Someone's only gone and discovered a tech demo for a The Simpsons game where you play as an anthropomorphic cockroach inside the family's home: it's titled "The Simpsons Bug Squad."
In 2000, Red Lemon Studio pitched this game to Fox Interactive, and made a short demo to show it off on the Dreamcast. The team was unfortunately unsuccessful in selling their project to the higher-ups, and the files were to lie dormant on a Dreamcast dev kit for twenty years. On December 18th, 2020, user sreak arrived in the Dreamcast-Talk forum, asking whether they could publish the files they had found on a broken dev kit that they'd had hanging around for more than a year, which comprised of titles like "BlowUp, roach, Bugsquad, Quake2, Simpsons, ttb410, RoachWorld, ttb5." It turned out that these corresponded to The Simpsons Bug Squad, and it's even playable.
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As you can see in this gameplay recorded by DreamcasticChannel, the game is relatively simple in its mechanics. It was intended to be a tech demo, so that makes sense. However, it looks really rather good for the time that it was produced, bar the lack of music and sound effects. The Simpsons Bug Squad shows 742 Evergreen Terrace like it had never been seen before, from the two sets of eyes of a cockroach. Yes, they have two types of eyes which give them a 360-degree view of their surroundings. And, whatever your thoughts on insects, you've got to respect that. GG, evolution.
The player runs, jumps, and flies around the family house, avoiding the stomping shoes of Homer Simpson. One theory is that the premise might have been inspired by the Treehouse of Horror VIII "Fly vs. Fly" story which was in turn inspired by the film starring Jeff Goldblum. In that one, Bart misuses a matter transporter from Professor Frink, and the machine transplants the head of a fly onto Bart's body and vice versa. Or, perhaps the cockroaches thrive off of Homer's wastefulness, and they invade the house seeking more rubbish to build their homes with.
As it happens, one of the original developers of The Simpsons Bug Squad has responded to the unprecedented discovery. "Oh my! Not seen that for 20 years!" said Andy Campbell, one of the co-founders of Red Lemon Studio. "We had a great coder who had developed an amazing cell shading engine for DC. I knew Fox pretty well, so this was a demo we created and I pitched to them. We were never commissioned, so this was technically never an official title in development."
"This was a trip down memory lane. The tech was great, developed by a guy called Rich Evans, great coder. Bug Squad concept came from Jamie Grant if I remember. A great art team built the models. The tech was also pitched as a production tool for the show itself. No game made though," they concluded. Well, never say never. Maybe a savvy fan or few will take the concept to new heights.
Featured Image Credit: Red Lemon StudioTopics: News, Retro Games