5 Of The Best Video Game References in The Simpsons

The Simpsons has always tried, and succeeded, to have a hilarious take on pop culture. Whether they’re making fun of Apple, or the latest movie, The Simpsons have always been pretty on the ball when it comes to mocking our favorite hobbies. This of course includes video games, so we’ve picked out the best gaming references we could find. Some are obvious, others you may have missed.

Bonestorm

In the episode Marge Be Not Proud (Season 7, episode 11), Bart craves after a violent video game called Bonestorm. Marge will not buy it for him, as quite rightly, she feels it is too violent for him, so he decides to steal it. Bonestorm is actually a reference to the Mortal Kombat games, so now we can all understand why his mom doesn’t want him to play it. Whilst Bart is considering stealing the game from the store, he also imagines other video game characters giving him advice, including Donkey Kong, Mario and Luigi and Sonic.

E4 (Expensive Electronic Entertainment Expo)

In the episode The Food Wife (Season 23, episode 5), Homer takes Bart and Lisa to E4, an obvious poke at E3, the annual video games expo. There are almost too many references to count here but some of the games shown at the event include: Guts Of War: Entrails of Intestinox , Furious Fliers, Marching Band, Grand Theft Scratchy, Grand Theft Scratchy: Itchy City Stories, World of KrustCraft, Jalo, Shaun White: Time Snowboarding, Dig Dug Revelations, Driver’s Licence 2: Licence to Drive, Assassin’s Creed: Summer of Love, Human Centipede, Blocko Cosmic Wars, Q-bert Origins and Medal of Duty. GameStation, Nokami, Mapple, Zii ZU and Ybox also make an appearance.

Portal

I squealed a little bit too much when I saw this Portal reference in How I Wet Your Mother (Season 23, episode 16). It’s only brief but at the beginning of the episode, Smithers open a secure supply closet and is greeted by two robotic turrets. So what does Smithers do? He gets a Portal gun out of his pocket and zaps them away, obviously.

Pokemon

In Postcards From The Wedge (Season 21, episode 14), Bart is trying to do his homework but he’s being distracted by a familiar looking TV show. Yep, Bart is watching Pokemon. Homer finds out that he’s watching TV and promptly comes in and tries to black out the TV by scribbling over Pikachu’s face with a pen. This isn’t the first time Pokemon has been referenced in The Simpsons, other notable nods include Bart vs. Lisa vs. The Third Grade (Season 14, Episode 3) where Bart imagines his classmates are TV characters during a test, one of them is Pikachu, also in Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo (Season 10, episode 23), The Simpsons watch a show called Battle Seizure Robots this is a reference to the 38th episode of the original series of Pokemon, which notoriously gave over 600 Japanese children seizures.

Dash Dingo

In Lisa Gets An “A” (Season 10, episode 7), Lisa gets addicted to a video game called Dash Dingo, an obvious rip of Crash Bandicoot. It features a treasure hunting Australian dingo full of many Aussie stereotypes. The Dash Dingo character also appeared as the mascot of the store Dingo Junction, which appears in Lard Of The Dance (Season 10, episode 1).

There are many more great video games references in The Simpsons but if we were to mention them all, we’d be here for a very long time. What are your favorites? Let us know in the comments.

Many thanks to Simpsons Wiki



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