Today marks 20 years since the release of one of the best licensed video games ever made in The Simpsons: Hit & Run. While the show may not be as popular today as it was decades ago, many people are still holding out hope for a remake that doesn’t seem on the way at this point. The game was released on the Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC, and while it is not perfect, it has remained one of the more popular games from that generation.
Hit & Run was made on the heels of the release of The Simpsons: Road Rage, a Crazy Taxi clone. The development team, Radical Entertainment, set out to make a Grand Theft Auto III-inspired game where you could explore Springfield and cause a little havoc along the way. What resulted was a game that featured original writing and voice acting performances from the show’s cast and a sandbox that players adored.
Of course, The Simpsons: Hit & Run isn’t perfect. While you could get out of the car and walk around the place, the movement and jumping weren’t ever that good feeling. There was also a pretty intense difficulty spike as you progressed through the story, where later missions started becoming downright frustrating with their strict conditions. That all said, that leaves this as a perfect candidate to receive a remake. A dedicated team could fix these annoyances while bringing current technology power to the game and make a better version of it.
However, as noted above, the odds of a Simpsons: Hit & Run remake are minimal. We would imagine the rights to video game adaptions of the show are in Disney’s court by this point, but if not, EA might still have the final say. These days, Radical Entertainment is a part of Activision and seems to be more of a support studio, so it is very unlikely that it would have any part in a remake. There’s also the question these larger companies would throw around of whether or not a Simpsons game would even sell well these days. Regardless of the many red flags, we still remain hopeful for a Hit & Run return at some point.
