The Simpsons: Hit & Run Review (PS2)
After the developmental crimes of Road Rage, why not go full criminality and clone Grand Theft Auto?
Developer: Radical Entertainment
Publisher: Vivendi Universal Games
Release Date: 31st October 2003 (EU), 16th September 2003 (NA), 21st November 2003 (PC, EU), 11th November 2003 (PC, NA)
Platforms: PlayStation 2, Xbox, Gamecube, PC.
In the early 2000’s, The Simpsons wanted to get back into the video game scene. Their last attempt in the 90’s was Virtual Springfield, a curious little point and click adventure letting you explore most of Springfield. And how else do you get back into the scene by none other than copying other popular games of the time? In 2001 we saw the disasterpiece Simpsons Wrestling, copying the WWE SmackDown! games, which even as a kid I knew was terrible but it had something endearing to it. Still, not a great start. In 2001 we saw The Simpsons: Road Rage, a Crazy Taxy clone which wasn’t that bad at all. It’s a fine clone of the game. Then in 2002 they cloned the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series with The Simpsons Skateboarding, another disasterpiece where you couldn’t even pull off tricks properly without the game bugging out.
4th time’s the charm maybe? A year later came none other than a Grand Theft Auto clone with The Simpsons Hit & Run! Because why not clone the biggest game series of the early 2000’s if you want a good game. And did it work? Yes! Well, mostly. But mainly yes.
The plot of the game sees Homer suddenly getting thirsty after seeing on TV Krusty advertising a brand new Buzz Cola! So he just has to go on down to the Kwik-E-Mart to get some, only to then run errands, go to work, then flake off for the rest of the day. While roaming around Evergreen Terrace, Homer then begins a dive deep down a conspiracy rabbit hole with mysterious giant robot wasps flying around town with cameras on their faces, mysterious black vans with cameras atop of them too, and that the new Buzz Cola will drive you insane. The conspiracy deepens as you play as Bart who then gets kidnapped by aliens, Lisa finding Bart dumped on the waterfront babbling in tongues, Marge going back to her officer ways digging deeper to the core of this Buzz Cola conspiracy and to fix Bart, and then as Apu lending a hand, feeling guilt stricken for selling dodgy merchandise. For once, I guess. Apu infiltrates the Springfield Museum with a now cognitive Bart and discovers the new Buzz is from a meteorite and that Kang and Kodos are behind this madness, wanting the humans to consume this new cola to go even madder and using the wasp cameras to film the humans for their reality TV show Foolish Earthlings. Bart then takes the lead again as he plans to ruin Kang and Kodos’ plans, as well as Krusty’s new business deal destroying laser stands provided by the aliens who wants to see the humans descend into a violent massacre. Homer wraps things up again as things turn to total madness, and in the vein of a Treehouse of Horror episode too, how nice. With the help of Professor Frink, Snake, and Grandpa Abe, Homer dumps barrels upon barrels of chemical waste from the nuclear power plant into the alien’s tractor beam at the school to send them to their destructive deaths.
In a nutshell, The Simpsons save the earth from an alien invasion. Or at least Springfield.
The game was written by Simpsons show writers Matt Selman and Tim Long with Matt Warburton who would later writer further Simpsons episodes. And if it were to be looked at as a Simpsons special episode, it’s pretty good and authentically ridiculous. There are some hilarious lines and jokes throughout and is quite possibly one of the funniest games ever.
There is plenty to do in Springfield. You get 3 base areas to explore, Evergreen Terrace, downtown, and the waterfront, and each place is littered with little details and moments from the show. Evergreen Terrace starts at the Simpson’s home, of course, and includes the Kwik-E-Mart, the elementary school, cemetary, the rich part of town with Burns’ mansion, the lower part of town with Cletus’ shack, trailer park, Moe’s house, and tire fire, and the nuclear power plant. Downtown includes the hospital, Jebediah Springfield’s statue, Springfield stadium, the defunct monorail, the tower of lollypop sticks that’s on fire, the DMV, Herman’s discount antiques, and Springfield museum. The waterfront has the comic book shop, Springfield casino, Rancho Relaxo, the observatory, Kamp Krusty, the Duff Brewery, and the TV studio where they film the Krusty Show and the news. You revisit each map twice with Evergreen three times. Downtown you first play as Bart then later as Apu at nighttime. Evergreen you start with Homer then later as Marge, also at nighttime. And downtown with Lisa at sunset and then later as Bart. I’ll give you 3 guesses what time of the day you play it in as Bart. The final level is back at Evergreen but everything’s gone all halloween/Treehouse of Horror with everything black and green and brown, with cars replaced with witches and coffins and hearses. It’s great.
Each level has 7 missions with an additional bonus mission. There are also 3 races to complete and you can even do gamble races to earn a little more coinage. Completing the bonus missions and races rewards you with more cars to use. Missions mostly entail racing from one point to another within the time limit, following a car, smashing a car, and collecting things either in your car or on foot. It’s rinse and repeat but personally it never felt repetitious because it was always varied enough and switched things up in the formula to keep me invested and entertained, and the gameplay and jokes made it always feel fresh. Some missions are dead easy, especially the first level because you’re learning how it all works, but some halfway through get very challenging with tight time limits and danger of your wanted meter going up as you plow through the boardwalk trying to find Bart. Great skill and caution is required later on.
