The Simpsons Game (PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii)

The Simpsons Game
Also known as: Die Simpson - Das Spiel (DE), Los Simpson: El Videoguego (ES), The Simpsons Videopeli (FI), Les Simpson, le jeu (FR), I Simpson: Il Videogioco (IT) Developer: Rebellion Developments Publisher: Electronic Arts Platforms: PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii Released in US: October 30, 2007 Released in EU: November 9, 2007 Released in AU: November 6, 2007 This game has unused areas. This game has unused code. This game has hidden developer credits. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused modes / minigames. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has unused sounds. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select. This game has a prototype article This game has a prerelease article This game has a notes page

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

The Simpsons Game is what you get when you make a Simpsons game with every game genre.

A low-end game engine was used compared to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, cutting the hub world and obviously reducing the graphical effects. The PlayStation Portable port is notoriously choppy, while the Wii release has exclusive "Wii Moments" as extra minigames.

Sub-Pages

Prototype Info

Prerelease Info

Notes

Developer Options Having a rather large debug menu during development has led to a ton of them still remaining in the final game!

Differences between Old-Gen and New-Gen Comparisons between the PS2/PSP/Wii versions ("Old-Gen") and PS3/360 versions ("New-Gen").

Unused Text

As is the case with most Asura engine games, the 1st string in all of the SYS_##.ASR files, where ## is replaced with the language name, has a placeholder string with text that shouldn't ever be seen.

DEFAULT TEXT WHICH SHOULDN'T EVER BE SEEN...

Menu

Unused Clichés

String Label	String
FE_Cliché_32	Flower Power
FE_ClichéDesc_32	The player can find allies in the most unlikely places
FE_Cliché_33	Behold
FE_ClichéDesc_33	Not all objects are as impressive as they are made to look
FE_Cliché_34	Boxes
FE_ClichéDesc_34	Some disguises are better than others
FE_Cliché_35	Unfeasible Sword
FE_ClichéDesc_35	Some weapons just don't make sense
FE_Cliché_36	Hacker Crack
FE_ClichéDesc_36	Not all hardware is easy to crack
FE_Cliché_37	Ports Ahoy
FE_ClichéDesc_37	Sometimes all you can find are ports

Movie names for the In-Game cutscenes.

String Label	String
MENU_MOVIE_38	Bullies conspire
MENU_MOVIE_39	Statue of Liberty reveal
MENU_MOVIE_40	Statue of Liberty Collapse
MENU_MOVIE_41	Lenny and Carl
MENU_MOVIE_42	Lenny and Carl log comes out of the factory building 1 and are on final approach toward death
MENU_MOVIE_43	Lenny and Carl are rescued
MENU_MOVIE_44	Show pinecone ammo racing toward core reactor in slow motion, ala Star Wars
MENU_MOVIE_45	Statue of I&S comes crashing down
MENU_MOVIE_46	Quimby in the hot tub
MENU_MOVIE_47	Ape is hit and reels backwards, falling into the goo
MENU_MOVIE_48	Lard Lad stumbling and falling down after final hatch
MENU_MOVIE_49	Freeing Cletus
MENU_MOVIE_50	Cartridge is saved after H&B close the gate to the masher
MENU_MOVIE_51	Show cartridge being ground up if player fails to rescue it in time
MENU_MOVIE_52	Selmatty dragon is chased off, entrance to dungeon
MENU_MOVIE_53	Poochie as kingpin
MENU_MOVIE_54	Medal of Homer fake loading screen
MENU_MOVIE_55	Grandpa buzzes the crows nest
MENU_MOVIE_56	Mr. Sparkle
MENU_MOVIE_57	Airship to Sky Island
MENU_MOVIE_58	Sparklemon 1 absorbed into Mr. Sparkle
MENU_MOVIE_59	Sparklemon 2 absorbed into Mr. Sparkle
MENU_MOVIE_60	Sparklemon 3 absorbed into Mr. Sparkle
MENU_MOVIE_61	Sparklemon battle 1
MENU_MOVIE_62	Sparklemon battle 2
MENU_MOVIE_63	Sparklemon battle 3
MENU_MOVIE_64	Say hello to my little friends
MENU_MOVIE_65	Climbing the Tower/Intro to heaven
MENU_MOVIE_66	Show defeat of Shakespeare
MENU_MOVIE_67	Confronting God
MENU_MOVIE_68	Ben Franklin
MENU_MOVIE_69	Intro couch gag

