The Simpsons Hit And Run

''The Simpsons: Hit & Run'' is a 2003 action-adventure game developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Vivendi Universal Games. It is based on the American animated sitcom ''The Simpsons'', and is the twenty-second instalment in ''The Simpsons'' series of video games.

It follows the Simpson family and their friend Apu Nahasapeemapetilon as they witness many strange incidents that occur in Springfield; security cameras, mysterious vans, crop circles, and a "new and improved" flavour of the popular soft drink Buzz Cola that causes insanity. Taking matters into their own hands, they discover numerous shocking secrets, and soon realise these incidents are part of a larger alien conspiracy, caused by Kang and Kodos. The gameplay largely focuses on exploration and missions; players often race enemies and interact with supporting characters on timed quests. It also features many elements found in role-playing games, such as explorable worlds and side tasks.

Development of ''The Simpsons: Hit & Run'' began in late 2001 as a spiritual successor to Radical Entertainment's previous game '' The Simpsons: Road Rage''. Production was extensive, as the team sought to differentiate it from ''Road Rage'', deeming that their new entry in the franchise required a different direction. It was heavily inspired by the ''Grand Theft Auto'' series, and the development team re-purposed the open-world design and nuanced character development for the game. This encouraged collaboration with the show's writers and its cast, who helped to craft the story and dialogue. It was released in North America in September 2003 and in Europe the following month for the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. It was ported to Microsoft Windows in November 2003.

It received positive reviews from critics. Praise particularly focused on the interpretation of ''The Simpsons'' as a video game, its parodical take on ''Grand Theft Auto III'' (2001), and graphics, while criticism mostly surrounded some aspects of gameplay, such as bugs and glitches. It is often considered to be the best ''Simpsons'' tie-in game. It was also a commercial success, with recorded sales of over 3 million worldwide by July 2007. It received the award for Fave Video Game at the 2004 Nickelodeon Australian Kids' Choice Awards. On the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox, it earned Greatest Hits, Player's Choice, and Platinum Hits respectively.

Gameplay

''The Simpsons: Hit & Run'' features seven levels over three separate maps, each with missions and a sub-plot. The player can control one specific character in each level. The playable characters are Homer Simpson (played twice), Bart Simpson (played twice), Lisa Simpson, Marge Simpson, and Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. When travelling on foot, the player character can walk, jump, run and perform three types of melee attacks: a normal kick, a jumping kick and a smashing move. To drive, the player can either hitchhike and control the driver in one of the many civilian vehicles that drive endlessly around town, or use a phone booth to select a car. Several hidden vehicles are present in each level and can also be used by the player if found. The game's driving missions are also similar to those of ''Grand Theft Auto III''. In both games, the player races against other characters, collects items before a timer runs out, and wrecks other cars.

The game has a sandbox-style format that emphasises driving, and the player controls their character from a third-person view. The character can perform certain acts of violence, punching, such as attacking pedestrians, blowing up vehicles, and destroying the environment. ''The Simpsons: Hit & Run'' has a warning meter that indicates when the police will retaliate for bad behaviour. Located in the bottom-right corner of the screen, the circular "hit and run" meter fills up when the character runs people over or destroys objects, and decreases when they cease doing so. When full, several police cars chase the character for the duration of the hit and run.

Each level contains items the player can collect, such as coins, which can be gathered by either smashing Buzz Cola vending machines, Buzz Cola boxes or wasp cameras, the latter of which become more elusive as the game progresses. The coins can be used to buy new cars and player outfits, some of which are required to progress through the game. The player can also collect trading cards, with seven cards hidden in each level. When the player collects all seven cards in a level, they will unlock one of seven tracks for the "Bonus Game" racing mini-game. When all 49 cards in the game are collected, the player unlocks a special ''The Itchy & Scratchy Show'' video. Several events cause the player to lose coins; because the character cannot die, injuries cause the player to lose coins. If the player is apprehended during a hit and run, they will be fined 50 coins.

Plot

In the week leading up to Halloween, mysterious happenings are occurring in Springfield; a horde of robot wasps descend upon the city, a "new and improved" brand of Buzz Cola is launched by the television personality Krusty the Clown and introduced to store shelves, and black vans begin appearing around town. Homer suspects that a black van outside his house is spying on his family, and he takes it upon himself to investigate who it belongs to, with the van eventually stopping in front of Mr. Burns' mansion. After helping Marge destroy several copies of a new video game, Homer accuses Burns of spying on Springfield, to which Burns reveals to Homer that the black vans were simply pizza vans and fires Homer for the accusation.

The next day, Bart tries to get a copy of the video game '' Bonestorm 2'', only to find that it is sold out (with many of the other copies having been destroyed by Marge and Homer). After doing odd chores in the hopes of obtaining a copy, Bart eventually learns that Professor Frink is using many copies of video games to help power the Truckasaurus, and Bart agrees to help him build it, as well as set up a safe environment for it to operate in. After escaping Truckasaurus' wrath, a tractor beam abducts Bart outside the stadium. Lisa attempts to find Bart by exploring the town for clues. She learns that black sedans, which have been appearing around town, are connected to Bart's disappearance. Lisa eventually finds Bart on a ship in Springfield harbor, albeit with memory loss and mumbling unintelligibly while occasionally mentioning the sedans and cola.

