Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (1991 arcade, 1992 SNES)
X-Men (1992 arcade)
Asterix (1992 arcade)
Maybe the answer is just “TMNT was a juggernaut”? The Simpsons was extremely early in its run (mid-season 2) when the game launched. The X-Men cartoon hadn’t even started yet. Asterix is just aggressively European. The games probably all did well, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the TMNT titles eclipsed them in earnings.
I don’t think it’s a hardware capability thing, or we wouldn’t have console versions of the TMNT games, either. While the SNES hardware is obviously less capable than the original arcade cab, many consider the SNES port of Turtles in Time to be definitive. There’s no reason Simpsons couldn’t have been similar.
I wonder how Konami decided which of their licensed beat-'em-ups did or didn’t get console ports. In order of release, they go …
Maybe the answer is just “TMNT was a juggernaut”? The Simpsons was extremely early in its run (mid-season 2) when the game launched. The X-Men cartoon hadn’t even started yet. Asterix is just aggressively European. The games probably all did well, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the TMNT titles eclipsed them in earnings.
I don’t think it’s a hardware capability thing, or we wouldn’t have console versions of the TMNT games, either. While the SNES hardware is obviously less capable than the original arcade cab, many consider the SNES port of Turtles in Time to be definitive. There’s no reason Simpsons couldn’t have been similar.