This post is gonna be a doozy for you to read because I want to talk about what is really special to us in the gaming community. I had posts about being excited for revisiting classic titles from back in the day, but this one will focus on one thing that I will be talking about in terms of nostalgic gaming.
As we all know, the Simpsons has been a longest running animated comedy known for its direction of yellow skin on white characters, humor and their life in Springfield. There are a lot of Springfields in the US, but the one in the Simpsons is fictional. What I like about the Simpsons is that it has unhinged and crazy moments. Over the years, the Simpsons became a franchise to extend beyond the TV show realm to have a movie, toys, LEGO sets and video games, which involved having two legendary games on the 6th generation era developed by Radical Entertainment. And this is something that I am going to talk about, so let's take a dive into the post.
Fox Interactive had brought on Radical Entertainment, and was impressed by their first game based on one of Fox's franchises, Independence Day. Now, Radical wanted to make a game that catered to the audience among Simpsons fans. This is when they brought on EA to make a driving game based on the show. When the developers made a game that only involved driving and picking up and dropping off passengers, they have confirmed a name for it, The Simpsons Road Rage.
It is a driving game where players have to pick up and drop off passengers to their destination across Springfield, but the characters each have their own vehicle to be a core of the game. Road Rage's story involved Mr. Burns' schemes using radioactive buses to damage public. But the Simpson family would do anything to reverse his schemes. To do that, you must earn $1 million and unlock every character and area.
There is also a GBA version that is a different story. Unlike the console versions, it was published by THQ and developed by Altron Corporation. Though these companies became a different story, they became a solid pass that they were Kokopelli Digital Studios before they became THQ and their partnership with Altron became faithful to the era where they produce 5th generation era games. And sadly, the game has landed in a very awkward spot.
After Road Rage was released, SEGA came along to sue the companies behind this game over patent infringement. The lawsuit shows that Road Rage became a carbon copy of Crazy Taxi by having a gameplay similar to it. It involved having the similar gameplay as Crazy Taxi from picking up and dropping off passengers to their destination. This led to a conduction of a SEGA of America v. Fox Interactive, et al. case, which was already settled before going to court, so EA called it quits and gave the companies a second wind.
Now, over to Vivendi. We got some reported cases that they were able to differentiate their game from Road Rage to be a GTA-inspired game to not show any signs of getting sued, but minus the killing and guns. And soon, they followed EA's footsteps to make another Simpsons game. Fox Interactive now has two games developed by Radical with their publishing partnership from EA and Vivendi. All polished up and ready to go for emulation. Except that they can beg Sony and Nintendo to release their games on their catalog and the licensing issues may occur.
The big takeaway from this is that Fox Interactive and Radical Entertainment had found not only one co-publisher that would go on to make future titles in this generation, but two co-publishers. The co-publishers make companies look amazing. However, Hit & Run would be the final Simpsons game handled by Fox Interactive before they get defunct and the license was renewed by EA to make the Simpsons Game, which was one of the first games that had no involvement with Fox Interactive.
Remember what I said that the Simpsons has a lot of unhinged moments? Well, here's another thing; when the Simpsons was in development, they made everyone in the show yellow, except for the black and Indian characters, who have brown skin. They applied it to bringing Bart and Lisa their weirdly shaped heads to go with their yellow skin. Maggie's head is shaped the same as Lisa's. Well, it's an animation thing that Matt Groening didn't originally plan. Its mouth animation lacked tongue animation throughout the show's span, which led to the automatic captions on YouTube hiding bad words at a moderate to strong level.
However, there is no involvement of making every white character yellow and mouth animations have tongue animations on other animated sitcoms by Matt Groening, Futurama and Disenchantment. Both of these animated sitcoms have no involvement of making white characters yellow and have mouth animations that have tongue animations, led to seeing bad words at a moderate to strong level getting replaced with brackets on automatic captions.