The game itself is basically a racing platformer and I say that because each map is laid out in a loop like a racetrack. You can drive from the Simpsons home past the school, past Burns’ manor, through the Stonecutters tunnel, through the powerplant, out through the trailer park, past the cemetary, and then you’re back home again. It’s an interesting way to lay out the maps but it does play in favour for certain missions. The final Treehouse of Horror level for Evergreen shuts off at the powerplant and school however, so it doesn’t loop there. You could follow the direct throughline around Springfield, but there’s reward for exploring as there are dozens of shortcuts and ramps to use which come in very handy during missions. Also revisiting each area with a new character you’ll find newly opened areas. For example as Marge you can explore Burn’s manor while you couldn’t previously as Homer.
The racing and car handling works fine enough. Each car has different stats, so some are faster than others, some have better handling, and some are much more durable than others. You can drift around corners and the vehicles are reasonable enough to control, which, you better get to practising on because the difficulty spike by level 4 will expect you to get better at the game and be a good driver at this point as the missions become more and more demanding and each level gets increasingly difficult. Even the wanted level has a longer delay to cooldown amidst your chaos in later levels. By the final level your wanted level shoots up so fast you can’t afford to be reckless.
Of course you can run around Springfield too with lots to find and collect. Scattered around the maps are Buzz Cola cards. Collect all 7 in every map and return to the comic book shop in level 3 with Lisa and you can exchange them for an Itchy and Scratchy ticket. Take it to the Aztec Theatre and you can watch a special episode of the cat and mouse duo made for the game. A nice little reward for all of your efforts, and some cards are really sneakily hidden beckoning you to really dig around. Additionally there is a bonus race mode from the main menu where you can race around a series of tracks unlocked from complete card sets ala Micro Machines. There are also gags hidden around the place, interactible buttons or another that trigger an event and reward you with a coin and another tick on your completion to-do list - which nicely has detailed all missions, gags, collectibles and unlockables in the level and overall percentage. Some gags include pressing a button on Homer’s safety inspection desk at work and causing a meltdown, kicking Jebediah’s head off his statue, and raising Camp Bart flag at Kamp Krusty. Everyone of them being a direct refrence to the show, even the collectible cards reference something from the show, such as Mr Sparkle and the Guatemalan insanity pepper. Littering Springfield are also coins and tons of Buzz crates and vending machines. Smash these to get even more coins and these can be spent on additional cars and outfits for each character. Get caught by the police however and you pay a 50 coin fine. There are also Krusty glass panes which are often found at the end of a ramp, which are not only a great indicator to a shortcut you can take but more moolah to grab.
Each level also has a secret car for you to find. You can’t unlock them and call on them at phone booths like all of your other cars, sadly, but they’re fun limited level specific cars to get. These include Frink’s rocket car, the monorail, the Knightboat, a dune buggy, the Obliterator monster truck, the Planet Hype 50’s car wedged into the building, and a toy RC car.
The platforming is simple enough. You run and jump and kick and groundpound within your environment. The enemies at hand are wasp cameras. Mostly harmless in the first level, later they move faster, shoot faster, and even have energy shields by the final level making them harder to destroy and demanding you kick them in the face more than once. But if you’re careful enough you can avoid their zaps and losing precious coins and decimate them in no time getting more coins in the later levels. There is some depth perception issues with the platforming though. Sometimes you could make a jump thinking you’ll land it but then disappear off to the side and wail in agony as you plumet into blackness. Sometimes you think you’re in position to do a jumping kick to destroy a wasp only to find it’s closer to the screen than you anticipated and then you get zapped. It can cause some frustrations but beyond that it’s alright.
The physics of the game are very cartoony and slapstick. It can seem a little buggy but going at max speed for your car to spearhead into a wall and bounce on its nose with a tremendous thud is so funny. As are the ragdoll physics where you can kick people and turn them into footballs, or run someone over and they can flail and roll away like bowling pins. Even during a mission with Lisa you can kick Milhouse down a creek. You can also punt children!
It looks as much as the Simpsons as it possibly can in 3D. It’s always been a little rocky and screwy and translating from 2D to 3D has always been difficult but it looks good here. Although, the background characters have incredbily minimal detail. They look like Groening Springfieldians alright, but are very much an afterthought as there isn’t much facial detail going on there at all. But the main cast themselves, the vehicles, and the levels yeah, look like the Simpsons. They’re incredibly cartoony enough, it’s all recognisable, the colours are vibrant, the lighting in the sunset is gorgeous and the final level looks horrendously spooky. The depictions of notable locations such as the house and the powerplant look great and detailed well enough. Exploring these areas are a treat too.
