The Simpsons

For more than three decades the Springfield sitcom has been the center of gravity here, and everything else in this collection orbits it. The 1989 series reinvented American animation as adult satire, and its sprawl into other media reads like a survey of pop culture itself: a coin-op beat-em-up and a string of platformers in the NES era, the open-world favorite Hit & Run, the long-running mobile builder Tapped Out, and a 2007 theatrical feature that arrived almost twenty years too late to feel like an event.

The tie-in books and holiday shorts are minor, and crossovers like LEGO Dimensions and Fortnite show a brand happy to rent itself out. The honest verdict: the show is essential and most of the games are disposable, with Hit & Run the one worth defending.

The The Simpsons franchise spans 1 series, 1 books, 8 games, 9 films in the CrossBinge catalog.