The Simpsons: Hit & Run

aka: Les Simpsons: Hit & Run, Os Simpsons: Hit & Run, Xingpuseng Yijia: Da Dai Pao
Moby ID: 10421
PlayStation 2 Specs
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Description official descriptions

The Simpsons: Hit & Run can be best described as Grand Theft Auto in Springfield.

The player takes on the role of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa or Apu and tries to uncover a mystery surrounding mechanical bees that are taking over Springfield, mysterious vans, and cola that can control the minds of those who drink it.

Like GTA, the game follows a linear-based path through fifty plus missions. The player will have to chase cars and find out where they're headed, grab all the spilling cola cans before people can drink them, and chase down villains before they get away.

Throughout the course of the game, the player can unlock tons of rewards by completing missions in a set amount of time or performing outstanding stunts.

All voiceovers are performed by those who act in the show, including Dan Castellaneta (Homer), Julie Kavner (Marge) and Yeardley Smith (Lisa).

The game supports multiplayer action for up to four players.

Spellings

  • 辛普森一家:打带跑 - Chinese spelling (simplified)
  • 심슨가족: 히트앤런 - Korean spelling

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Credits (PlayStation 2 version)

250 People (175 developers, 75 thanks) · View all

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Associate Producer
Vice President of Technology
Publishing
Vice President of Marketing
Marketing Directors
Assistant Marketing Manager
Director of Public Relations
Creative Services Director
Creative Services Manager
Senior Designer
Account Manager
Manual Layout
Vivendi Universal Games Special Thanks (Marketing)
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 75% (based on 52 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 112 ratings with 9 reviews)

D'oh!..

The Good
Do you like The Simpsons? Do you like GTA? Well, then you are going to love... oh, wait, that's not it. D'oh!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Hit & Run. The game in which you can run around virtual Springfield, collecting coins, which you can use to purchase... well, almost nothing actually, just some useless outfits and a few cars. I wish I could spend all this money on donuts. Mmmm... do-nuts...

Right. So what's really good in Hit & Run? Well, it's quite addictive. Almost like chocolate. Mmmmm... chocolate... You start the game, and immediately you can hop into your car and drive around Springfield as much as you want. You never have to think about your next objective. It's all driving, driving, and driving. And it's fun. For a while.

The city is re-created in all its glory in full 3D. Every part of Springfield you've ever seen on the show is here, and you can explore it. 3D Springfield is undeniably the star of the game. Driving around it, visiting familiar locations and discover others which weren't even shown in the TV series (but which fit its theme very well) is a more pleasant experience than following the game's story and missions.

Almost every character from the show you can think of appears in the game. And naturally, all the characters are voiced by the original cast. As far as fan service goes, Hit & Run certainly delivers - though more in quantity than in quality.

The driving itself is fun, and there is something strangely addictive in the game's ridiculous timed missions. You feel compelled to try "just one more time", until... well, until you really can't take it any more.

Destructible environments are perhaps what I liked most in this game. Nothing beats the feeling of methodically crushing everything you see. There are coins hidden pretty much everywhere; destroying poles, telephone booths, and other parts of the city while driving and getting money in the process is definitely the most exciting activity in the game. There are many places to explore; and if you are tired of driving, you can just run around on foot and kick the hell out of the environment.

There are plenty of collectible items to scavenge; people who care for this sort of thing will probably enjoy exploring every corner of the city for yet another Itchy & Scratchy coupon or whatever.

The timed missions are difficult, but the game is much more forgiving than GTA, since it allows you to restart a mission right away (without the annoying driving to destination), and even skip the mission entirely if you fail too many times! This is certainly a feature I would love to see in GTA games.

The Bad
Hit & Run was supposed to deliver us a double amount of fun: that of playing a free-roaming driving game, and that of experiencing high-quality comedy TV-like entertainment. Unfortunately, it fails on both fronts.

Let's first see why Hit & Run is not a very good Simpsons product. I belong to those old-timers for whom Season 3 of The Simpsons was the real deal. I loved the kind, not overly cynical humor of early Simpsons episodes, and its good storytelling - always with a moral meaning, though never didactic or preachy. It is true that the series had different writers, and many of them, especially during the later years, focused more on gags and grotesque and less on what made The Simpsons endearing to me in the first place. However, Hit & Run doesn't even reach the level of some of my less favorite episodes in terms of writing and narrative. It's neither warm and charming, nor amusingly nonsensical - it's just dumb. The plot is almost non-existent, and what is left of it is something that even the least sophisticated Simpsons episode would be ashamed of containing. The characters lack any personality beside assorted one-liners - granted, those are pretty much within the style of the show, but you can't make your writing depend on one-liners, just as you can't make your gameplay depend on timed races (and as we'll soon see, Hit & Run does both).

