Retro Respawn – The Simpsons: Road Rage

Hello, one and all, and welcome to the re-launch of Retro Respawn. We at Gaming Respawn pride ourselves of having gamers from multiple age groups on the team, meaning we can cover a broad spectrum of video games for all of you. Some of us (yours truly included) are of such an advanced age that we can remember what gaming was like before anyone cared about frame rates, ray tracing, or any other modern buzzwords that dominate gaming conversations. Which brings us to Retro Respawn. Every week, we will bring you a title from gaming’s past.

Some will be well-known, others not so much. Before diving into this week’s chosen one (no, don’t worry, it won’t betray the Republic), let’s get some housekeeping out of the way for how the formats of these features will work. Firstly, we’ll cover a bit of development history of the game, followed by a brief overview of the story and the gameplay. We’ll move onto to good and bad points and finally compare the title at its modern price to something at a similar cost and see if it is worth it. With all that out of the way, let’s put our foot down and get started with this week’s selection, The Simpsons: Road Rage.

Development and History

Developed in only 12 months by Radical Entertainment (who would go on to develop the arguably more popular The Simpsons: Hit & Run, as well as other titles such as Prototype and Scarface: The World Is Yours) for first the PlayStation 2 and then later releases on GameCube and Xbox. To say The Simpsons: Road Rage is similar to Sega’s Crazy Taxi would be doing a disservice to the word “similar”. Road Rage is a completely unapologetic copy of Crazy Taxi set in Springfield with everyone’s favourite cartoon family and a few of their friends. The gameplay was so similar to Crazy Taxi (released first in 1999 and ported to the Dreamcast in 2000) that Sega sued Radical Entertainment, along with publishers EA and Fox Interactive, with the lawsuit being settled out of court. The voice cast from the show reprised their roles for Road Rage. There is a mixture of familiar phrases from the show but also original dialogue.

Story

Those of you who have played The Simpsons: Road Rage before might struggle to recall if there was a story. Well, I can assure you, there was. Springfield’s evilest (and oldest) resident, C. Montgomery Burns, is up to his old tricks in trying to expand his evil empire in Springfield. He has taken control of all public transportation in the city and replaced it all with his radioactive buses, which are about as safe as Apu’s discounted hot dogs are to eat. The citizens of Springfield all come together to earn enough money to buy back the public transit system from Mr. Burns by turning their own vehicles into taxis and dropping the residents of Springfield to where they want to go. You will be forgiven if you didn’t know about this story as it is all explained in a pre-menu cutscene that you can easily skip.

Gameplay

It’s “Simpsons Crazy Taxi”, let’s jump straight to the good. Only joking! Yes, as previously mentioned, this is pretty much a clone of Crazy Taxi with a Simpsons coat of paint thrown over it. If you have ever played Sega’s arcade classic, there will be zero to learn here, really. To be honest, if you haven’t played Crazy Taxi before, it will still take only seconds to learn how to play Road Rage, but these arcade-style games were never meant to have a steep learning curve, and they are created to simply pick up and play. There are four game modes to get stuck into: Road Rage, Missions, Sunday Drive, and Head-to-Head.

Road Rage is where you will spend most of your time as the default taxi mode. Here you will pick up numerous Simpsons characters and take them to their desired locations, earning money as you drive as well as earning bonuses based on speed or passenger requests (avoiding traffic collisions or destroying things) when you do drop them off, as well as seconds added to the clock based on how quickly you got them there. At the start of the game, you have access to five characters (the Simpson family, minus Maggie, which is a shame as she has driven in the show before, and that would be hilarious) and one location.

You can unlock numerous more Simpsons characters (with some special ones based on the date you’re playing, such as Halloween Bart) and five other starting locations in and around Springfield. Like Crazy Taxi, no matter how well you drive, getting all the time bonuses, your session will eventually run out of time (you start with over a minute on easy mode), and you will have Krusty “announce” your rank. Announce is in quotation marks as it is a brilliant gag and a callback to an older Simpsons episode where Krusty, after being paid to do something, doesn’t want to do it, so he gets someone else to do it.

Out of Road Rage there is Missions mode, which has ten different…missions to play through, ranging from driving Homer to work as he slept in too late, or a disgruntled and hungover Barney running over a dozen Capital City Goofball mascots. Completing all ten missions will unlock a special car for Homer to drive in the other modes. It’s special because it was designed by the man himself! There is also Sunday Drive, which acts as the free roam mode for Road Rage, and finally, there’s Head to Head, where two players race against each other to complete fares.

The Good

It might be a complete copy of Crazy Taxi, but this game is a lot of fun to play, especially as a Simpsons fan. There is original dialogue in Road Rage, and sure, once you play it for long enough, you will hear it over and over again, but the fact it features any original dialogue at all is great. Certain characters will also uniquely interact with each other. Obviously, all the members of the Simpson family interact with one another, but you’ll also have Homer chatting to Barney, or my personal favourite, Marge asking Moe not to look at her like that. Springfield itself is full of all the well-known and loved locations, like Moe’s Tavern, the Church, obviously the Simpsons’ house, and (but don’t tell the townspeople!) the Maison Derriere.

The quick, pick up and play arcade style of Road Rage makes it a perfect choice if you have a half hour to kill. You won’t be spending hours at a time playing this, but it was never made for that. Is it better than Crazy Taxi? That will depend. Gameplay-wise? No, Crazy Taxi is a lot smoother (more on that below), but if you’re a Simpsons fan, I can guarantee that you will enjoy Road Rage a lot more, even with the various issues it has.

The Bad

I have been rather complimentary towards Road Rage thus far, but it is far from perfect. I know at the top of this feature I bemoaned modern gaming’s obsession with frame rate, but Road Rage’s gets bad…really bad in certain parts of levels when there is a lot going on. The collision detection is incredibly frustrating, which might be the biggest flaw in Road Rage. You will be flying along, making great time, when all of sudden, you “crash” into another car that seemed far enough away to avoid. It is also frustrating when you get caught by the corner of a building whilst trying to make some time up by driving on the pavement (sidewalk) where you have made sure to leave enough space.

Graphically, it isn’t the greatest, even for the time. The cars (you drive) look great, but the characters (more so in cutscenes) just look a bit odd. A bit like when Homer gets lost in the 3D world in one of the “Treehouse of Horror” episodes. The different cars you can drive, in theory, drive and handle differently, but it isn’t really that noticeable. The Plow King will be able to withstand more collisions than Grampa’s little kart, but it doesn’t drastically change the way you play, say, in comparison with Mario Kart, for example. This was a huge swing and a miss for the devs as it would have been interesting to try out different strategies, but alas, holding down the accelerator and occasionally tapping the brake/handbrake works for every vehicle.

Worth It Today?

Looking at eBay, you can pick up a PS2 copy (the version I played) of The Simpsons: Road Rage for between £10-£15. You can pick up a KFC Zinger box meal (in the UK) for between £11.49-£12.99, depending on extras, so is Road Rage worth getting over a KFC meal? As much as I love KFC, it has to be a yes. It might be a complete ripoff of a better made game, but it is still fun to play, especially as a Simpsons fan. You’ll be able to find a copy of Road Rage even cheaper at car boot sales or in charity shops, so if you do fancy a quick zip around Springfield, keep a look out!