The full history of Epic Homer

Epic Homer is a Simpsons video game meant release exclusively for the Nintendo Wii in 2008 until the ESRB unexpectedly prevented it from ever being released again after its initial release and by 2009, no copies were allowed to be sold. what is its full story and what exactly is this game?

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The development of this game is surprisingly long, spanning almost a decade and multiple generations. We need to go back to the year 1998. The state of Simpsons video games was not good.The first game is lost media, "Simpson Family Maze Quest", released in 1989 for the commodore 64. It only was released in eastern Europe for unknown reasons.

The second was "You Are Lisa Simpson" in 1993 which was simple MS DOS game for PC revolving around Lisa and a year later, in 1993, "Bort Simpleton Vs. Nuclear Strong Man" was released for the SNES, this time starring Bart, well technically.The story here is that during the development of “Bort Simpleton Vs. Nuclear Strong Man", about a month prior to the deadline, Kemco got their license to The Simpsons removed causing them to have to change the name and look of the characters as they no longer own the rights to them.

A whole 4 years later, The Simpsons Office Assistant Extension Pack for Microsoft Office Suite would be released for PC. They were simple replacements for the infamous Clippit that everyone hated and included a mini game called Krusty Fun Juggle. By 1998, "The Simps", a virtual pet game, would be released for the infamous Game.com consoles.

FOX at this point had an idea. They thought that they could help revive the Simpsons video game scene through contacting a video game company. They would eventually find THQ who agreed on making a game but they also agreed that if THQ failed, they will move to EA with their deal.

FOX would have a big role in the early stage of its development, giving the team episode scripts and character biographies so that it would be easier to create a story and portray the characters accurately. By late 1998, the story gameplay and characters were already set out. The game at this point was simply called "Simpsons game" and would have all 5 characters of the family be playable, having to collect different items related to the character they are. For example, Homer would have to collect donuts and Bart must collect comics these items would be used to unlock secret abilities and even secret stages.

The story is that Kang and Kudos have invaded Springfield and it is up to the family to save Springfield. throughout the game, you must go through different stages based on the different part of Springfield and even secret locations based on Shelbyville and Capital City.

Along with the main collectables, the game's currency would be dollars with coins and even paper notes scattered everywhere and with enough, you can by extra powerups and abilities by going to a shop that can be found in the different hub worlds and the stages themselves.

Along with all of that, each character will also collect a certain thing to fill a bar that allows really powerful moves to be used and as well as normal hearts to increase health from damage.

The earliest concept art would be done around this time.

Most of them, except for the Simpsons house sketch, were character profiles as the developers wanted to get the character designs first. However, it would be decided that the first location they would design is the Simpsons house itself, where the 3-D models would be tested.

By the end of 1998, into 1999, one of the developers would come up with a new idea. Instead of just pure platforming and defeating enemies, there should be minigames. At first there was disagreements, however most would conclude that it would make the game fun.

However, FOX wasn't impressed with their ideas. FOX did not want Kang and Kodos to be the main villains unless it’s a Halloween game and they did not want it to be a collectathon 3D platformer. They would also complain that it just simply not unique enough.

Even though the story, gameplay, character, and stage ideas have already been set, THQ was forced to either start from scratch or rework something that would make the game different. It was also around this time when discussions of a new Simpsons game started to surface online, increasing the demand for it.

For the first few months of 1999, reworks and tweaks would be done like removing Kang and Kodos out of the story and making it less of a collectathon with the only thing that needs to be collected being reduced to money and one special item for each stage. FOX saw this as a huge improvement but still were not impressed. They wanted it to bless of a 3D platformer and to be like a normal Simpsons episode.

However, by the middle of 1999 and the rest of the year's half, news came that a new Sony and Nintendo console was in the works. There were also voices around the time claiming that Microsoft was going to join the console market and that the Dreamcast may be the last Sega console.

THQ had a decision. Move development to the upcoming consoles or just continue working for the current generation at the time. Already the game was never planned for dreamcast, the first 128-bit console and it was a failure, but now that Sony, Nintendo and even Microsoft are joining the race, the need for shifting it seemed inevitable.

And they were right as like how FOX wanted them to change the gameplay and script, they wanted them to be on the latest consoles at the time, which is something they didn't seem to want back in 1998. THQ themselves would also see that having a system that had higher graphics and space would allow for bigger and better ideas. The development would slowly shift to the upcoming 6th gen consoles once third-party development for them was allowed.

A new set of ideas would come, that it would be OpenWorld with all the areas being connected by late 1999 to the early 2000's. Along with this, it would also be decided that characters would be allowed to ride vehicles. by 2000, another idea came along that despite FOX not wanting it to be Halloween themed, some areas would get makeovers as you proceed through the game like becoming Halloween themed.

