Completion Time: 14h:20m:00s
Rating: 6/10

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Cromulent Beginnings

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I’ve been a huge fan of The Simpsons for as long as I can remember, to the point where I have a sort of attachment to the very idea of it existing, and still watch the show to this day almost as an obligation more than anything else. Unfortunately, The Simpsons have a pretty rocky history when it comes to video games, with the only ones I feel being worth a mention are The Simpsons Arcade Game and the topic of today’s post, The Simpsons: Hit & Run (some defend Road Rage and 2009’s The Simpsons Game, but they aren’t really for me).

Simpsons Wrestling, anyone?

The existence of this game I’m sure isn’t news to anyone; a GTA-like with numerous fans clamoring for a rerelease of some kind. One fan has even taken to remaking the game piece by piece in a series on YouTube. And it’s certainly a game that I have a particular fondness for, growing up loving The Simpsons and having this title on, you guessed it, the GameCube. Does it hold up, however, is a different question entirely, and one that I intend to look at. Although the short answer is one of those shaky hand sort of deals.

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Catching the Next Plane to Springfeld... field

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When you’re looking at games based on licensed properties, especially ones as long running as The Simpsons (which had already been on over a decade by the time this game released), one of the major metrics that people tend to look for is how it embodies the spirit of the source material. Sometimes that can come down to having the same writers and voice actors, and other times it’s just a reference fest so you can point at the screen and say “I know that! I remember Mr. Plow!” Hit & Run has a little bit of both going for it there, with the original cast reprising their roles and writers from the show contributing to the game’s script and dialogue. Now, this was written around the time of the “Matt Selman-as-showrunner” era of the series, which has divided fans on both sides of the aisle. But for those who don’t care for the writing, as I said references abound. Some of the collectibles in this game are trading cards that call out items from past episodes, which are fun to just go through and read as you collect them, especially in a time when it wasn’t as easy to see previous episodes unless the TV Guide said it’d be in syndicated airing soon. So all of this amounts to an enjoyable experience from at least a surface level.

Everyone is saying "Gabbo this" and "Gabbo that". But no one is saying "Worship this" and "Jericho that"

As far as the gameplay is concerned, it’s frustrating and not built very well. Hard to say more than that, but I’ll try. Now already I’m not a huge fan of driving in video games, unless the game itself is explicitly built around driving like a kart racer and the like. GTA-style games let you take cares where you want, and the wanton destruction that follows in your wake is a part of the charm, because you’re driving like a maniac in a world not built for it. But more often than not, I just broke the game playing this way, and I couldn’t pretend to follow traffic signals because none of the CPUs ever did. An NPC’s car may recognize to stop at a stop sign, but not if my car is already there. So my car gets rammed and I get blamed for it, which adds to my wanted level, and if the cops catch you or your car explodes, then you lose money.

Someone needs to rewatch "Alice's Adventures Through the Windshield Glass"

Money should be extra in a game like this, right? Wrong! There are a ton of vehicles and costumes that really don’t matter to anyone other than a completionist like myself, but there are some items that you have to purchase to progress the story. On more than one occasion, I went to buy something and was woefully low on cash, so had to grind. And this game does NOT make it easy to get money by the way, there’s a limited amount you can gain from the world, everything else you have to get from these street races that are in incredibly confined places and feel equally as broken. So now imagine going through and buying all costumes and vehicles in each stage to make a number go up on the results screen? Why would I do this to myself? Who knows.

Now the game does have its charms, like I said, it’s just that most of it devolves into “this is The Simpsons” and not much else. I mean the final stage of the game is entirely based around Treehouse of Horror as a concept, and that’s reflected in the stage design, character dialogue, and even the trading cards that I mentioned beforehand. Nothing but Treehouse of Horror stuff all the way down. That I like! I enjoy visiting places like the Squidport and Kamp Krusty too, if only it wasn’t such a pain to get from point A to point B. I like a challenge, but not when the challenge is getting the game mechanics to work.

I no longer fear hell, because I've been to Kamp Krusty

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Completing the Game

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So let’s talk collectibles. I already called out the trading cards, and there’s a couple in each stage. Aside from that, though, you also have the costumes, vehicles, robot wasps to kill, vague gags hidden in the environment, gambling in the form of street races, and the occasional side mission that you have to accomplish. That’s a lot over time, specifically with the purchasable items, which I already complained about. But what does all of this net you in the end? Well, firstly is an enhanced "Unlock All Cars" cheat, which enables you to drive quite literally any car in the game so long as there's a model for it, which is fun enough once you're already done with the frustrating task of actually completing the thing. For your other reward, you need to visit the Android's Dungeon to grab a special ticket off the counter, then go to the Aztec Theater and you will be greeted to a special, 3D-rendered Itchy & Scratchy cartoon.

And you don't even need to be a supreme court justice to see this one!

So aside from finishing up main missions, the completion of this game boils down to collection and destruction. I REALLY don’t think coins are easy enough to obtain in the game, either that or the items for sale are too expensive. There aren’t even that many, this may be a GTA-style game, but it's not like there are a hundred different haircuts to buy, for example. Each stage only has a couple vehicles and character costumes to buy, and the game considers buying each of these to be part of the completion criteria for each stage. But the game doesn’t compensate you in a way that makes buying things simple, and it doesn’t make collecting enough coins to buy all extra items easy either. It got to the point where in multiple stages I had to tediously grind through street races challenges over and over again just so that I could get Lisa’s cool girl outfit or Apu’s “All-American” getup. And because of the aforementioned troubles with the in-game police, the game loves taking your money away much more than it loves giving it to you.

(slurring speech) ...125 coins?! Get outta here

When it comes to controls and mechanics, The Simpsons: Hit & Run doesn’t hold up the greatest. Driving comes with its own issues, but they’re all hallmarks of that generation of games and overall it isn’t abjectly terrible. Maybe just the familiarity I have with bad licensed games and even just bad Simpsons games makes this one so much more palatable to me, but I still recommend this one even with all of its issues. I mean, the game itself props itself on top of a lot of references and Simpsons lore, and being the fan that I am its hard not to enjoy those parts of the game. The fact that its playable and not a complete trainwreck is really just icing on the cake.

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 5/652