The Best Simpsons Game Finally Getting a Modern Remake?
Joe McGinn, creator of the iconic 2000s game, The Simpsons: Hit and Run, would like to see the game remade for modern players.
Here we are again; it’s the time of the year when we discuss the highly-coveted remakes of some of the most fondly remembered classic games. We already covered Goldeneye 007, which was recently revived by Nintendo and Xbox, and now it’s time to discuss the possible remake of one of the most beloved games from the early 2000s—the iconic The Simpsons: Hit and Run.
According to GamesRadar+, Joe McGinn, the game’s lead designer, stated that The Simpsons: Hit and Run is still one of the highest-rated games from The Simpsons franchise that ever got made and that he’d like to see it remade. Unfortunately, the remake is nowhere to be found. It would seem that each year we discuss the possibility of a remake, and considering that we’re living in an era of remakes and collaborations, the possibility of The Simpsons: Hit and Run remake doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
As for remakes, we get fan remakes of The Simpsons: Hit and Run from time to time, and while some of them look promising, the lack of official remakes continues to dishearten the fans. Joe McGinn would like to see the game remade, and so would we. McGinn also expressed pride over the game’s success and the fact that the game’s ongoing popularity among the gaming community continues to surprise him. He recently gave talks to high schoolers about his computer career and was genuinely surprised that some of them actually played The Simpsons: Hit and Run.
This only attests to the game’s evergreen status, considering that today’s high schoolers weren’t even born when the game came out. But classics will remain classics. 2003’s The Simpsons: Hit and Run was a massive success when it came out two decades ago—at the time when the popularity of the franchise skyrocketed. In fact, the popularity of one of the most popular sitcoms resulted in many other The Simpsons games. Yet nobody could predict the level of fondness and esteem the game would enjoy to this day.
But the development of the game and its road to release were rocky for the lead game designer and his team of developers. The studio’s first The Simpsons game, called The Simpsons: Road Rage, wasn’t a head-turner by any metric, but it allowed the development team to learn from their mistakes. They moved on to other games, which were canceled by the studio, just in time for when Fox sought to make The Simpsons game. And luckily for the developers, bits and pieces of previously developed but canceled games worked to their advantage.
Apparently, the developed assets were applicable to what would turn out to be The Simpsons: Hit and Run. While most other competitors submitted their concept to Fox Interactive on paper, the team at Radical Entertainment—who also worked on the canceled Scarface 2 game—repurposed their assets that were developed for the canceled games and submitted a proof-of-concept demo. Taking what they learned from their previous flop, and the assets they already had developed, Radical Entertainment developed something truly awesome and enjoyed by gamers of all ages.
