(Originally published to Glitchwave on 11/20/2020)
[Image from igdb.com]
The Simpsons: Hit & Run
Developer: Radical Entertainment
Publisher: Vivendi Universal
Genre(s): Open World, Racing
Platforms: GCN, PS2, Xbox
Release Date: September 16, 2003
The Simpsons: Hit and Run is the exception to the unexceptional slew of Simpsons video games. It's the Simpsons video game that I was fortunate to grow up with alongside being a huge fan of the series around the same time. If something like Bart vs. the Space Mutants came out when I was a kid, I probably would still have played it despite its questionable quality. I was fortunate enough for the licensed Simpsons game of my generation to be the only good one. One could argue that this game is just a GTA knock-off with a Simpsons skin, but the prevailing trend of Simpsons games seemed to be skins of other popular games. What made Hit and Run so special? Isn't this just another case of the developers putting a Simpsons skin on another well-known franchise? The answer is yes and no. Yes, The Simpsons: Hit and Run is structured exactly like a GTA game, but as it turns out, the open-world GTA-esque format works wonders with the world of The Simpsons.
If you've ever played a GTA game, you know that one of the most appealing things about the franchise is how expansive the world of each game tends to be. The franchise has even broken some ground in surpassing the limits of how big the world in any game can be. If you've seen the opening of every episode of The Simpsons, the sky is panned open to the expansive city of Springfield. The opening is mostly focused on each member of the Simpsons family, but we see plenty of sites and people that we all recognize just as much as the core family of the show. We all know sites like the Springfield Tire Fire, the Nuclear Power Plant, Android's Dungeon, etc from decades of Simpsons content and all of the supporting characters just as well as the Simpsons family. The beauty of the open-world game is that the player can revel in the expansiveness that something like GTA organically delivers. Players tend to get lost in the world presented to them, and the available objectives don't seem as immediately imperative compared to a more linear video game. Considering how long The Simpsons have been on the air and their iconic status as one of the greatest television shows of all time, they've built up quite the world of sites and characters. The ability to explore the world of The Simpsons is an incredible experience for any Simpsons fan such as myself. Once you play the game, the comparisons between it and GTA start to become more thinly veiled as you realize that you are playing an interactive Simpsons tribute with the GTA open-world as a template. This is how Hit and Run excels above the other licensed Simpsons games because it's for fans of The Simpsons, not just to cash in on the craze of the GTA franchise in the early 2000s.
This game is brimming with so much Simpsons history that I think it would be difficult for someone that hasn't seen the show. Of course, I think that the strength of every great licensed game is to appeal to the fans of the source material instead of cheaply trying to re-paint an already existing game with another medium's source material hoping that people are too dense to notice. I'm thoroughly convinced they thought they could get away with that with every preceding Simpsons game, but it turns out that gamers aren't as dumb as the corporate fat cats thought they were. Hit and Run is the first example of a licensed Simpsons game where the developers actually tried, and boy does it show.
Plotting out the town of Springfield is something I think I could probably do in my head for about 10 minutes until it gets all too complicated, so I'm glad that the developers of this game did it for all us Simpsons fans and did a damn good at doing it. The world map is divided into three different districts of which I can differentiate the three locations between the standard types of human settlements. The first area is the suburban area of Springfield. It's most likely the first area because the Simpsons live in this section of the town and lets the game start organically by having the family start off the game at their house. This section also has the Kwik-E Mart and Springfield Elementary, which gives this level a cozy feeling fitting for the first level of a video game, in which the game makes several meta jokes involving the typical tutorial level in a video game. I don't remember the power plant being as dark and dim as it is in this game. The second level is the urban district has Moe's Tavern, the DMV, the town hall, the hospital, etc. It feels like an entirely different place to traverse through than the first level as it feels far more crowded. All it does is make me impressed that Homer goes the distance to drink at Moe's almost every single night. The third and last district is the more rural area showcasing Springfield's beaches and mountains. It also showcases plenty of urbanity with Krusty-Lu studios, Mr. Burns Casino, and Barney's Bowling Alley. It vaguely looks like Los Angeles, but it always seemed like a pocket of Springfield had a ritzy celebrity bubble in the show. Unlike in San Andreas, you can't travel to these districts seamlessly. Instead, each of these areas coincides with a level for a certain character. You visit each district at least twice, probably due to technical limitations, but different parts of each level unlock around the second time they are played. If this game was made in 2013 instead of 2003, the developers would probably make traversing through each district of Springfield seamless, but this would probably result in some of the town of Springfield feeling empty and artificially placed to divide space. Each level is designed superbly, with each section brimming with life and charm. It also helps that each level is designed like a circle, and you can easily get back to one section pretty quickly, making every level traversal smooth and accessible.
