David’s Retro Rewind – The Simpsons: Road Rage

Off the top of my head, I can think of a fair few examples of entire genres of video games that spawned from development studios creating titles that were “clones” of other games in some sense of the word. Modern First-Person Shooters evolved from early so-called “Doom clones.” The Saints Row franchise was originally described as a “Grand Theft Auto clone,” and now look at how prominent that series has become over the years. There’s a ton of potential in borrowing from noteworthy games within reason, so long as you avoid producing soulless copies of the source material for the sake of making a quick buck.

The game I’ll be going back in time to discuss today doesn’t even bother attempting to be the least bit subtle about the fact that it’s a Crazy Taxi clone. As a matter of fact, this game and Crazy Taxi are so similar that Sega actually sued Electronic Arts and Radical Entertainment for patent infringement over its existence. That’s one of the biggest dangers of being careless (or even outright malicious) when taking inspiration from existing copyrighted works. Even so, I’ll be darned if the subject of today’s monologue isn’t at least a bit fun despite any negative connotations that the whole kerfuffle may carry.

The title in question is The Simpsons: Road Rage, originally released for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox on November 19th, 2001 in North America. Now, as some portion of our audience is likely well aware, there have been a handful of rather poorly-received games that had The Simpsons’ IP slapped on them for one reason or another. The Simpsons Skateboarding was, in my opinion, a halfhearted Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater wannabe, and the earlier The Simpsons Wrestling has made itself at home within the darkest depths of Metacritic alongside games like South Park Rally.

That’s not to say that the entire lineup of The Simpsons games has been composed of flops, though. On the contrary, the next game to feature this particular IP, 2003’s The Simpsons: Hit & Run, is widely regarded as one of the best open-world titles that just so happens to be set in Springfield and its surrounding areas. Granted, that may well have been because Hit & Run was a satire of the then-recent Grand Theft Auto III rather than a blatant clone, unlike Road Rage’s resemblance to the aforementioned Crazy Taxi.

Then again, I think a game like Hit & Run would have to be more of a satire of its source material than a clone because I would wager that the more violent mechanics of a title such as GTA III couldn’t exactly be co-opted into a game based on something considered a more “family-friendly” intellectual property. That is to say, I find it ridiculous to imagine that there could ever be an officially-licensed game in which any member of the Simpson family goes on a carjacking rampage through Springfield with all kinds of guns and other armaments in tow.

Anyway, I’ve gone on a tangent. Let’s get back to the star of today’s Retro Rewind. The plot of The Simpsons: Road Rage begins with an introductory cutscene in which news anchor Kent Brockman reports on a press conference held by Mr. Burns. During that broadcast, Burns announces that he has just launched a new public transit service composed entirely of a fleet of nuclear-powered buses. As the Simpson family watches the news report, Lisa quickly realizes that the buses are clearly unsafe due to radioactivity and, in her words, “a threat to the public health.”

This gives Homer the idea to essentially start his own taxi service in direct competition with what his boss calls “the Burns Atomic Mega Bus.” Homer goes about this by first crudely painting the phrase “Homer 4 Hire” on the side of the family sedan, then proceeding to peel out of his driveway with the intent of picking up and delivering his first few “lucky” passengers. With that scene in mind, you’re then taken to some actual gameplay. The game offers three single-player modes and one multiplayer head-to-head mode in case you’ve got a friend who’s interested in playing against you.

The single-player modes in question are the titular “Road Rage” mode, “Mission Mode,” and “Sunday Drive” mode. As you might expect, the first of these is where Road Rage’s numerous similarities to Crazy Taxi are most apparent. Your primary objective is to pick up and deliver as many passengers as quickly and efficiently as you can in order to maximize the amount of money you earn from doing so. The faster you get your customers to their destination, the more cash they’ll give you at the end of their trip.

If you drop them off where they’re going within a certain amount of time after you pick them up, you’ll also have a few precious bonus seconds added to the total which remains on the in-game clock. Arrive at their destinations too slowly, however, and you’ll have to deal with your fares berating you as soon as they exit your vehicle. No time will be deducted for getting a passenger where they’re going after those first few seconds, but you’ll probably have wasted a significant amount of your available time in those cases anyway.

Sunday Drive mode is nearly identical to the core gameplay loop present in Road Rage mode, except there’s no time limit or money to be earned. Instead, you can pick up and drop off passengers at your own pace without having to rush and/or operate your motor vehicle in a potentially unsafe manner. The concept behind this mode is to present you with the opportunity to explore the various unlockable areas of Springfield at your leisure. Speaking of unlockable areas, there’s quite a bit of additional content that you can earn based on your performance in Road Rage mode.

In terms of playable drivers, you start with the entire Simpson family available to you. Amusingly, this includes Bart, Lisa, and Abraham “Grampa” Simpson, none of whom should be allowed to have driver’s licenses, but that’s neither here nor there. The more cash you rack up in Road Rage mode, the more frequently you’ll be able to unlock new drivers and new areas of town to navigate. When you earn a reward this way, you can pick any currently locked driver from the list rather than the game choosing which bits of content you get at any given point.

In case this tidbit interests you, you have the ability to unlock a considerable array of The Simpsons characters to control as you drive around town like a bat out of Hades. To name a few random examples, the cast includes Groundskeeper Willie, Chief Wiggum, school bus driver Otto Mann, Professor Frink, Reverend Lovejoy, and a different version of Homer in his Mr. Plow truck and costume. Just for the fun of it, I chose to unlock Reverend Lovejoy as my first reward since I find humor in the fact that he drives the “Book Burning Mobile.”

Having said all that, the only game mode I’ve yet to discuss is Mission Mode. Now that I’ve played Road Rage for a while as a refresher for this article, I’ve discovered that I actually have a fair few complaints about the game. That list of grievances begins with this mode, which is partially why I’m discussing it this late in my monologue. There are a total of ten missions within The Simpsons: Road Rage. Of these, you’ll have to unlock nine by successfully completing each mission’s predecessor.

I consider these missions to be simple in theory but aggravating in practice for the most part. For example, the first mission sees you control Groundskeeper Willie and tasks you with running over twelve newspaper containers within one minute. That sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Well, if you’re anything like me, you’ll likely find the awkward handling of some vehicles you can drive (including Willie’s tractor) and the fact that the game gives you barely enough time to do what it asks of you in the best case scenario make this task more annoying than it has any right to be.

What’s more, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of rhyme or reason when it comes to the difficulty of any given mission. The second mission, for instance, gives you about thirty seconds to drive to a specific, nearby portion of Springfield’s nuclear power plant and come to a complete stop in order to allow your passenger to exit your vehicle. In this case, it’s not the time limit that presents the issue; it’s the fact that you also have to avoid colliding with Mr. Burns’ limousine, which will begin to chase you down as soon as you get near the power plant.

This task only took me two attempts to pull off, whereas the mission before it required several more than that for what seems like no good reason. Personally, I think there should be something of a difficulty curve in this mode rather than each individual mission happening to be simpler than any of its counterparts. Perhaps I just need to “get good,” though I really don’t see myself investing enough time in the game to accomplish that.

To conclude, it may sound like I’m not exactly fond of The Simpsons: Road Rage based on what I’ve said thus far. It’s entirely possible that my rose-tinted nostalgia glasses struck again, reminding me of the not-insignificant amounts of fun I had with the game when I was a lad. Maybe I just didn’t know better back then. Still, I certainly don’t hate the game by any stretch of the imagination. I wholeheartedly believe it remains a good way to kill a decent amount of time if you’re a Simpsons fan and you’ve got that Crazy Taxi itch.