The Simpsons: Hit & Run is an unlikely classic – a rare actually good licensed game of the PS2 era, and one that continues to have a strong fanbase to this day. The open-world game’s robust speedrunning has recently come under a bigger spotlight thanks to a new video from YouTube documentarian Summoning Salt, and one of the game’s original devs is among the many people shocked to see how fans have pushed the game over the past 21 years.
Joe McGinn, who served as the lead designer on Hit & Run at Radical Entertainment, says in the comments of that video, “this is incredibly fun and heartwarming to see.” He adds, “I don’t think we knew about a single one of these optimizations during development!”
The story of the Hit & Run speedrunning scene is a wild one, as evidenced by the one-hour runtime of the Summoning Salt video, and the 10-year speedrunning gauntlet had been dominated by one runner who broke 45 records in a row. If you’re at all interested in the specifics I can’t recommend the full video enough, and it’s easy to see why McGinn is so impressed with what the community has done.
McGinn has also been sharing a bit of insight into the game’s development, including a frank assessment of how the out-of-car gameplay doesn’t measure up to the driving action. In all honesty it was our first game doing ‘platformer’ style gameplay,” McGinn explains. “If we’d had the chance to make a sequel that out-of-car gameplay would be better.”
Radical Entertainment actually did have a chance at making a sequel, though publisher Vivendi cut that opportunity short. “Gracie Films offered our publisher a deal to make three sequels, with all Simpsons rights and voice actors, for the preferred price of zero dollars (we wouldn’t have to pay anything for the Simpsons license in other words),” McGinn says. “Some crazy person at the publisher – we never found out who – said no.”
If you found yourself pulling your hair out during some of the game’s more challenging missions, there’s a reason why. One reason some of the missions are so hard: Richard Mul, brilliant racing game designer from early Need for Speed days, helped me with the final tuning,” McGinn explains. “Mostly made the missions a bit harder, but I trusted his judgement as he had more experience, and in hindsight I think he was right. A game that’s a bit too easy gets boring quick.
McGinn adds that “the whole team” was made up of “huge fans” of the show. “That was around season 12, the show’s golden age. And yeah that made it super fun to make the game.” He also says “we never imagined it would still be bringing some people happiness 20 years later!
If Hit & Run tickles your nostalgia centers, check out our guides to the best PS2 games, best GameCube games, and best original Xbox games of all time.