The internet’s favorite Simpsons scene, often referred to as “Steamed Hams,” has been recreated in hundreds of strange ways over the years. Now someone has turned the whole thing into a playable point-and-click adventure game, not unlike classics like Monkey Island.
“22 Short Films About Springfield” first aired as the 21st episode of season 7 of The Simpsons all the way back in 1996. It’s a great episode, featuring some classic moments and jokes. But one segment starring Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers has become, in recent years at least, popular meme fodder. In the segment, Skinner invites Chalmers to lunch, ruins the meal and sneaks over to Krusty Burger to get some grub he can pass off as his own. What follows is an absurd conversation—with Skinner trying to convince Chalmers that in upstate New York people call burgers “steamed hams”—is one of the silliest moments shared between those two characters at that point in the show’s run.
Now, in 2022, developer NeoDement has gone and recreated the whole thing as a playable adventure game, complete with the familiar graphics and UI from classic adventure games of the era. You can download it from GameJolt for free.
And here’s a full playthrough of the game via the developer’s YouTube channel.
Bill Oakley, one of The Simpsons writers behind the segment that birthed Steamed Hams, shared the game on Twitter with a simple “OH MY GOD” response. So he seems to dig it, at least.
Gotta catch 493 of 'em!
While the new entries in the series have adopted a larger third-person camera that can be controlled, these remakes follow the spirit of the originals.
Last year, Oakley actually talked about a strange quirk in this episode. In the Steamed Hams segment, Chalmers says he needed directions to get to Skinner’s home. This seemingly contradicts a previous episode that season where we see Chalmers bringing Skinner’s mother home after a date. Oakley had never thought about that and explained to The AV Club that the line was added by Greg Daniels, who helped put the big episode together.
After you beat Steamed Hams: The Adventure Game, you can then check out the fan recreation of Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge, a terrible golf game seen in The Simpsons. Poor Bart, he deserved better than that.
