The Simpsons — port

The Simpsons — port

Konami's 1991 arcade game The Simpsons as a native game for computers, the Nintendo Switch, Android, iPhone and iPad, and Anbernic's handhelds, built on its decompilation, simpsons-decomp: both of the game's programs (the Konami 053248's and the Z80's) in C, checked frame by frame against MAME in state, picture and sound. Two games come out of it:

• The Simpsons Arcade Game: the arcade game as it is: coins, the test mode, four players.
• The Simpsons Mr. Plow Edition: the console version, the arcade game made for playing at home.

This repository contains no game data: you bring your own ROM set (MAME's simpsons, 4 Players World, set 1), and the game takes its assets out of it. Only that set: MAME's other sets of the game (the 2 Players ones, the Japanese and Asian ones) have program ROMs of their own, which the decompilation does not cover, and the game refuses them.

Playing it

Download the package for Windows, Linux or macOS from the releases. Keep simpsons.zip beside the game, or drop it on its window when it asks: the first time, it takes the assets out of it (simpsons.assets, a fraction of a second), and plays from them from then on.

Each device has a package of its own, its games without assets, beside the tools that make your own of them on a computer (for Windows, macOS and Linux):

• Nintendo Switch (simpsons-switch.zip): The Simpsons Mr. Plow Edition.nro and The Simpsons Arcade Game.nro for the Homebrew Menu, with simpsons.zip in /switch/simpsons-arcade/ on the SD card; or Simpsons NSP makes The Simpsons Mr. Plow Edition.nsp and The Simpsons Arcade Game.nsp for the HOME menu.
• Android (simpsons-android.zip): Simpsons APK makes The Simpsons Mr. Plow Edition.apk and The Simpsons Arcade Game.apk on your computer, with the assets of your simpsons.zip inside, signed with a key of yours (ports/android/apk). Phones, tablets, foldables, and TVs with Android TV or Google TV (in the TV's apps, with a banner; the APKs carry 32-bit ARM too, for the Chromecast with Google TV).
• iPhone and iPad (simpsons-ios.zip): unsigned .ipa files to install with AltStore, SideStore or Sideloadly, and simpsons.zip put in the game's folder with the Files app or the Finder. They are not, and will not be, on the App Store.
• Anbernic's H700 handhelds (simpsons-anbernic.zip, the stock firmware): the folder for PORTS, with simpsons.zip in PORTS/simpsons/; or Simpsons Anbernic makes it with the assets inside.

What a tool makes has the game's data in it: it is yours alone, never share it. Each package's README.txt says how.

The console version

• The Konami presentation: the family walks across the game's own big Konami logo, then Bart has a word.
• The menu on the TV: the family's TV from the attract mode, the title on its screen.
• ARCADE: the arcade's game with no coins: each player picks a character on the game's own portraits, one each, and START brings a player in at any time, up to four. After a continue, or for a new player, START picks again. OPTIONS sets its lives and its continues (0 to 9, or UNLIMITED).
• MR. PLOW MODE:
  • FREE PLAY: the arcade game from stage 1, as many continues as you like.
  • BOSS RUSH: the bosses one after another, from the wrestler to Mr. Burns, each stage crossed to its boss out of sight.
  • BONUS GAMES: the two bonus stages in a row, for one to four players, with their results.
  • FRANK GRIMES LIFE: one player, the whole game, against what four players would face.
• MULTIPLAYER: up to four devices on the same local network play one game, a character each: one hosts a room (HOST), the others find it (JOIN), and the host's START begins ARCADE's game on all of them with the host's settings. Built on arcade-lan; Escape or Back leaves the game.
• OPTIONS: controls for four players, difficulty, lives, ARCADE's continues, demo sound, screen, video (window, full screen, sharp, smooth, bilinear or CRT pixels, integer scale, WIDE AUTO, 16:10, 16:9 or 20:9, VSYNC, FPS), volume, and SOUND: MONO, as the cabinet wires it, or STEREO, the music's channels where the program pans them. The version is under the menu and in OPTIONS.
• WIDE: the picture as wide as your screen (AUTO follows its shape), the stages drawn past the cabinet's 320 columns, the players' boxes in the middle.
• The pause in a game: CONTINUE, SAVE STATE, LOAD STATE, RESTART, QUIT GAME. In the story scenes, the stages' title cards and ends and the ending, START skips the scene instead (as the attack does), and nothing pauses there.
• The high scores are kept between sessions (the cabinet forgets them at power-off).
• Bart's shirt is orange, as on the show (the cabinet dresses him in light blue).
• And the Konami code on the menu: a stage select, infinite lives or health, and two or more players with the same character.