The "Simpsons tribute" that I alluded to a few paragraphs back doesn't just stop at recreating Springfield. They could have done a lackluster job with just placing buildings in the world and slapping a familiar name on them, hoping that we would accept them as is, but The Simpsons fan base is rather sharp and would certainly notice the lack of effort IF that was the case for this game. The history of The Simpsons is littered throughout Hit and Run through almost every facet of its presentation. In every level, there are a number of gags that you can trigger that are all Simpsons references. Some of these references in the game can be pretty obscure too, some that you'll blink and miss while watching the show like the brick tied to Homer's workstation or the midget skeleton in the robot in Android's Dungeon. Maybe I'm underestimating the Simpsons fan base, but the developers of this game certainly didn't. Why else would there be references at every corner of the game? This level of fan service doesn't just stop at the gags. There are collectible trading cards in each level that usually coincide with an object related to the character in that level. There is even a description and a line of dialogue pertaining to the card that you can check in the pause menu. It may seem like just another collectible made to pad the game's content, but as a huge Simpsons fan, I can't deny how excited all of the different cards make me. I'm such a fucking dork.
Almost every single vehicle in this game is a reference to the show. You start the game with Homer driving around his trademark pink sedan. It makes perfect sense that Homer would be driving around town in his car from the show, but what fun would it be if Homer was confined to just his car in a game as expansive as this one? You have the ability to take cars from the street like in GTA, but you can't steal them. Instead, the driver of the car can chauffeur you around to all the wacky mayhem. To make up for this PG rated, disappointing switch, the developers made up for it by incorporating seemingly every vehicle from the first eleven or so seasons from The Simpsons. It would be mind-numbing for both me and whoever is reading this if I listed off every single vehicle that you can unlock, so I'll just list some highlights: Mr. Plow AND the Plow King, the Globex Supervillain car, and The Car Built for Homer complete with "La Cucaracha" as it's horn. Wow. To make things even better, there is a novelty car in every level that are all also references to the show like the rocket car and even the fucking monorail (which is located right by the "Matlock Expressway". All of the references in this game make me giddy as a schoolgirl if you haven't noticed already).
I don't know if this needs to be explicitly stated, but this game isn't just an open-world driving simulator with Simpsons references making everyone point everything notable out like a seven year old at Disneyland. There is a story in this game and it is probably the grandest Simpsons story ever made at that point in time. Only the video game medium could let the writers produce a story as topsy-turvy as the one they came up with. It's also one of the funniest stories from the early 2000s era of The Simpsons to the point where I wonder if the writers of the show put all of their effort into the script and story of this game instead of the actual show. Or, there could be a total other possibility that the show-writers had a little "assistance" in writing the story for this game.
