The Simpsons was pretty much a staple in my house when I was a kid. In the UK and Ireland, if you grew up in the 2000s, there is almost no way you didn't make a event out of watching the show on Channel 4 at 6pm every day, possibly catching a second episode on RTE2 at 6:30pm, and if you were lucky, catching a marathon of episodes on Sky One almost right after. I had several VHS tapes which contained a random assortment of four episodes based on a theme. I loved seeing the Treehouse of Horror episodes, I sat in anticipation after seeing a rerun of Who Shot Mr. Burns Part 1, not nearly aware that Part 2 had been out for years, and everyone knew the baby was the shooter. I had multiple seasonal boxsets. 

To say I was a huge Simpsons fan as a kid, and remain a Simpsons fan to this day is a understatement. While I don't follow the show as much, I still love watching the classic episodes, and referencing various gags and memes near constantly. Hell, I even like a good chunk of later seasons and still followed the show up until around Season 24 or so. 

How much of a fan was I back in the day? Despite being a kid, I finished the damn game 100% back then, and anyone who plays this game knows the horror of some of the missions later on. From Never Trust a Snake to Alien Auto Autopsy Parts 1-3. Yet I still did it. Then I deleted the save after having a nightmare due to the Treehouse of Horror aesthetic of Level 7, and the general creepy vibe of Level 2's ending, and Bart's abduction. 

But hey, enough ramble, let's do this thing!

So our story starts with a normal day in the Simpsons household. Homer swats a strange robotic bee, and then proceeds to go to the Kwik-E-Mart to buy a brand new version of Buzz Cola. What unravels throughout his day is helping Marge destroy a van carrying the violent sequel to Bonestorm, destroying Smithers' car to stop him finding out Homer is late to work, and attempting to unravel a mystery concerning mysterious black vans that appear to be snooping on the town, albeit Homer finds out they're only pizza vans later.

Following Homer's daily life, we continue on with Bart's adventure the next day attempting to find somewhere selling Bonestorm II after 'some crazy lady' destroyed a shipment (I wonder who...). Throughout this, Bart tries to find other ways to entertain himself, leading to him helping Professor Frink build a Truckasarus which proceeds to go haywire and attempt to kill Bart. Bart narrowly escapes, only to suddenly find himself bathed in a green light, and swarmed by green smoke, after which, Bart has suddenly vanished, leaving his car empty.

Much like a regular Simpsons episode where things start normal before a inciting incident kicks the plot into gear, this is where the real plot gets underway - Bart has been abducted by aliens, and it's now up to Lisa to track him down, where after finding him following a series of side-tracks, Bart is manic, talking gibberish, and in a bizarre trance. From here, Marge and Apu begin to unravel the mystery behind all of these events, eventually discovering that Kang and Kodos have created the new version of Buzz Cola to place humanity into a rage-induced trance, intending to give them weapons and other various items to incite riots and chaos, and film it all for a intergalactic TV show. When things get desperate for them, they then plan to feed the cola into the graveyards of Springfield, literally intending to raise the dead in a last-ditch effort to boost their ratings.

To say the story is a bit out there is a understatement, but given the various stories that later Simpsons could get into, and the fact they go into full-blown Treehouse of Horror territory later, I think it ultimately works pretty well. It also helps that the writing of the game is genuinely pretty funny, helped by the fact that all of the VAs from the original show all return as well, more of a rarity back during the early 2000s for licensed games, which makes the game just feel right at home with the universe. Any Simpsons fan will likely fall in love with the sheer amount of fan-service present in the game.

You can tell that the developers of this game were massive Simpsons nerds. Everywhere you go, there's some kind of reference to the show, some kind of easter egg. From seeing locations from the show faithfully recreated in all three of it's levels, to unlockable and even secret cars being some clever obscure references, such as the rocket car from The Day Violence Died, to a car that Hans Moleman crashed into the Springfield Squidport, to the Monorail. There's collectable gags all over the place that reference various episodes, such as Flanders' bomb shelter, a frozen Jasper at the Kwik-E-Mart, and three unlockable costumes per level that all reference different episodes.

Costumes range from the more obvious like Bartman, and Officer Marge, to more obscure, like Donut Homer, Cool Lisa, and the suit Marge wears in Scenes of the Class Struggle in Springfield, and even then, the amount of detail put in is pretty nuts. Each costume has a unique animation all relating to the episode. From Homer eating a piece of his donut-ified head (referencing the episode in question) to Bart doing a ninja flip when he's wearing his ninja costume. There's also collector cards to find in each level that has different objects relating to each character, along with a bio to go with it, and getting all of them unlocks a exclusive Itchy and Scratchy cartoon too.

