The Simpsons Game Preview

Like Bart and Milhouse plotting in the Simpsons family tree house, EA was cooking up a little something-something on May 7, 2007. Outside, hundreds were celebrating a milestone 400th episode of The Simpsons. But inside the Fox Studios cafeteria, guarded by famed bartender Moe Szyslak, The Simpsons Game was being unveiled to a select group of press representatives.

Executive Producer Scot Amos set the scene: "We wanted to stay true to the fans, first and foremost. We wanted to make the ultimate video game for the Simpsons characters." The first step was crafting a script worthy of the license. To do that, EA enlisted a trio of the show's writers and producers, Matt Selman, Tim Long, and Matt Warburton.

The three spoke to us about the game's focus, and earned massive gamer cred. "EA has been great to us," said Selman. "They're much better than the other monolithic video game companies." The plot promises a plethora of surprises, poking fun at not only standard pop-culture, but also game-centric segments and parodies to appease even the most hardcore gamers. Unfortunately, the camp was keeping all of these secrets, well, top-secret.

Bartman Begins! Yeardley Smith (Lisa)

They would tell us the game featured over an hour of new, TV-worthy material in cutscene form. All the actors reprise their roles for voiceovers, so it will be as authentic as possible. Tim Long quipped, "We're not going for a hard ESRB rating here, but I will tell you some of the lines are so dirty, they made the cast cry." Also, very early in the game, the Simpsons figure out that they're actually inside a video game, which means all Springfield breaks loose.

Amos and Creative Director Jonathan Knight took us through one chunk of the game, however. It was an eating contest at the Duff Brewery, and the player controlled Homer. The perspective was free-roaming 3D, as Homer battled Barney, Krusty and other familiar characters to reach food. Surprisingly, after ingesting enough grub, Homer could turn into Homerball -- ransacking the place as a gigantic sphere.

Being in a video game (and being aware of it), the family Simpson is not tied to the limitations of the show as much. Each one has a superpower to exploit: Homer has his ball form; Bart turns into Bartman; Marge can command hordes of characters; and Lisa can change the environment. Each of these has their own advantages, and the level design allows you to use them both to complete prime objectives and do a little exploring to find secrets and gather pick-ups.

Back to the eating contest: The stage is almost like Epcot Center, with various geographical locations. Homer trashes Germany, Mexico, and others -- partially with the help of a spicy pepper (referencing the chili cook-off episode) to turn into a ball of lava. When it comes time to go through Scotland, Groundskeeper Willie closes the gate.