By mid-2000, a year after the initial announcements of the consoles, it would be found out that the GameCube and the Xbox would be released in 2001, the same year as the Dreamcast's discontinuation and since THQ wanted it on all 3 consoles, the game would be slated for a 2001-2002 release.

The game would be done in a slow yet steady paste and buy the following year in 2001, it was near complete, however there were 2 problems along the way. the first problem was that they couldn’t make it OpenWorld and had to use a level select due to hardware limitations. The second problem came when it was in its near final stage of completion near the end of 2001. FOX was made to look at the game and they hated it and thought it looked ugly.

FOX wanted it changed immediately which would cause the game to be completely delayed. Despite this, there was a minigame called skeeball and THQ in desperation to atleast release something told FOX that for now they would release a Simpsons skeeball game. FOX agreed but under the deal that the game must succeed and if not, they will change developers.

Simpsons Skeeball was released in 2002 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. It was critically panned, being called the worst skeeball game. The worst aspects according to critics was that there was absolutely nothing Simpsons related other than playing as Homer, the only character in the entire game.

FOX was angry at THQ and doing what they said they would do, would change the developer from THQ to EA by the end of 2002. Even worse many of the games original assets were lost except for a few. This meant that EA had to start from scratch with very tiny bits of what was there before but it didn’t bother them as development would restart by the beginning of 2003.

It would take an entire 3 years to get things right with their priority being the redesign of the ugly models made by THQ. The game would go through numerous design iterations as FOX would constantly change their minds on everything. One thing that FOX didn't change their minds on is the fact that they weren’t allowed to have Halloween or Treehouse of horror type stuff other than a Halloween aesthetic for some of the stages. They also did not change the idea that it must not be a 3D platformer collection and while still 3D and having platforming elements, it must have things other than platforming and be like a normal episode of the show. FOX would also say that they want there to be some sort of recurring theme or gimmick that would make the game interesting and must also revolve around dialogue between the characters.

When EA checked the remaining pieces of the prototype that THQ developed, they saw that it was more than ugly, it was a buggy and glitchy mess. The Collison detection of many of the stages was bad, it froze at certain times, randomly and the models and environments often would not load properly and be corrupted.

This would mean that it needed a complete rework and recoding along with redesigns for the character models which is why the development would take so long, again increasing it to another 3 years.

It would also be decided that car driving would be less emphasized as it would be more about controlling the actual members of the family. FOX agreed to this but still wanted it to have a gimmick.

About halfway through 2004, FOX would out of nowhere announce that they want it to be a Homer game. FOX would also start to come up with name ideas saying it must be a prefix like super or ultra and eventually the word epic was chosen and thus the game became known as Epic Homer.

The game world be reworked slightly once again but somewhere in 2005, there was a rumor that Nintendo was working on a new console that had wireless controllers that sensed what the player was doing. At this time, it was called the Revolution and both FOX and EA saw it as an opportunity. eventually, the answer finally came that it was in fact a new console with wireless sensor controllers.

The Revolution would be renamed the Wii and EA contacted Nintendo immediately. Nintendo refused at first but eventually agreed. But they ran to a problem, they didn’t want to spend too much money and if they were to have the Wii controllers be the gimmick, the Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 at the time were not suitable, nor was the PC so all 3 of those ports were cancelled and focus was mainly on the Wii.

The last major rework would begin in 2006 and would take 2 years with FOX changing how things must be. EA still haven’t fully changed the game from being about the Simpsons family to being Homer focused, which was the main priority, other than that, the game would be almost complete and all that weas needed was to implement the motion controls.

It would take another year from 2007 to 2008 where it would be finalized and completed and ready to be released. However, they would encounter a problem. When it was shown to the ERSB, they caught a problem. There was a scene in the game where Homer gets angry and strangles Bart like the show except, you had to shake the Wii remote

This concerned the ERSB as they saw it as imitating child abuse and encouraged violence. Because of this, they decided to ban the game. This upset FOX and EA as this game was worked on for a decade and has costed them money.The ERSB would make a deal, they would allow for limited releases in certain stores for only that year, 2008 and very limited advertising. EA and FOX would agree and despite this, the game would do quite well.

It was mainly praised for its gameplay and cut scenes, getting high review scores usually and as for sales, it also sold quite well, selling about a million units. Because of the deal, the game would stop selling by the end of 2008. Luckily it would not become lost media as roms of the game would start to be uploaded on the internet as early as 2009. Despite the games limited success, FOX and EA would not create another Simpsons game until The Simpsons: Tapped Out in 2012.