The story begins with a queer looking robotic wasp flying into the Simpsons residence. Homer destroys the wasp and falls back asleep. The first level is Homer performing a smattering of wacky tasks to procrastinate from going to his day job at the Power Plant when he sees a black van spying on him at home. He follows the black van and makes some erroneous claims that Mr. Burns is behind the spying phenomenon around Springfield, but is dead wrong. Meanwhile, Bart hooks school to try to find a copy of Bonestorm II (more video game meta humor occurs), but gives up on his task once Professor Frink gives him the opportunity to create the Truckasaurus, a familiar creation from the early Simpsons seasons. Once the Truckasarus is made, Bart escapes from his own creation and is abducted by aliens. Lisa then tries to find Bart and find him on a boat unable to speak anything but gibberish with the occasional subliminal message. Marge then tries to find out what happened to Bart and learn what caused him to only speak in tongues. Once she finds out that it involves a conspiracy involving crop circles and the new brand of Buzz Cola, she goes to Apu who has been selling the cola in large quantities through the Kwik E Mart unknowing of the cola's secret properties. To cover his tracks, he tries to find out who is responsible in making the cola that he has been distributing when him and Bart find out that Kang and Kodos have been making the cola to make people act feral in order to make their Earth reality show "Foolish Earthlings" more interesting for their intergalactic viewers. Remember when I alluded that the writers in this game might have had some assistance when writing the plot for this game? I'm referring to this plot reveal. Remember the South Park episode from 2002 called "Simpsons Already Did It" that tributes The Simpsons, but also conveys the idea that nothing is truly original? Well, the plot of this game might be a case of "South Park did it". In the same year that Hit and Run was released, South Park's seventh season debuted with an episode called "Cancelled" in which the characters find out that the world they live in serves as an entertaining reality show for the rest of the universe and that the intergalactic producers are desperate to boost ratings. It's hard to say who stole from who considering both the South Park episode and this game came out the same year, but the plots of both are too similar for it to be just a coincidence. Perhaps the writers of this game were giving homage South Park the same way South Park did for The Simpsons? It's a clever set-up for sure, but I'm not sure who to give credit in this situation. Anyways, the rampant popularity of the mind-altering cola results in turning the citizens of Springfield into zombies (yes, literally zombies) giving the developers a ploy to create what is essentially an interactive Treehouse of Horror episode. It's a more condensed version of the suburban level with Evergreen Terrace we've seen twice already, but the level acts as an homage to the Treehouse of Horror segments that the show releases every year near the Halloween season. Did I mention that there are also loads of Treehouse of Horror references littered throughout this level? It makes me so happy,
It goes without saying that most of the gameplay in The Simpsons: Hit and Run involves driving. No, it does not also involve shooting down characters of The Simpsons because although a lot of us would probably like to get our sick kicks out of unloading rounds of bullets into the denizens of Springfield, driving in an open world is the extent of the GTA template that this game borrows (you do get to kick the crap out of tons of Simpsons characters which proves to be somewhat controversial for some characters like Homer kicking Marge No one seemed to care that you can sacrifice Marge and Bart to the alien ship in one of the last missions in the game. I guess the only type of controversial spousal and or child abuse is one that holds some ground in reality, but I'd imagine that if someone sacrificed their wife or child to aliens in real life that no one would be pleased with them. Besides being recognizable from the show, all of the vehicles in each level have a large array of different stats for the different missions types in the game. Some cars are fast making them great for races, but aren't very durable for missions where you have to smash up another car or find collectibles. Some cars are giant, indestructible tanks that you wouldn't dare doing a race with unless you wanted to get floored by the competition. I really enjoy the fact that the game makes all of these vehicles more than just a novelty because the missions give you an incentive to check all of the other cars to aid you in certain missions. It isn't like in GTA where the car you drive is meant to get you from point A to point B and have it parked there while you do the mission. You actually have to consider the right options for each mission instead of just picking a favorite vehicle for the entire game based on superficial design.
