Released for the Playstation 2 and Xbox in August of 2003, the Futurama video game has a unique connection to the canon of the animated series. It was released the same month that Futurama concluded its first run on Fox, ending with Season 4's "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings."
The video game had been produced with the direct involvement of much of the same team that created the original show. Executive Producers Matt Groening and David X. Cohen were heavily involved in the development, the original CGI animated cutscenes featured the majority of the voice cast, the script was written by veteran Futurama writer J. Stewart Burns, and the music was provided by the show's composer, Christopher Tyng.
During an interview with Wired in 2007, Cohen even described the video game as, "the 73rd episode of the original series...We are looking to include the footage as 'the lost Futurama episode' on one of the upcoming DVDs." It would indeed later be featured as a special feature on the DVD release of "The Beast With a Billion Backs," the second direct-to-DVD movie.
As such, it carries a lot of the same DNA as the original series, and the status it held with the creators is apparent. However, if it had been considered the "73rd" and final episode of the series -- which it officially wasn't following the success of Season 5 on DVD and the show's revival by Comedy Central -- then it would have been a tragic way to end the story.
The plot opens with Farnsworth selling Planet Express to Mom -- inadvertently giving her control of 50 percent ownership of the planet and making her the emperor of the world. She quickly forces humanity to help her convert the planet into a war machine, using an army of robots to enforce her will.
Fry, Leela and Bender try to escape the planet with Professor Farnsworth, who's the only person who could construct the engine powerful enough for Mom's new world to travel the galaxy. To help, the group is able to use Farnsworth's newest invention, the Re-Animator. Capable of creating a new copy of anyone who dies within moments, the crew is able to perish multiple times throughout the story and be revived.
Although the crew fails to prevent Farnsworth from being captured by Mom, they are able to escape through the Kingdom on the Sun and find Farnsworth's mentor, the ancient alien scientist Adoy. He builds them a time machine, bringing the trio back to before Farnsworth sold the company. The crew rushes to prevent the sale and defeat the massive Destructor. However, the Re-Animator is destroyed by Igner, and the three are killed when Destructor collapses on top of them. Farnsworth then sells Mom the company anyway, resulting in the beginning moments of the story to repeat, suggesting the cast is caught in a time loop.
Taken as the "73rd episode," Futurama's video game is a surprisingly grim ending for the cast. In effect, Mom succeeds in her mission and conquers the Earth as she threatened to do in Season 2's "Mother's Day." The three primary characters are killed just as they're on the verge of victory and seemingly doomed to repeat their defeat countless times. It's a surprisingly big downer, but it's oddly appropriate for the overall heavy sci-fi and bittersweet tone of the series. However, when the series was revived, it carried on the original canon while ignoring the events of the video game, yet it's still shocking to think about just how tragically things could have ended for the characters if this had been the final adventure of the Planet Express Crew.