To this day, players still love The Simpsons: Hit & Run, and apparently there could have been more, if it wasn’t for someone who helped publish the game.
I’m not sure if there’s a PS2 game more universally loved than The Simpsons: Hit & Run. I’ve just never heard a bad word against it, and even now people are clamouring for a port or remaster, yet one has never materialised. The Grand Theft Auto-esque game sold well at the time, yet somehow a sequel never materialised, and now we might have some idea why. Earlier this month, YouTube Summoning Salt, who essentially makes entire documentaries on the history of various games’ speedrunning scenes, released a video all about The Simpsons: Hit & Run, and as spotted by GamesRadar, a comment was actually left behind from the game’s lead designer, Joe McGinn.
McGinn’s comment was initially one just saying how “incredibly fun and heartwarming” the video was to see as the game’s lead designer, but he later shared in another comment that actually, the film could have had up to three sequels, all without paying the licence fee for The Simpsons itself. McGinn explained that The Simpsons’ production company 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 licence in other words).”
With an offer like that, and the game being as successful as it was, there’s obviously the question of, “why did no one greenlight this?” Well, as McGinn continued to explain, “some crazy person at the publisher – we never found out who – said no.” That’s obviously quite the wild decision, and certainly a frustrating one for the devs themselves, but alas, 20 years on there’s not exactly much anyone can do about it these days. Maybe one day we’ll get a port at the very least.