Hit and Run doesn't just confine the Simpsons family to their cars in this game. For the most part, you can also slowly but surely navigate the town of Springfield on foot as each character is just as readily mobile in that regard as well. The time you'll spend on foot in this game is spent retrieving collectibles, destroying wasp cameras, talking to people to start missions, selecting a new car etc., but most of this game is in a vehicle. Each character plays exactly the same on foot with a kick move, a jump kick, and a ground pound in their arsenal of moves, but they aren't really that practical unless you are dealing with the wasp cameras. There are only a couple of missions that involve being on foot, but these are sprinkled into the game on very rare occasions and they are usually pretty simple. For the most past, you'll be progressing through this game in a vehicle. It almost makes The Simpsons: Hit and Run a crossbreed between a driving game and a 3D platformer. My guess is that they needed to implement more palatable features to the very M-rated label the open-world game was heavily associated with at the time. They needed to think of another direction to go with the PG-13 quality the Simpsons are known for, and mowing down enemies with an AK-47 didn't seem too appropriate.
Ironically enough, the missions don't have the same variety as the mechanics of the vehicles. I can list every type of mission in this game on one hand: racing, destroying, following, escaping, and collecting. I'd say that this game felt repetitious, but it didn't for some reason even though I was well aware that the missions kind of started to blur together after a while. I guess this game compensates for being funny making the tedium seem less grating. It always seems like you're doing a different mission when you're doing it with a different context every time. Most missions later in the game incorporate two or more of these game styles in a single mission to make it more challenging, but I feel as if this is a shallow way of implementing difficulty as the game progresses. Not to mention, almost every single mission in this game is timed which is the real difficulty juggernaut in this game. The game sometimes fails you if you didn't get in your car with a certain time constraint. One would think that the natural progression of difficulty with this time limit in mind would result in tenser time limits later in the game, but even that aspect is inconsistent. In some missions, the game rewards you with more time after completing a certain objective but in other missions, you have to do a handful of objectives under one time limit. I can speak for everyone that has played this game that every mission with one consistent time limit prove to be the hardest ones in the game by far (Never Trust A Snake and Set To Kill come to mind). These missions aren't even in the final level, but scattered all over the game. It's hard to say whether or not the game gets harder as you progress through it because there are difficulty curves so steep that the game will start to look like a wave. In every single level in this game, there is a mission that is way harder than the other ones while there are stupidly easy missions even in the last level.
I have to mention a special detriment to this game that I feel it excels in for better or for worse: this game is glitchy as hell. It's buggier than Ooogie Boogie from A Nightmare Before Christmas. You'll hit an number of breakable objects that won't hit, textures sometimes never load, you'll be talking to invisible characters to start missions, you can do one-time bonus missions again, some NPCs will be floating in the sky, etc. It's laughably bad considering how often these glitches occur. When trying to play the game straight, these glitches oftentimes break the immersion of the intended experience. However, like in the GTA games, Hit and Run comes with a multitude of cheat codes that revel in the awkward mistakes the developers didn't bother to patch. The cheats are fun for a while until you inadvertently break the game by using them usually resulting in your character plunging into an unprogrammed oblivion making you have to restart the game. It's a cheap thrill with a fleeting level of enjoyment.
My general attitude of licensed games wasn't nearly as jaded when I was a kid. Most likely, this was probably because I was the target demographic for the industry to milk money out of because I didn't know any better. Wouldn't it be soul crushing to buy a game based off of something else you loved from another medium just to have it be the worst thing you've ever played? That probably would've been the case if I had bought any previous Simpsons game before Hit and Run which would've soured my love for The Simpsons and maybe even for video games. That might have been a bit of a drastic result for a hypothetical, but after learning about the negative reputation most Simpsons games have, I am relieved that Hit and Run was the exception that I got to play as a kid. It may have it's limitations to the open-world game play and all of the glitches make this game objectively flawed, but it is the best Simpsons experience in the interactive medium by a large margin. All of the humor and charm from the early seasons of the show are omnipresent in every aspect of this game which gives it the strengths that the other Simpsons games don't have. It's almost as if I can use this game to make the point that licensed games aren't inherently bad and that the correct way to execute them is to heavily consider what makes the source material resonate with the fans.
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