The Simpsons had a penchant for good videogame parodies. Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge is an obvious example, but another highlight of the animated series is the Waterworld arcade game. You know the one, where Milhouse spends 40 quarters to walk two feet as Kevin Costner! Someone’s fleshed out the gag to be a full adventure game.
Developed Macaw45 is responsible for the project, available for free on Itch.io. When you first boot it up, it seems like it’s just a meta-gag based on the scene. You manually insert 40 quarters to get a go, and then you get game over just as quick as Milhouse does. But then, if you insert another 40 coins, you can go further, and actually explore the full action game.
Don’t get excited, there isn’t some deleted scene or short or something where we see more of the mythical licenced arcade machine. Macaw45 just made his own approximation of what might come after the scene we see. “Originally planned to only be a short game, it quickly developed further,” he writes on the description on Itch. “I sunk tremendous amounts of effort into it to the point where it ended up becoming a fully fleshed out game of much greater scope than I ever expected.”
To play it yourself, just go to the link above, and download the file. You won’t need to install anything, and once you start it up you’ll be faced with arcade interface that lets you play. It’s a funny little curio totally in the spirit of the comedy series.
An official line of games based on Waterworld were release for the SNES, Virtual Boy, Game Boy, and PC. They’re all pretty standard open-world shooters where you explore pats of the waterlogged landscape to take on pirates. Marginally more playable than The Simpsons version, but it’s a close call.
A TV series based on Waterworld is in development, but we haven’t heard much since the initial announcement. Check out the best science fiction movies for more candidates for wonky virtual tie-ins.