Last year, a YouTuber who goes by the channel name, reubs made an unofficial remaster of the game using Unreal Engine 5. In his most recent update, he made it into an open-world sandbox, and by all accounts, this is perhaps what The Simpsons: Hit and Run fans have been waiting for all these years.
The Simpsons: Hit and Run – History
To give a bit of a background, The Simpsons: Hit and Run was a weird but cult classic action-adventure game that featured a 3D version of Springfield and had the gamers fulfilling quest objectives with a UI and playstyle not too different from a Grand Theft Auto game.
Released in 2003, The Simpsons: Hit and Run could be played on PCs, PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. Back then, it was more objective-focused and as a result of hardware limitations, Springfield wasn’t as expansive as the developers would have wanted it to be.
Nonetheless, it won the hearts of many gamers in the 2000s and has since been an ‘underdog classic’ so to speak. Luckily for gamers though, we live in a decade where revitalizing franchises, is taken very seriously, not to mention the growing demand for a remake of the title.
The Simpsons: Hit and Run remaster
In August 2021, YouTuber reubs uploaded a sort of demo video demonstrating what he was able to do in a week of tweaking the graphical assets of the IP.
While it was quite an impressive feat to achieve at the time, the remaster wasn’t exactly practical for a full game setup. The remake was mostly a way of unearthing the potential of a revamped The Simpsons: Hit and Run using the vastly updated (and user-optimized) graphical capabilities of Unreal Engine 5.
Fast forward to now, where reubs is back with a well-rounded idea and elaborate plans on how he wishes to take the remake forward.
Instead of the objective-focused, zone-based gameplay of the original The Simpsons: Hit and Run, this unofficial remake will allow users to travel the entire town unhindered. The remaster has essentially embraced The Simpsons: Hit and Run‘s open-world GTA roots that the game was always closely referenced for.
Will The Simpsons: Hit and Run be available for download?
Now for the big question, can you get this unofficial remake? The answer is a flat no, unfortunately.
For obvious reasons, the YouTuber does not want to be dragged into potential legal troubles with Fox/Disney, so he has decided against making the project available to the public.
This is a good move on his part since we’ve seen corporate entities delete entire independent projects to oblivion using vicious cease and desist orders even if the project was intended for free and non-profitable uses.
That being said, if corporate entities are watching the developments of this project, (which they presumably are) they’d soon realize the demand for a remaster of The Simpsons: Hit and Run. Maybe we’ll even see a Fox/Disney remake of the video game in the near future.