Marge tries to figure out what has happened to Bart. As she investigates a crop circle that recently appeared in Cletus Spuckler's field, Grampa Simpson gives a description of a crop circle that matches that of the Buzz Cola logo. Marge shows a can of the cola to Bart, which snaps him out of his stupor. Bart reveals that Buzz Cola is a mind-control cola produced by aliens to make the townspeople insane. Marge attempts to purge Springfield of the cola, but despite her valiant efforts, the drink maintains its presence and popularity amongst the public.

Wracked with guilt over selling a tainted product, Apu sets out to find the owner of the Buzz Cola trucks. After helping Snake Jailbird with his community service, Apu learns that the cola trucks are registered to the Springfield Museum of Natural History. Apu and Bart go into the museum and discover that a meteor is the source of the cola. They then eavesdrop on a conversation between aliens Kang and Kodos, who are masterminding a scheme. Apu and Bart learn that the wasp cameras are filming the antics of Springfield for Kang and Kodos' struggling intergalactic reality show, ''Foolish Earthlings''. The aliens intend to boost ratings to their show by spreading the cola into the town's water supply and distributing laser guns among the populace to drive the town to a violent massacre.

Apu is too frightened of the aliens to help further, so Bart asks Krusty for help to foil Kang and Kodos' plan. Krusty informs Bart that he has already helped the Duff Brewery set up free laser gun stands around Springfield, which Bart promptly destroys. Bart then goes with Homer to pursue Kang and Kodos to the brewery. The aliens escape and reveal that they have already released the cola throughout Springfield's water supply. As the cola seeps into the ground, it releases the undead from the Springfield Cemetery, who invade Springfield on Halloween night.

After Homer gathers supplies to protect his family and home from the marauding zombies, he decides to pursue an alien probe vehicle to the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. There, he meets Frink, who has discovered the aliens' weakness to nuclear waste. Homer plans to use the spaceship's tractor beam to suck up cars loaded with drums of nuclear waste. After collecting four loaded cars, the ship explodes and crashes, killing Kang and Kodos. The next day, life in Springfield returns to normal, and Homer has become a celebrity to fans of ''Foolish Earthlings''.

Development

The developer, Radical Entertainment, received the rights to create games for ''The Simpsons'' franchise when they demonstrated a playable prototype. Radical released its first ''The Simpsons'' game in 2001, called '' The Simpsons: Road Rage''. After ''Road Rage'' was released, the 60-person development team for ''Hit & Run'' decided not to create a direct sequel to ''Road Rage''; instead, Radical wanted to steer the franchise's video game series in a different direction by giving the game engine a complete overhaul. The developers felt that everything else needed a new approach, while only the driving portion of ''Road Rage'' was worth keeping; in ''Hit & Run'', enhanced traffic artificial intelligence is introduced, which makes computer-controlled vehicles react better to the player's driving. The internal development name for ''The Simpsons: Hit & Run'' was simply "Simpsons", as referenced by the executable file of the game. They also decided to add an exploration element to the game to make players get out of the car and navigate the area on foot, so that the game offered a better experience of Springfield. Lead designer Joe McGinn said the game was pitched as "'' GTA'' for kids"; in addition to the exploration and freedom of ''Grand Theft Auto III'', the team was also influenced by the "action-movie-style" drifting and car physics of '' Driver'', and the platforming, character control and camera of ''Super Mario 64''. Lead programmer Cary Brisebois considered the GameCube version the hardest to develop, with its 24MB of RAM necessitating tricks such as loading animations into audio memory. A port for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) entered development, but never released due to return on investment, as by then the voice actors had renegotiated their contracts to increase their fees.

When developing the graphics, the team decided to include landmarks from Springfield. The player is able to enter some of them, including the Kwik-E-Mart, Moe's Tavern, Springfield Elementary School, and The Android's Dungeon and Baseball Card Shop. During ''Hit & Run''s development, 20th Century Fox, Gracie Films and Matt Groening, the creator of ''The Simpsons'', played important roles in bringing ''The Simpsons'' universe into a 3D environment. All character voices were supplied by the actual cast, and the series' writers wrote the entire story for the game, including dialogue, with a total of 12,231 recorded lines; Yeardley Smith (Lisa Simpson) had more lines for the game than she would perform for a whole season of the show. Voice samples original to the game, as well as one-liners from the show, can be heard in ''Hit & Run''. Some of the dialogue from ''Road Rage'' was reused. Tim Ramage, the associate producer of the game's publisher, Vivendi Universal Games, considered it a blessing to have the opportunity of working with ''The Simpsons'' cast, along with the writers, with Ramage saying "...you have no concerns about quality; you know you’re getting the best there is."

