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 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 "Bite Night Wii Moments" as extra minigames.

Sub-Pages

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

Prototype Info

Notes

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 PAL 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

3 & 4 Player Splitscreen

This game seems to have an incomplete three and four player splitscreen mode that barely functions. It is only somewhat playable on the PSP port with only one player playable and none of the other screens displaying 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.

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

In the files of the game there exists unused renditions of music used in the game. Oddly enough the instruments used are similar to the unused renditions found in the prototype.

moh02ac

a unused rendition of the "Homer's Charge" theme, which the music and the part of the level are not found in the final game.

moh03am

a unused rendition of the third part for Medal of Homer. What is odd though is that it's only the first layer, and that there's also music for this part of the level that is already used in-game.

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...

Build Dates

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

Region	Build date
Wii (NTSC)	14:23:36, Oct  9 2007
Wii (PAL)	23:07:01, Sep 30 2007

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