In the late 80s and early 90s, Nintendo had a “queue” that could take months for their standards and practices department to screen the games and send back notes on inappropriate material and other stuff of that like. It could take a year.
@DanKitchen Yes, and they were very strict about those rules. If you didn’t get your finished game to Nintendo by a certain date. You had to wait sometime an entire quarter (three months) to resubmit the game.
@IndieGamerChick I want to pivot to Bartman Meets Radioactive Man, which was the last NES Simpsons title and the only of the three Bart titles to come out after the SNES released.
Did the Radioactive Man angle come from you guys, the Simpsons, or Acclaim, @DanKitchen? #IGCvNES https://t.co/T4EOGsk736
No, we finished The World and then Acclaim approached us for yet another Simpsons title. This time they wanted us to focus on Bart’s alter-ego, Bartman. They wanted this to appear as an interactive comicbook.
@DanKitchen The radioactive angle came from the Fox Studio. They were thinking of more episodes centered on Bart’s super hero alter-ego so they wanted the next game to be specifically on Bartman.
@SolidRoar I always liked Bartman. They made a good call IMO. I had the Mattel action figure, too. So I was definitely the target audience. ? https://t.co/SDXFzh65Ft
@DanKitchen Yes we had him in the office at the time. LOL
@SolidRoar Oh, wow! That is so cool. I’m hit by a strong sensation of nostalgia right now. ?
@StarkWyvrnGamer New fan here, but I have a question. How much freedom did you have to innovate on ideas relating to radioactive man?
@DanKitchen We had freedom about the worlds we could place him in. But his actions and look were dictated by Fox.
@IndieGamerChick I’d like to touch on that because I haven’t asked yet, but there’s some really good 8-bit character models for the Simpsons, especially in line with what the Simpsons looked like at the time (bigger overbites, more exaggerated spikey hair). How tough was getting the look down?
@DanKitchen We worked very closely with Matt’s team to make sure all the characters, humans and non-humans, were all created in that Simpson’s style. Once we created a few characters that they approved, it was easier to get the look right.
@IndieGamerChick Bartman feels like the least Simpson’y version of the Simpsons on the NES. Did the show’s producers offer any feedback or guidance to you guys?
And I also hear Acclaim wasn’t happy with Nintendo’s lack of marketing of it. Any truth to that, @DanKitchen? #IGCvNES
#IGCvNES https://t.co/yumpi88uHd
@DanKitchen There is some truth. At the time Nintendo was becoming more picky about the games they highlighted in Nintendo Power, and by the time Radioactive Man came out, they were focused on highlighting bigger titles.
@IndieGamerChick A Simpsons game isn’t a “big game” in 1992? Really?
That’s Nintendo from that era in a nutshell.
@IndieGamerChick I don’t have a question for this part. I just want to scream if that’s okay with everyone. Okay? Cool.
GAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!
Okay, now that’s out of my system..
Did you guys want to do the SNES games and were bummed you didn’t get the call? @DanKitchen #IGCvNES https://t.co/QOdrsfMT7N
@DanKitchen Yes, those pits were hard. Soooooory! After Radioactive Man, we started designing more games that we published under the Absolute Entertainment Brand. But we would have liked to create the first SNES title.
@IndieGamerChick Did you guys even get a chance to pitch a 16-Bit Simpsons or did Acclaim (who had a 10 year contract if I understand correctly) skip you guys immediately?
While I also enjoyed both SNES games, I do wish we got to see the Kitchens vision for a 16-bit Simpsons game.
Hey, maybe it can be done today as an indie game. ?
@DanKitchen Well, neither Garry or I would create an Indie game based upon someone’s intellectual property unless we had the rights to do so. I don’t expect Fox will be granting indie game rights anytime soon. LOL
@IndieGamerChick Yeah, especially after the Disney purchase. ?
@SolidRoar But Capcom did get to work with WayForward to remake DuckTales, so never say never I guess.
@DanKitchen very true!!!! Thank you so much to everyone who participated this evening. Be sure to visit me at https://t.co/82nvIoCaor to check out my newest retro game!
@IndieGamerChick It was news to Garry but I have credible people telling me a remake of Bart vs the Space Mutants is in discussion, even if you guys aren’t involved. Apparently they looked at the top selling NES games and someone realized they had those rights.
@DanKitchen If you can put me in touch with whoever they are, I’d love to see if I can be a part of bring it back.
@SolidRoar Thank YOU, sir. I wish I could send a message back in time to my child self and tell him that one day he’ll get to interact with one of the designers of some of his favorite games and that he’ll answer his questions about the games he loved! ??
@DanKitchen My pleasure. Reach out anytime.
@IndieGamerChick We’re about to wrap up here. Dan’s here now so I get to share the #IGCvNES verdicts with him..
I’m actually going YES on Bart v the World for the same reasons I did with Space Mutants: the inherit problems are undone via Emulation cheating.
NO to Bartman, sadly. https://t.co/2xOvN7GvKG
My last major question to @DanKitchen, because I noticed IMMEDIATELY that World’s controls were better than Space Mutants, and then Bartman’s were back to being sluggish and collision boxes were quite brutal. Was that because you were back to the short turn around time? #IGCvNES https://t.co/5TE6MUQG8n
@DanKitchen Unfortunately, it’s due to a different programming team. By the time Radioactive Man was in development, the lead programmers were busy on larger titles and we put less experienced guys on the game. It was a business decision I wish we hadn’t done.
I want to thank Dan Kitchen. 35 years in the business and he’s gone back to his roots with some new Atari 2600 games in the 2020s! Check out Gold Rush, in all it’s Atari 2600 era Activision glory at https://t.co/PiBUl3gcOq
@dankitchen, it’s truly an honor my friend. Thank you! https://t.co/vD2FxUKD4d
@DanKitchen Thank you so much Cathy, It’s been an honor to put part of your forum!
@SolidRoar Keystone Kapers is hands down my absolute favorite Atari game! I can’t believe this is actually happening.
We thank Indie Gamer Chick and Garry Kitchen for their permission to repeat this.
You can read the twitter thread here
Welcome everyone to #IGCvNES Legends Forum with Dan Kitchen, developer of your childhood. Hi @dankitchen!
Released in 1991 for the NES, Dan's Simpsons: Bart vs. The World was the sequel to one of 1991's Bart vs. the Space Mutants. A rare NES sequel to get a same-year release! pic.twitter.com/0IrbH4CPJg
— Indie Gamer Chick (@IndieGamerChick) August 22, 2020
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