The outfits you unlock look great and there’s so many iconic ones. Homer might get the best ones that make the most changes to his model with his muumuu outfit making him fatter and the donut head from Treehouse of Horror of course changing his head entirely. There are some really funny ones to unlock right from the episodes such as Lisa’s “Floreda” outfit, Apu’s American outfit and B-Sharps, and you get Bart’s tall outfit with platform shoes and spikier hair to make himself look taller. Obviously there’s Bartman as well.
The vehicles are very nicely designed and faithful to the show, and there are so many vehicles to get. Some are just regular vehicles and some are very creative. Some even have novelty exhaust fumes such as bubbles, feathers, or fire. It’s a nice little touch and makes them that much more distinct. Damage your car enough and you’ll burst open the boot of the car and you’ll see what the owner’s got stashed away in there, like in the family sedan Homer has packs of beer in there, while Marge’s Canyonero has lines upon lines of bagged groceries. Frink’s hovercar obviously has no wheels but as you pick up speed it goes invisible, leaving the world reflected on its exterior but leaving whoever you’re playing as hovering alongside Frink. And as some vehicles are character specific, in certain levels they serve as the driver. For example, Abe’s WWII jeep in level 2 with Bart, Abe will drive it but in Marge’s level she can drive it, or Otto’s bus, Lisa can drive it in her level after buying it from him but he’ll drive his bus when someone else drives it in another. But it’s these little details that adds so much character to the game.
Of course you have the main cast voicing their respective characters in this. It would be so strange not to. And every line delivery of theirs is comedic gold. Tie those into the gameplay and you get so many raucous moments.
The music was otherwise done by Jeff Tymoschuk, who before this had only co-composed 007: Nightfire, and Marc Baril and Allan Levy. It obviously uses the main theme of the show, but its central themes are all pretty much entirely new. It sounds Simpsons enough, but it also sounds pretty individualistic. Generally, it’s all so bouncy and cartoony and adds a whole fun layer of joy to the game, it’s great. The early themes of driving through Eevergreen Terrace with Homer is jaunty and light, like prancing through a daisy field in the spring. Bart’s theme is appropriately edgey with a rock soundtrack while Lisa’s is entirely jazz funk echoing the Simpsons theme in places. Marge’s sounds a little Tom Jones-y and cartoonishly dramatic as well as breezy elevator music. Apu’s themes have an authentic Indian flair with sitars and drums and choirs. And the final level is wrought with halloween themes ala Munsters and its Treehouse of Horror episodes making things downright spooky and eerie. The whole soundtrack is so lively and playful and blends with the slapstick of the game wonderfully.
The sound effects are fantastic too. Each car sounds unique, from Cletus’ pickup chugging along to Snake’s sports car roaring, to some jokey cars like Krusty’s clown car bubbling, and Frink’s hovercar wooing mysteriously. Comic Book Guy’s Gremlin vehicle cranking like the cheap piece of shit it is and even the Electaurus breezing on with its clean electric motors.
And then there’s the clanking and banging and bashing and thudding of the cars as you crash into everything and everyone around Springfield. No one is safe from your 4-wheeled terror. The satisfying sound of a heavy thunk! as you crash into a purple sedan you’re trying to destroy while driving Otto’s bus adds so much weight into it, it’s so nice. Even the tinkling of the coin collection scratches a particular itch in your brain like “Ooh, addictive collectible.”
The Simpsons Hit & Run, it looks like to me in recent years, has been gaining greater appreciation and praise. So much so that modders have geniously created a singular Springfield map stitching together all 3 areas of Springfield together for one complete world to race around. Even the demand for a remake or remaster is getting louder, but whether Activision will pony up the money to do that, who can say. But it would be very nice to see happen one day. We need more comedic platforming games like this and more people should get in on this game.
Hit & Run holds a lot of nostalgia for me. I first played it on the GameCube when my brother got it for christmas in 2003. A year or so later I got it again for myself on the Xbox. And then much later as an adult I got it again on the PS2, so I’ve pretty much played it on all platforms now sans PC. It holds very fond memories for me but nostalgia aside, it’s still a very good game that holds up very well today. It’s funny, it’s entertaining, it’s challenging enough and rewarding enough for your efforts and plays great. As a GTA clone it isn’t really a GTA clone at all, namely because there’s no weapons in it. Radical Entertainment definitely used it as inspiration, but somewhere along the lines they created something else entirely new and different. So much so that it would even become the basis for Crash Tag Team Racing.
There’s a reason it’s always spoken of so fondly, and why even streamers are getting into playing the PC version, and that’s because overall it’s a damn fun game and worth a playthrough. It has some janky corners and minor problems but overall it’s a solid game, and might even be the best Simpsons game ever.
Also, the final 3 missions where you have to race to the school from the powerplant carrying a sensitive load of radioactive waste 3 times might well be one of the most infamously stressful and deceptively difficult endgame missions ever. The first time I did those on the Xbox I was so knotted with stress and anxiety it was a massive relief when I completed it. And then on the PS2 was like PTSD but I felt more capable of doing it again and it was a breeze.
Where to Purchase:
eBay: £9.50 - £1,200 (stupid / $15 - $1,000
Amazon: £24 - £173 / $55 - $100
CeX: £22 - £70