Which I suppose in discussing the collectibles, we might as well get to the gameplay loop, which is fairly simple enough - the game is a semi open-world GTA clone where you partake in missions throughout three areas of Springfield, the suburbs, Downtown, and the Squidport. These missions range from exploration, destroying objects, tailing cars, destroying cars, racing cars, and getting to different places under a set number of time, with each level containing seven missions a piece, plus a bonus mission from a random cameo of Springfield, offering a car in exchange for your services. You'll also be doing this with five characters - Homer, Bart, Lisa, Marge, and Apu in that order, with the game rotating back around to Bart and Homer for the last two levels.

The missions is probably one of the most infamous aspects of Hit & Run, as most kids growing up remember how utterly brutal these missions can be. The game starts out fairly light within Levels 1-3, but by the time you hit Level 4, and especially Level 5, it ramps up in difficult, with missions that usually require multiple runs to get an ideal path through the mission. Missions that frankly aren't even playtested well in certain cases, as a recently discovered beta revealed that infamous difficult missions like Set to Kill had timers added to it at the very last second, a timer that is not well-balanced and leads to it being one of the most infamously difficult missions.

As a kid? I definitely felt this. I got stuck so often on so many missions. Monkey See, Monkey Do in Level 2, Clueless in Level 3, Wolves Stole My Pills in Level 4, pretty much all of Snake's missions in Level 5, Set to Kill in Level 6, and don't even get me started on the nightmare trilogy known as Alien Auto Autopsy where the game wants you to carry a load of radioactive waste from two sides of the map under tighter and tighter time limits, and where even the smallest tap resets you back to the start because your waste gets destroyed, not to mention the final mission having the worst car in the whole game due to it's horrible handling.

Luckily, the game does have a skip function built in where if you fail a mission five times, it'll offer you to skip it, meaning anyone of any skill level can more or less get through the game with little issue...except for the last three missions, that does require you to beat them and has no skip option built in, a pretty dickhead move considering how lazy the last three missions are and how badly designed they are.

However this time? It was surprisingly easy. I was expecting a lot of these missions to give me trouble again, but I blew through all of them within 1-2 tries. Even the infamous Set to Kill only took me 2 or 3 attempts to finish up. I was genuinely shocked given this was the first time I played through Hit and Run since...ironically I think the first 52 Game Challenge way back when. But yeah, I blew through all of the missions pretty much.

...Except Alien Auto Autopsy. 

Part 1 and 2? Fairly easy enough. 

Part 3? Oh god help me, no.

These missions were always the most horribly designed. Limited time to make it all away across the map, a mechanic where every time you tap anything, you lose the waste and have to start all over again with driving aaaall the way to the Power Plant again. Then they add chases and more to it and it just becomes downright unreasonable. I despised these missions as a kid, and I still despise it now. Especially when their bright idea for the last car is to use one of the lowest stat cars in the game, and then just slap a rocket in it so it's speed and acceleration are maxed, while everything else remains the same, meaning the car is horrible to control.

Just a bad mission all around, ugh.

But still, the game, even on this revisit was still a lot of fun, and doing all of these missions I had so much trouble with back in the day gave me the same kind of excitement hit that I got when blitzing KH2 after always getting stuck in that game all the time.

The graphics in general is also probably the best the Simpsons have looked in 3D up until this point, that one Treehouse of Horror segment aside. There actually is beta content where you can see them use the Road Rage models for cutscenes, and the difference is night and day, I am so grateful they redid the models:

Also the soundtrack. Holy shit, the soundtrack is SO good. Every single character gets their own unique genre of music to accompany their missions, adding just a bit more uniqueness and charm. Not to mention that the songs are just outright bangers. I listened to this soundtrack as a kid, and I still have some of these songs just randomly burst into my brain, causing me to hum them. They're that good. Just listen to these songs, and be amazed that it comes from a Simpsons game of all things! 

And need I even mention probably the most famous song from the game, the one that takes clear inspiration from ACDC's Hell's Bells and is probably the only redeeming factor present in Set to Kill?

Honestly, what else can I say? If you're even faintly aware of licensed games, you know Hit & Run sits up there with Battle for Bikini Bottom, and Spider-Man 2 as the top tier. It still has a beloved fanbase that are making mods of the game to this day, with Donut Team being the most prominent. Need I even mention the two fan-made remasters, including one that is literally outright reanimating the game's cutscenes into the show's 2D style?

I'm right there with them. I loved Hit and Run as a kid, and even now, problems and warts and all, I still love it. You can argue that the driving ain't amazing, missions aren't very balanced, and the game had a very problematic development cycle, which is shown in the fact that the Halloween Level is clearly recycling content and has half the map missing despite it having been planned as shown by cut music cues showing Halloween variants of the Stonecutters' Tunnel, but the fact that the game, even in it's state is so fun, and so brimming with charm, wit, and fan-service shows how good it is. I would say it's the Crash Twinsanity of the Simpsons games, but it's in a better state both functionally and content wise than Twinsanity, so it's not the best comparison, but still, my point stands.

If you have any means to play it? Then play it. It is so damn good.