The Simpsons Game Preview

Now it's time to switch to Bart, and use Bartman's glide ability to scale the wall and take out Willie with some well-placed slingshot fire. This is a good time to mention the co-op gameplay. Each stage features two Simpsons family members, and you can switch between them during play. Much like LEGO Star Wars, a second player can jump in at any time. This turns everything split-screen, and the difficulty scales dynamically.

Online play will not be supported, but EA's reasoning is sound. Knight says, "Our focus has been high-quality couch play. People are going to want to own the game because their friend will come over for a Homerball vs. Homerball match, or to play through the story with them. It's going to bring the whole family together." The prospect of multiplayer-centric minigames is definitely exciting.

Being a 3D game about a 2D family brings up some complications. You need to be faithful to the show, but expand the world to be more exciting. You need to have the Simpsons themselves be 3D, but still look hand-drawn. The team worked many months in research and development to solve this. Knight says, "We have a patent pending on this tech to real-time deform the mesh of faces as you move the camera around. It's important that they stay looking like Bart or Homer from any angle."

Grand Theft Scratchy Matt Groening

This addresses problems with past 3D Simpsons games, where something just didn't look right -- be it Lisa's hair or Homer's marshmallow-man physique. Knight says, "You want Lisa's hair to look like a flat 2D billboard from any angle. There's a lot of technology behind it, but it looks effortless in the game. But once you see it, you can never go back to another Simpsons game. It's the first time we're capturing the look and feel of the TV show."

As we got to see the game in action (on Xbox 360), we can attest to the beautiful and faithful art style. It's like you could pause it at any time, and it looks like an animation cel from the show. The Simpsons has simplistic visuals to be sure, but the game doesn't skimp on details. Physics react realistically (for a cartoon, of course), and the animation is very solid. Also, things like flesh bunched up on the Homerball are nice -- albeit disturbing -- touches.

We've gotten relatively technical talking about graphics, but Simpsons creator Matt Groening popped in to put things into perspective: "This is the most ambitious Simpsons game ever. It rewards people that love games, while making fun of other games." This isn't just a video game starring The Simpsons; this is exactly how The Simpsons themselves would do video games. Due to release in late fall, we still have a long time to wait, but with reruns, the upcoming movie, and no shortage of DVDs, there are plenty of outlets to get your Simpsons fix in the meantime.