Earlier seasons of the Simpsons are goated so far with its charm involving black lines on windows and wacky and unhinged moments that would include Bart doing troublemaking stuff like hammering down mustard packets to make a mess, Lisa being an entitled Karen against meat while getting ticked off at Homer, two kids begging Homer to take them to Mount Splashmore several times, Maggie making pacifier sounds with her friends at daycare and probably the most exciting thing of them all, Homer drinking bottles of beer and a bottle of gin at Moe's. Until in the modern day era where there is HD animation, which lacked a lot of charm and uses white lines on windows.
For example, did you know that in the old intro, Marge's hair whipped while the HD intro toned it down? That's proof as to how classic Simpsons would be freaking goated to reign supreme over modern day Simpsons in terms of unhinged and crazy moments. However, there is one part on the modern era that resonated the classic era, and that is the human pyramid.
Classic Simpsons in all of its forms had paved the way for Fox Interactive and Radical Entertainment to develop two of the Simpsons games that are faithful to the classic era of the show's charm that the Nintendo and PlayStation fanbases want to revisit. That's what makes both games so special. That also led to people making random clips of them.
Now, both of them have Metacritic scores, but because each version is scored separately by platform since they are old games, I will be determing the average score on each game. Then I will determine the average score for both games. I will be leaving out the PC version of Hit and Run and the GBA version of Road Rage. Now let's get to the averages.
We'll start with Road Rage and look at its Metacritic scores on each platform. The GameCube version scored a 67/100. The PS2 version scored a 64/100. The Xbox version scored a 61/100. The average score of Road Rage is a 65/100.
Now let's take a look at Hit and Run's Metacritic scores on each platform. The GameCube version scored a 79/100. The PS2 version scored a 78/100. The Xbox version scored an 81/100. The average score of Hit & Run is an 80/100.
Road Rage:
GameCube: 67/100
PS2: 64/100
Xbox: 61/100
Average score: 65/100
PS2: 64/100
Xbox: 61/100
Average score: 65/100
Hit and Run:
GameCube: 79/100
PS2: 78/100
Xbox: 81/100
Average score: 80/100
PS2: 78/100
Xbox: 81/100
Average score: 80/100
Average score for both games: 74.5/100
We now have average scores of both Road Rage and Hit and Run and the average score of both games. If you look at the average scores, Road Rage's performance became a bit abysmal over its poor graphics and bugs, as well as being a Crazy Taxi clone. That's why it averaged on a 65/100 as none of the versions even passed a 70/100. The one with the highest rating was the GameCube version, which can be played if Nintendo releases it on their GameCube catalog. But Hit and Run became a critically acclaimed Simpsons game of all time over its GTA goodness and quality graphics. It has averaged on a good score of 80/100. Both games have averaged on a 74.5/100, so I believe that PlayStation Plus Premium and Nintendo Switch Online's GameCube catalog should have a place for both of these games because this is a good average score of both Simpsons games developed by Radical.
And that is the story about Fox Interactive's two Simpsons games developed by Radical and what makes them so special and why we want Sony and Nintendo to release them on their catalogs. While it may seem like a convincing statement, there is a silver lining to this story. The first one is that if Road Rage did do well and get inspired by Crazy Taxi, then it would've received a lot of praise and SEGA wouldn't file a lawsuit against the companies over patent infringement at all because the Simpsons and Crazy Taxi are both great.
The next one is hopeful for Xbox players that they can be able to play two of Fox Interactive and Radical's Simpsons games on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S since these platforms support full backwards compatibility, both physically and digitally. Who knew that Microsoft, the only American manufacturer of the big three, would achieve full Xbox backwards compatibility on both of their modern systems to make Xbox players happy that they can be able to play both Simpsons games in the 6th generation era because of the Xbox 360 being easy to develop for?
I just received some news that Disney+ has launched a 24/7 stream that plays all 767 Simpsons episodes from Seasons 1 to 35 in chronological order. It is great news, but it needs a random episode button fans wanted as they don't want to watch the episodes in order. It is the perfect opportunity to binge watch The Simpsons on Disney+ to bolster your hopes of Sony and Nintendo releasing Radical's two games on PlayStation Plus Premium and the Nintendo Switch Online's GameCube catalog.