Playing Hit & Run doesn't feel like participating in a Simpsons experience. You don't get attached to Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa the way you did in the series' better episodes. It's also not particularly funny. I barely even smiled when I was playing the game. Sure, they've crammed the city with every Simpsons character and location imaginable, but what's the point if none of these characters and locales truly matters anything? The characters serve only as givers of inane missions, are not tied into the plot, and their appearances are nothing short of pointless. It's like they slapped the license over their game mechanically, without bothering to research what really made the show tick.

It is debatable whether the GTA template is the most fitting one to use for a Simpsons game. Driving and organized crime themes are hardly the trademark of that TV series. That said, I think even this template could have worked if it were used more smartly. Just like with the Simpsons license, the developers of Hit & Run didn't quite understand how GTA games really worked. They obviously thought it was enough to create a virtual city and let the player drive through it. They forgot that the meat and bones of every GTA game were the missions; it was the variety of the missions and the creativity of their design that elevated GTA games above most of its subsequent clones.

Alas, the makers Hit & Run paid no attention to that. The game's missions design is so bad that it borders on ridiculous. Without exaggerating, every mission belongs to one of the three possible templates: 1) race against another car; 2) race against time; and 3) collect X amount of items under a time limit. This inane collection of mind-numbingly repetitive, simplistic, arcadish tasks passes for actual gameplay in this game.

GTA games had a large variety of driving missions plus shooting missions. Obviously, there is no shooting in Hit & Run, but they didn't even bother to replace it with anything else. 99% of the time in Hit & Run is spent in a car, and 99% of that time is spend doing idiotic "missions" such as finding 30 monkeys under 3 minutes (seriously, I haven't made that one up). The example of Bully shows how deep and varied GTA-style gameplay can be without guns (and even without cars!), using a more family-friendly tone. But Hit & Run was created without any concept.

In GTA and in all other comparable games I can think of the missions had something to do with the story. The missions were a way to advance the story; even if their goals were remote from the main objective, they were still logical. Hit & Run lacks this kind of basic logic. The missions in this game have, for the most part, absolutely nothing to do with the story. In order to prevent the aliens from spying on humans with giant bee-like cameras, the Simpsons family has to participate in races and collecting games. Almost all the missions follow the same senseless formula: "I need to save Springfield!" - "Ok, but first help me to find 22 fishes under 2:35 minutes!" - "Okay!"... Mission is over, an equally senseless "talking heads" cutscene follows, and... you must meet character X at location Y! Why? Nobody knows, but the game tells you to! You head to character X, triggering another "cutscene" - "I'd answer your question, but first you'll have to drive to my home under 1:20 minutes! And then find character Z!"... and so on, and so on... there is no end to this, and that's how the entire game plays.

As appealing as virtual Springfield and its characters are, their graphical style is just your basic 3D. Many characters look weird in a three-dimensional outfit (my favorite character, Lisa, doesn't look like herself any more); in my opinion cel-shading would have worked much better here.

And... no mouse support for the PC version? You have to move the camera with Num keys? And you can't even move it up and down properly? And it takes forever to turn it right or left? Was there something wrong with my copy of the game?...

The Bottom Line
Hit & Run clearly proves that it takes more than mixing a great setting with a great gameplay concept to make a great game. It lacks both the wit and the presentation of The Simpsons, and the gameplay depth and variety of GTA; it is a mediocre Simpsons product as well as a mediocre GTA clone.

I think the later Simpsons experiment, The Simpsons Game, is better both as a game and as an incarnation of the series' spirit.

Windows · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2011

Not quite the worst... game... ever.

The Good

The best thing this game has going for it is the truly funny plot and acting. The entire Simpson's cast provides voice acting for the game, and writers from the show provide the plot. The game also manages to make Springfield come alive as a fully explorable world. You will be able to visit almost every obscure place from the show you can think of. You can check out Evergreen Terrace, the Nuclear Plant, Burns' Mansion, and Moe's. Even things like the Escalator to Nowhere and the Stonecutters' secret traffic tunnel are present. You can even take the broken down monorail for a spin! The game on a whole is very, very funny.

The Bad

Sadly, funny doesn't equal fun. At all. The missions are all basic variants on the same theme. Race this car to this place. Collect this many items in this amount of time. Drive to this place in this much time. And so forth. Almost all the missions are timed, and most of them are lame. It always feels like you are performing the same task again and again and again, and it gets old fast. While I truly enjoyed exploring Springfield, I honestly dreaded having to take up a mission to advance the plot. And, unfortunately, the plot is completely linear, despite what you may have heard. There is no branching storyline, and no real incentive to take things at your own pace.

The Bottom Line

Only if you are a Simpson's fanatic would this game ever be worth a purchase. Even then, I would have to recommend a rental first. I am a huge Simpson's fan and only my love for the show enabled me to trudge though the seven boring, repetitive levels. The game is worth checking out for the humor factor, but it's just too bad that there is nothing funny about the lame-ass gameplay.