The game's soundtrack was primarily composed by Marc Baril, with additional compositions by Jeff Tymoschuk and Allan Levy. The soundtrack includes various arrangements of the original ''Simpsons'' theme by Danny Elfman, and features specific melodies for each playable character; for example, Bart's gameplay is accompanied by hard rock, while Lisa has laid-back motifs that Steven Hopper of ''GameZone'' compared to beach party films.

Vivendi Universal Games spent US$7 million marketing ''Hit & Run''.

After release, Radical immediately began work on a sequel, but had to cancel it when Vivendi chose not to reobtain the ''Simpsons'' license.

Reception

''The Simpsons: Hit & Run'' received "generally favorable" reviews on all platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic, and many consider it to be the best ''Simpsons'' game to date.

Over one million copies of the game were sold as of June 2004, and three million as of July 2007. It had sold 500,000 copies in the United Kingdom by January 2004. The game's PlayStation 2 version received a "Diamond" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 1 million copies in the United Kingdom. According to the Fox executive producer John Melchior, ''Hit & Run'' sold 8-10 million units in its lifetime.

Praise focused on the move from the ''Simpsons'' television series to the video game format, while criticism targeted some aspects of gameplay. ''Hit & Run'' won the award for Fave Video Game at the 2004 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.

A number of reviews complimented the transposition of the ''Simpsons'' television series to a video game. Justin Leeper of ''Game Informer'' and Alex Navarro of ''GameSpot'' commented on how well the game depicted the fictional city of Springfield from the television series, and called it the most accurate representation of Springfield ever put into a game. ''Official Xbox Magazine'' said that the game did the show justice, and ''Play'' felt that it was "essentially the show in real time", summing up its review by calling the game a "truly great cross-over product". Navarro thought that the humour that the game offered included many excellent self-referential jokes, and Eric Bush of ''TeamXbox'' concluded its review by predicting that the game would be extremely appealing to gamers, especially hardcore ''Simpsons'' fans. Entertainment magazine ''Variety'' surmised that ''Hit & Run'' was the first ''Simpsons'' game to include humor comparable to what was in the television series.

''Hit & Run''s parodical take on the ''Grand Theft Auto III'' video game was praised by several reviewers. Zach Meston of ''GameSpy'' considered it to "deftly satirize ''Grand Theft Auto'' while being almost as entertaining", and suggested that ''Hit & Run'' improved several gameplay aspects that it borrowed from ''Grand Theft Auto'', including instant mission restarts, a superior guidance system, and an easily accessible collection of vehicles. ''Official Xbox Magazine'' agreed that ''Hit & Run'' was an excellent game in its own right, and found the game to be a "brilliant" clone of ''Grand Theft Auto''. The combination of the ''Simpsons'' universe with the gameplay of the ''Grand Theft Auto'' series was also praised by Douglass C. Perry of ''IGN'' as "pure brilliance".

Positive reviews of ''Hit & Run'' focused on its graphics and gameplay. ''Play'' appreciated the virtual world that the game offered, describing it as "grandiose in its expanse and artistic rendering". Navarro found the gameplay to be very engaging. Meston found the game to be "very fun and very funny", and Leeper called it "nothing short of astonishing". Despite positive reactions, the game also had serious issues that were brought up in several reviews, which focused on the game's bugs and glitches. Both Bush and Mr. Tickle of ''Game Revolution'' pointed out that ''Hit & Run'' had a few gameplay issues and graphical shortcomings that included strange artificial intelligence behaviour and a broken camera system, which they felt hindered the overall experience of the game.

Non-video game publications gave positive reception on the game as well. Nick Catucci of ''The Village Voice'' gave the Xbox version a score of nine-out-of-ten, and stated, "This delightful, deep, and detailed (but unfortunately not cartoon-style cel-shaded) rip on the ''Grand Theft Auto'' series critiques itself better than any untenured academic could." Marc Saltzman of ''The Cincinnati Enquirer'' gave the game four stars out of five and said that "What it lacks in originality it more than makes up for with its fun and easy-to-pick-up game play that will appeal to fans of the long-running comedy." Geoff Keighley of ''Entertainment Weekly'' gave it a B and said, "If some of the missions seem repetitive, others stand out, like the one that has you confiscating copies of a particularly violent videogame (wink, wink) corrupting Springfield's youth." ''Famitsu'' gave the Xbox version a score of two eights, one seven, and one eight, for a total of 31 out of 40.

During the 7th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated ''The Simpsons: Hit & Run'' for " Console Action/Adventure Game of the Year".

Notes

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Simpsons Hit and Run, The
2003 video games
Action-adventure games
Video games about alien invasions
Fox Interactive games
GameCube games
Metafictional video games
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Open-world video games
PlayStation 2 games
Radical Entertainment games
Self-reflexive video games
Hit and Run
Video games developed in Canada
Video games scored by Jeff Tymoschuk
Video games set in the United States
Video games about zombies
Windows games
Xbox games
Video games scored by Marc Baril
Video games featuring female protagonists
Vivendi Games games
Halloween video games