Yes, There Was a 'Simpsons' 'Treehouse of Horrors' Video Game

We all have some kind of Halloween tradition. Crafted candy routes. Movie marathons. Ignoring it. Blood rituals. I once had a roommate who marathoned the Resident Evil remakes on GameCube.

For me as a kid, Halloween didn't end until I saw The Simpson's "Treehouse of Horror" special, which could extend the festivities whenever it was a week behind the actual damn holiday. If, per chance, you had hopes to combine that approach with the video game approach, and mix survival horror with Matt Groening, then here's a surprise: There is definitely a "Treehouse of Horror" video game.

Homer as King Kong. Image: YouTube

The Simpsons: Night of the Living Treehouse of Horror isn't part of Acclaim's early 90s marathon of dumpy licenced games, which came out so frequently it was as if they were under the same witch's curse as Steven Soderbergh, but it certainly has the most unwieldy title of them all.

Acclaim's Simpsons games were horrendous. I mean, they were real ugly things. Bart vs. The World may be one of the ugliest games ever available on a store shelf. Those games were impressively bad. Revenge of the Night of the Living Treehouse of Horror came out about a decade after those, and on the Game Boy Colour.

The title screen isn't particularly scary. Ignoring the opportunity to dress all the Simpsons people like wolf-people, it's just the normal couch gag illustration. And Bart is wearing a blue shirt. You have the Simpsons logo and a gooey green slime addition (and seriously, when you can't fit the entire title on the screen at one time, maybe it's time to make a redaction). They do capitalize on the credits gag, wedging eerie words into their names like we're all currently doing over Twitter.

The game is split into seven chapters, loosely based on some of the Halloween specials. One for Bart, one each for Lisa, Marge, and Maggie. Homer gets three.

Remember the episode where Bart becomes a fly? Or Homer is King Kong? Or when Bart stumbles on to the Necronomicon in the school library because the latest "Where's Waldo" couldn't hold his attention? They're sort of in here!

Homer gets to go ape on Springfield in a really broken Rampage clone, one not in black and white. Marge goes at numerous zombie citizens like Apu, Moe, Krusty (though the clown doesn't seem at all zombified) with a vacuum in a dull shooter.

Lisa's story is based on the "Nightmare Cafeteria" skit. You have to make your way around Springfield Elementary dodging cannibal Skinner, Hoover and Willie (even if he was an attempted hero in that episode) to free the other kids, but all you do to hide is hug the walls while the evil adults pass you by on a 2D plane. Maggie buzzes around as a fly in a segment where the timer ran out on me twice before I could figure out what the game wanted me to do.

This Simpsons game is the bin where all the crumpled idea notes ended up. Even though Acclaim didn't make it—THQ had this pleasure—it's eerily structured like a few of the previous Simpsons games. If there exists a person who, from memory, can say which mini-games were in Super Nintendo's Bart's Nightmare or Virtual Bart, I will buy you a beer, if only to get you out of the house.

In those games, as well, Bart would sift through radically alternating scenarios. A pig escaping from a Krusty-brand slaughter house, a baby swinging through the trees, or just normal vanilla Bart throwing tomatoes at other kids or shooting down a water slide. But none of the segments in those games are standouts, or were on to something, or even based too heavily on actual Simpsons episodes.

The first chapter of the game is based on, in the most bar rail drink watered down sort of ways, the "Bad Dream House" episode. As the story goes, the Simpsons move into a haunted house that turns out to be possessed by a depressed James Earl Jones; here, it is just the Simpsons' normal house suddenly possessed. And Santa's Little Helper is trapped in the attic.

This is another Bart one, and in order to find your wide-eyed pup in the attic you need to return power to the entire house. Fuses are scattered about the house, some behind locked doors that need coloured keys. You can enter rooms even if their power is out, but on top of the dangers of stumbling around a house full of animated murder props, hanging around a darkened room too long will prompt an angry broom to aggressively sweep at you until death.

So between locked doors and dark rooms, you must descend into the basement, fend off against such evil enemies like rats, some spiders and larger drips of water, which were lethal in a lot of old games come to think of it. In the basement, which quickly becomes a sewer where El Barto is written everywhere, you can navigate along the pipes and pick up the needed fuses and keys.

As stiff as it is, this level was on the right track. The other-platformer stage has Homer navigating Burns-as-Dracula's castle, but it's a straightforward level.

Between exploring your environment, seeking materials, keys, hell even managing health items (donuts), it seems THQ in this Game Boy Colour Simpsons game either earnestly or accidentally stumbled on to a horror survival game. Treading around an enclosed space, even a single household, is many a horror games' thing.

In the end, the game sinks in that post-mortem disappointment over a 13-year old game very few people remember. Likely in a similar reason to why previous Simpsons games had so many ideas on their dart board to fit it to the final product, here we have one that abandoned something that was fun and fitting. A brush with something that could have been better, and real specific for all of us spooky nerds.

Then again, this is a Halloween special video game originally released in March. Guess it's not something to worry about, too much. That fog that turns people inside out, on the other hand…