Xbox · by Entorphane (337) · 2003

Grand Theft Canyonero

The Good
The Simpsons: Hit & Run just lets you loose in Springfield in a way no previous Simpsons games have done. In each level, you're given a chunk of Springfield to just roam free in. You can perform missions or wander off and serch for hidden items, enter races, etc.

The game makes great use of its source material. It's voiced and written by the team from the show and contains dozens of the Simpsons supporting cast members. You'll get to play not only as the entire Simpsons family, but also that jolly Bengali Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. Even Halloween-episode regulars Kodos and Kang appear as the main villains, using evil cola to take over Springfield for an alien reality TV show.

Hit & Run is in many ways very similar to Grand Theft Auto III, but instead of being a hybrid driving/action game, it's driving and platforming. It even makes some improvements to the design, such as a menu option for instantly restarting the current mission. You won't have to drive all the way back to a start point here.

The Bad
Unfortunately, it doesn't compare as nicely to its inspiration in other areas. There's a lot less freedom. There are five levels. Each has seven story missions to complete in order, one side mission and three races. These side missions aren't really connected to other, either. You'll find nothing on the order of Marty Chonks here.

The reward structure is unfortunately disappointing. Each level has three races, three vehicles to buy, a side missions and three outfits, 20 robot wasp cameras to smash and seven collector's cards. Finishing all four races or the side mission each get you a vehicle. The collector's cards focus on various items from the show and a full set gets to a multiplayer slot car game. That's pretty cool. The wasp cameras get you nothing except money. THe outfits all come from the show, but they don't actually do anything. The most annoying thing is the vehicles, which are the bulk of your rewards. The vast majority of them are completely useless.

I have some other related quibbles with this design. You must finish all three races in a level to get your reward. The game only indicates how many races you've beaten, not which ones. If you forget, you just have to do all the races in the level over again.

I have some gripes regarding the audio as well. Each character only has a few lines, so they're saying the same thing over and over. Often, they'll say the same thing twice in a span of a few seconds. It's funny the first time grandpa tells you about how they used to call sandwiches black freddies, buy even he should be able to remember he just told that story five seconds later.

Another annoyance is the money. It costs $50 to get busted by the police. On some missions you'll get busted a lot and lose all your money, forcing you to restart from an earlier save or do some rather tedious things (that might get you busted again) to earn more cash. Thanks to a combination of load times and the interface design, it takes a substantial amount of time to do this. Money is a far more limited resource than in Grand Theft Auto, but it's quite a bit easier to lose it.

The Simpsons and GTA are an odd fit. You can't very well have them go whack people and the platforming segments are sadly underused. The game is made almost entire of driving missions and really only has three types: collect the item/get to goal before time runs out, race or destroy a vehicle. The designers really needed to think of some new mission types rather than just eliminating all the GTA types that didn't work with their license. The ending is what bugged me the most as it's more or less the same mission three times in a row.

Speaking of variety: I would have liked to see some more playable characters. You play Bart and Homer twice each. Since they were doing supporting cast, I would have loved to see a segment where you play Flanders or something.

The Bottom Line
The problems are all minor quibbles. The bottom line is this is far and away the best Simpsons video game currently available, not that there's a lot of competition. It manages to be true to the show and be a mostly fun game and give a decent ten-plus-hour play time. I highly recommend it.

Xbox · by Ace of Sevens (4479) · 2006

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

Trivia

Advertising

Most, if not any, advertising in this game are actually references to previous episodes. For example, the Itchy and Scratchy Movie poster was used in an episode where Bart is grounded from seeing said movie.

Cut content

There's quite a gaggle of cut content for The Simpsons Hit and Run. These range from unused voice clips, vehicles, character models (Agnes Skinner being one example), mission objectives, graphics and more. You can look up all missing content on The Cutting Room Floor.

Christmas

On Christmas day (December 25th), Homer's character in the main menu is dressed as Santa Claus.

Lionel Hutz

There are billboards throughout the game advertising the legal services of Lionel Hutz. Matt Groeing, producer for the Simpsons, retired Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure when Phil Hartman tragically lost his life.

Music

The hoity-toity music you hear in the Stonecutters hallway is the Spring of The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi.

Awards

  • Computer Games
    • March 2004 - #10 Best Game of the Year 2003
  • GameSpy
    • 2003 – Most Pleasant Surprise of the Year (PC)

Information also contributed by PCGamer77, Pizzaking27, Scott Monster.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by clef.

Windows added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, JPaterson, chirinea, Daniel Albu, Sciere, Xoleras, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, Rik Hideto, Tony Denis.

Game added September 26, 2003. Last modified March 6, 2024.