Don’t forget: The Simpsons Arcade is free for PlayStation Plus subscribers this month! Read the full details here.

Speaking as a lifelong Simpsons fan, I’m just as excited for this game to come out as everyone else — the wait to finally see this game make its way to home consoles seemed endless! We worked closely with Gracie Films and Fox to time the release of the game with the 500th episode of The Simpsons so that fans of the show could experience the classic game during an important milestone for the series.

It’s been a great collaborative effort with Gracie Films to find a balance between preserving the authenticity of the original arcade game and making just enough tweaks to adapt it for PS3. The original game is already great, so we decided we would focus primarily on making it as faithful a port as possible while adding various gameplay modes and bonus content.

We also listened to fans’ suggestions from our previous arcade conversions, particularly in respect to including more challenging ways to play these classic arcade games when you remove the quarter-crunching element. To that end, we’ve included several different gameplay modes in The Simpsons Arcade, so there’s a mode (and a leaderboard!) for everybody.

Freeplay is the usual “unlimited continues” mode found in most arcade-to-console ports. It’s best when you just want to sit back and do a full playthrough without having to worry about getting a game over screen. One of the best parts of Freeplay mode in Simpsons Arcade is being able to scour the levels at your leisure to find the many, many inside jokes placed there by the original programmers in 1991.

To provide a more challenging experience closer to that of the original coin-op game, we included two different kinds of “Quarters” modes that give the player a set amount of credits up front. One Quarters mode sees players pulling credits from the same pool, while the other gives each player their own stash. Finally, Survival mode is the ultimate test because it gives you just one life to progress through the game. I look forward to seeing how far players can get on only one life!

We really wanted to add a lot of replay value to this title, hence all the different gameplay modes, leaderboards, Trophies, inclusion of both US and Japanese ROMs, and all the unlockable bonus content. There are some pretty cool unlockables in here, including my personal favorite, the sound test from the original game. There are a ton of hilarious sound effects in that lot that are just plain fun to listen to. We also dug up as much Simpsons Arcade memorabilia as we could find and put it all in a “Flashback” section. We’re hoping it really rounds out the overall experience and adds to the fan appreciation for this arcade gem.

I hope you’ll enjoy playing this game as much as I have, and I hope it brings back nostalgic memories of the glorious early ‘90s and all that Simpsons goodness.