The Simpsons (Xbox, EA)

The Simpsons
Developer: EA Redwood Shores Platform: Xbox This game has unused graphics. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material.

This game was never completed and/or given a public release. As a result of this, keep in mind that the developers might have used or deleted some of the content featured here, had the game actually been released.

The Simpsons for Xbox is a tech demo created by EA as a pitch to Fox in hopes of acquiring the license to make a Simpsons video game.

The build covered on this page was built on March 8, 2004. The HDD it was found on (bought and dumped by Tdijital on October 28, 2019) also contains two earlier Simpsons executables, dated January 14 and 28, 2004, but they don't seem to work with the March demo files. A different Xbox development HDD also owned by Tdijital had a Simpsons build from March 31, 2005, but most if not all of it had been overwritten and what remains is nonfunctional.

Judging by the build dates, it's likely that EA pitched this idea directly after the release of The Simpsons: Hit & Run. They officially got the license in late 2005, which would be when development on The Simpsons Game really started. Notably, the Simpson household explored in this demo made its way nearly verbatim into the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions' hub world, with many of the assets and textures carried over from here.

Not to be confused with another Simpsons pitch by Papyrus Design Group that goes by the same name.

Sub-Pages

Debug Options What about my options?

General Differences

• Almost everything is incomplete and the player can't switch characters yet.
• The only cutscene is played on boot: Bart does a "Living Room Olympics" pole vault onto the couch, breaking it in the process, after which Homer comes in and is upset about the couch being broken. This scene (particularly the audio) is taken straight from Season 3 Episode 24 ("Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?"), and was likely meant as a cutscene test.

Gameplay Differences

To do: See if you can play as any other characters through digging in the code. See if Bart can do anything besides what's listed.

The loading screen before the cutscene is taken from James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, which uses the id Tech 3 engine, of which this build shares.

Bart

• Bart can turn the TV on and off by pressing Y. The TV shows a looping animation of Itchy and Scratchy beating each other with mallets with no other sound than the iconic Itchy and Scratchy Show theme song.
  • Similarly, he can also play and stop a record player. The record played is a jazz version of the Simpsons theme song.
• Moving Bart into a wall plays a rather loud banging noise regardless of which surface it is.
• Bart can do somersaults, make faces during his idle animation.
• Bart can perform a jump fly glitch if you press A + X.
• Bart can swing on bars in the backyard, as well as stand on the piano in the house to make noise.
• Bart can get dizzy when running in circles for too long.
• Bart's animation while running is almost similar to his running animation in Hit & Run.

Lisa

Seen in the opening cutscene, but is only a static image rather than a proper model.

Homer

Homer wearing a tie appears in the cutscene, as well as on the roof grilling.

Unused Graphics

There are a number of leftover graphics from James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, due to being built on the same engine.

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Unused Text

movies.txt

This is a text file template.

filecom/filecom_dummy.txt

This is a dummy file used to hack around dir creation