EA unveils their new Simpsons game @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on May 09, 2007

News: The Simpsons make the next-gen leap.

After acquiring the license in late 2005, EA has announced the first details of their new Simpsons, currently titled just "The Simpsons". The game is being developed by EA Redwood Shores and it will be coming to the PS2, PS3, PSP, Xbox 360, DS and Wii this fall. It was unveiled to the world at a Simpsons press event this morning.

The game will take the form of a third person action adventure starring the entire Simpsons family (minus Maggie). According to EA, the game will be broken up into 16 "episodes" with a unique location and theme (EA showed off "Around the World in 80 Bites," or Homer's adventure at Duff Brewery during the press event). Two Simpsons family will tackle each episode with one player switching off between the characters or two players playing together in splitscreen mode.

The game will use a special cel-shaded graphical engine that not only recreates the show's cartoon look, but flattens all of the characters so they'll have a flat, 2D look as well.

The Simpsons writers will also be sharpening their parody knives as staff writers Tim Long, Matt Selman and Matt Warburton supplied the dialogue for the game. Over 8,000 lines of dialogue to be precise, along with close to an hour of original cinematics.

This parodic bent will also extend to the world of video games as The Simpsons will realize they're in a game and proceed to make jabs at the game industry. This includes giving themselves super powers (Bartman will become Bartman and Homer will bulk up into the giant Homerball).

We'll have more on the new Simpsons game (EA says it will be the 22nd, the first was Bart Versus the Space Mutants in 1989) very soon.