Ah, 2020. The year of things that could’ve been.
In this latest edition of “stuff you can only dream about” is a look back to 20 years ago, when the now-defunct Red Lemon Studios was seemingly working on a video game based on The Simpsons for Sega’s ahead-of-its-time console, the Dreamcast. (h/t The Verge)
What you see here is a tech demo set in the Simpsons’ kitchen and living room (complete with a TV showing an old Itchy & Scratchy episode). There’s not much to it, just a player-controlled insect that can run and hop around. But the cartoon art style (commonly known as “cel-shading” in games) is absolutely gorgeous for a 20-year-old creation.
As it turns out, this was only ever meant to be an in-house experiment, and potentially a production tool for the show to use(!!!), as Red Lemon co-founder Andy Campbell explains in a comment shared by Dreamcastic Channel, the video’s creator:
Oh my! Not seen that for 20 years! We had a great coder who had developed an amazing cell shading engine for DC. I knew Fox pretty well, so this was a demo we created and I pitched to them. We were never commissioned, so this was technically never an official title in development.
This was a trip down memory lane. The tech was great, developed by a guy call Rich Evans, great coder. Bug Squad concept came from Jamie Grant if I remember. A great art team built the models. The tech was also pitched as a production tool for the show itself. No game made though.
How cool!