3 & 4 Player Splitscreen

An incomplete three and four player splitscreen mode that barely functions. It is only somewhat playable in the PSP version with only one player playable. None of the other screens display anything useful, since it doesn't have any controller checks in place, unlike the PS2 and Wii versions.

There are only two areas in the New Gen release that has all 4 Simpsons available at once (but still doesn't allow 4 simultaneous player screens), and every single level in Old Gen only has two players available maximum. This could either be an early leftover from New Gen, or maybe even from when it was prototyped and demoed on the Xbox, which also has 4 available controller ports.

(Source: Edness)

Unused Graphics

Level Screenshots

FRONTEND.*\graphics\ui\menus\levels\ has a few early screenshots meant to be used as the level select preview image. These images were taken from a development build on Xbox 360. The final game only has 5 of them that remain, but the earlier prototype has all 16.

• 

  loc.tga

• 

  bartmanbegins.tga

• 

  80bites.tga

• 

  treehugger.tga

• 

  mobrules.tga

Fonts

The Wii version has two font textures that aren't used in the final game. The 2nd one found in tools_fonts.asrBE is seen being used during earlier prototypes for the debug menu.

DigiFont.asrBE\graphics\fonts\digiface_20_0.tga ...\digiface_20_0.tpl	tools_fonts.asrBE\graphics\tools\font.tga

Early HUD Tiles

wm_hb1.wii is leftover from earlier development stages, which also means there's plenty of leftovers and early tile designs to be found. wm_hb1.wii\graphics\ui\ has a bunch of UI elements resembling graphics that were used in the New Gen release along with a bunch of unused tiles as well. Surpsisingly, the final UI graphics that are located in the GUIMenu folder files also has a few unused tiles.

Another tidbit to note is that during earlier Wii development stages, the textures didn't have any alpha channels of their own. Instead they were located separately in GC_Alpha_Textures, in their respective environment container, as three color images which need to be split into individual R, G, B channels in order to get the correct alpha channel for each texture.

Early Texture	Final Texture
wm_hb1.wii\graphics\ui\hud\BartHud.tga ..\..\GC_Alpha_Textures\wm_hb1_512x512d0_0.bmp (G)	BartHUD.*\graphics\ui\hud\BartHud.tga Also in GloblHUD.*, tbubbles.*.
wm_hb1.wii\graphics\ui\hud\HomerHud.tga ..\..\GC_Alpha_Textures\wm_hb1_512x512d0_0.bmp (R)	HomerHUD.*\graphics\ui\hud\HomerHud.tga Also in GloblHUD.*, tbubbles.*.
wm_hb1.wii\graphics\ui\hud\LisaHud.tga ..\..\GC_Alpha_Textures\wm_hb1_512x256d0_0.bmp (G)	LisaHUD.*\graphics\ui\hud\LisaHud.tga Also in GloblHUD.*, HomerHUD.*, tbubbles.*.
wm_hb1.wii\graphics\ui\hud\MargeHud.tga ..\..\GC_Alpha_Textures\wm_hb1_512x256d0_0.bmp (R)	MargeHUD.*\graphics\ui\hud\MargeHud.tga Also in GloblHUD.*, tbubbles.*.

All of the Character HUD containers, GloblHUD.* and tbubbles.* has a commonhud.tga graphic which also contains many New Gen HUD elements that aren't used in this version. And ColTotal.* happens to have an earlier version of this graphic, lacking a few tiles, such as the notepad icon.

