Beware the low quality of Krusty brand fun houses.
PLAYERS: 1
PUBLISHER: Acclaim
DEVELOPER: Audiogenic
GENRE: Puzzle
RELEASE DATE: September 1992
I’m all for watching hours of “The Simpsons” on my local Fox affiliated station or on my stacks of Simpsons DVDs. But I can only play about fifteen minutes of any number of Simpsons games, especially the early ones. Even the arcade game, while nostalgic, isn’t as fun as you remember (sorry, everyone). Krusty’s Fun House is one of the better early Simpsons game entries in that, it’s a unique idea, it’s definitely playable until the end, and the controls don’t make you want to scream profanities at the sky.
If you’ve ever played Lemmings, you’ll have a basic grasp of Krusty’s Fun House. Krusty the Clown, for whatever reason, has been charged in leading dozens of rats to their demise. Each level is a mix of getting the rats to Bart’s Rat Stomping Machine (patent pending) and destroying large snakes and blocks with random items. It’s as strange as it sounds, and each level contains an equal amount of fun and frustration. It’s always fulfilling figuring out how to get the rats to ascend or descend to their final destination, but it can be pull-your-green-fuzz-out annoying to get there. The later levels particularly feel like they were crafted by Pinhead or Jigsaw, sans the eventual deaths (but hey, they’re all clowns, right? Bros before hos!). If only there was a little more variety in both the level design and the gameplay. Rats always need to climb blocks to get sucked through holes to get crunched by Bart, the end. Lemmings includes several varieties of creatures, along with various gameplay options like weaponry and destructible environments. Perhaps it’s not fair to compare the different games, but Krusty’s Fun House would be vastly improved by drawing further inspiration from it. Either way, having a go in the Fun House is a lot better way to spend your time than helping Bart save the world or destroying Space Mutants. As Selma would say to Troy McClure on their date in the episode, “A Fish Called Selma,” “I had a pretty good time.”
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4 replies on “#352 – Krusty’s Fun House”
Don’t really understand the Worms comparison. That game doesn’t have many similarities to Lemmings.
In retrospect, perhaps the Worms comparison was a tad misguided, at least in reference to Krusty’s Fun House. I still think Worms and Lemmings are bred from similar gaming DNA, though.
I would have rather seen Moe get his own game before Krusty. Not that the clown isn’t funny, its just that with Moe’s low self esteem he could have used a little publicity. Maybe a game at his tavern or something…
This game screams to me like something that was different in Japan but got altered so they could license it in hopes it would sell better. Also you observation regarding the quality of pretty much every Simpsons game ever is astute.