Controls

• Keyboard: player 1's arrows move, Z or left Ctrl attacks, X jumps, Enter or 1 is START; player 2 is R F D G, A, S and 2; player 3 I K J L, right Ctrl, right Shift and 3; player 4 the keypad's 8 2 4 6, 0, its point and 4. Escape pauses (and goes back in the menus). F11 or Alt+Enter is the full screen, F3 the next kind of pixels. OPTIONS > CONTROLS changes each player's keys and buttons (controls.ini).
• Game controller: the pad or the left stick moves, A attacks, B jumps, Start is START; Back or Start pauses. Each controller is a player, in the order they are plugged in (a TV's remote after them). One the game does not know, or knows wrong, takes its line of SDL_GameControllerDB's format in gamecontrollerdb.txt, beside the game on Windows (in ~/.local/share/The Simpsons on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/The Simpsons on macOS).
• The Simpsons Arcade Game: 5 to 8 put a coin in each slot (a controller's Back, its player's), F2 is the test switch, and a coin and the attack bring a player in.
• Touch screens (Android, iPhone, iPad): a stick where your left thumb lands, ATTACK and JUMP at the right, START (COIN in The Simpsons Arcade Game); a controller hides them.

Building it

Python 3.10 or newer, CMake 3.20 or newer, a C11 / C++17 compiler and SDL2 2.30 or newer. The simplest SDL2 is the releases' own: -DSIMPSONS_STATIC_SDL2=ON builds it from its source into the games (CMake fetches it). Otherwise the system's (libsdl2-dev on Debian and Ubuntu). Clone it with its submodule and build it:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/cheviman/simpsons-port

cmake -S . -B build/cmake -DSIMPSONS_STATIC_SDL2=ON -DSIMPSONS_REFERENCE_TOOLS=OFF

cmake --build build/cmake --config Release

The games are The Simpsons Arcade Game and The Simpsons Mr. Plow Edition, in build/bin/: they take their assets out of simpsons.zip the first time (beside them, or in rom/), and on Windows cmake --build build/cmake --config Release --target simpsons_package packs them as the releases do. Each device's build is in ports/PLAN.md; the console version's plan and what is done in console/PLAN.md. The decompilation itself (its status, the tools, the assets' formats, the checks against MAME) is simpsons-decomp's README.

Supporting it

The games are free, and stay free. If you want to support the decompilations and the ports, there is Patreon, where supporters also have a say in what comes next, and GitHub Sponsors: entirely optional, nothing is locked behind either. If anyone asks you to pay for these games, it is not this project.

Legal

• This project is licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License; see LICENSE.
• The C in src/ is the game's programs decompiled into a new form: logic only, with names and comments written for this project. No ROM contents (graphics, sound, data) and no extracted assets are distributed by this project; they come from your own ROM set. The screenshots in docs/screenshots/ show the game running from this code.
• runtime/ follows the behaviour of MAME's simpsons.cpp, k052109.cpp, k053246_k053247_k055673.cpp, k053251.cpp and k053260.cpp and of ymfm's OPM (all BSD-3-Clause).
• The game controllers' mappings are SDL_GameControllerDB's (ports/sdl2/controllerdb, zlib License), built into the games on the computers, Android and iOS.
• The first run's window writes with Kenney Mini and CONTROLS shows Kenney's Input Prompts (www.kenney.nl), CC0. The window port links SDL2 (zlib License); the packages carry it inside the executables, with its terms and the ones above in licenses/.
• The icons are the arcade game's cover (the Switch) and Homer at his window from the show (the computers, Android, iOS): Konami's and the show's art.
• The Simpsons is a trademark of its owner, and the arcade game is Konami's. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by either, nor by Nintendo, Apple, Google or Anbernic.