ColTotal.*\graphics\ui\hud\commonhud.tga	GloblHUD.*\graphics\ui\hud\commonhud.tga Also in (Character)HUD.*, tbubbles.*.

Unused Wii Moments Minigames

wm_cat1.wii

The Wii version has two unused Wii Moment maps.

The Lord of the Flings: Hobbapult

A cut catapulting minigame. This has its own file, named wm_cat1.wii, but loading said map will put you in a blank world with nothing in it.

Inside wm_cat1.wii\Sounds\samples\char\voc\homr\ you can also find placeholder sounds that were meant to be played by Homer's character. It doesn't sound like it is using Homer's actual voice actor, and whoever did voice these, sounds a lot like the same actor in the early version of Around The World in 80 Bites cutscene found in the prototype.

Filename	Audio
x_homr_xxx_0000053_a.wav
x_homr_xxx_0000053_b.wav
x_homr_xxx_0000053_c.wav
x_homr_xxx_0000054_a.wav
x_homr_xxx_0000054_b.wav
x_homr_xxx_0000054_c.wav
x_homr_xxx_0000054_d.wav
x_homr_xxx_0000054_e.wav
x_homr_xxx_0000055_a.wav
x_homr_xxx_0000055_b.wav
x_homr_xxx_0000055_c.wav

Heartburn

Also known as Homer Bowling. The actual map wm_hb1.wii was supposed to use has been long removed in this build, but is fully present in the earlier Wii prototype. What did remain in the final release, however, was the Metrics.* test map that took its place. It's also mentioned in the PlayStation 2 release inside CD_ENVS.TXT, but isn't actually present.

• Homer's running animation is different and resembles the running animation from the DS version

The characters for whatever reason have somewhat corrupted textures when loading this map, but the aforementioned prototype renders them properly.

Unused Sounds

UI_placeholder_sound.wav in GMSND.ASR is an unused menu sound.

Unused Music

moh02ac

An early version of the music for the second area of the Medal of Homer level exists, but both the music and that part of the level are not present in the final game. This track can also be found in the New-Gen E3 build

moh03am

An early version of the music for the third area of the Medal of Homer. This track can also be found in the

Oddities

Bite Night Background

The Around the World in 80 Bites version of the Bite Night seems to use an early version of the level as it's background.

Build Dates

The Wii version has a build date mentioned in the game's executable.

Region	Build date
Wii (North America)	14:23:36, Oct  9 2007
Wii (Europe/Australia)	23:07:01, Sep 30 2007

Development Leftovers

ELF Executable

An executable with debug symbols named Simpsons_Wii_Sub.elf is present in the root of the Wii version. It is just the retail executable, as the MD5 hash matches with main.dol after stripping the symbols from it, the European/Australian version has it named Simpsons_Wii_Sub_Pal.elf.

Disc Definition File

To do: Check all regions for this file?

A ddf file named Simpsons_Wii_am.ddf is present on the root of the Wii version.

Compilation Metadata

To do: Name in credits? Is Andy Haith an alternative name?

The compiled font file for the game, SimpFont.asrBE in the Wii version leftover a TEMP chunk, having a small bit of information of where a developer compiled it. The developer being Andrew Haith. A lead designer of Rebellion Developments.

TEMP=C:\DOCUME~1\ANDREW~1.HAI\LOCALS~1\Temp
TMP=C:\DOCUMEB
LLION
USERNAME=andrew.haith
USERPROFILE=C:\Documents  dna

Platform Differences

Texture Quality

Since the PlayStation Portable's UMD format has much less storage than the PlayStation 2's DVD and the Wii's Optical Disc, several textures ended up being scaled down to accommodate for the smaller file size.

The example below uses the font texture located in SimpFont.asr*\graphics\fonts\itc highlander std medium_24_bold_0.tga:

PlayStation 2 & Wii	PlayStation Portable