Fan dreams of a return for The Simpsons: Hit & Run may actually come true, if an accidental comment by Matt Groening is to be believed.
Ask any fan of The Simpsons what the franchise’s best video game is and they’ll likely answer with The Simpsons: Hit & Run, an obvious expy of GTA that launched in 2003.
To this day, fans are still clamouring for the game to see a remaster or remake. One fan went so far as to remake Hit & Run’s first level singlehandedly in the space of a week, back in 2021.
So, there was naturally a lot of buzz when Simpsons creator Matt Groening seemed to confirm that Hit & Run is being brought back, according to comments he made during the recent D23 event.
As an event for all things Disney, a dedicated Simpsons panel took place to discuss the future of the show, following a teaser for the second Simpsons movie, which has been given the very Nintendo-esque title of The New Simpsons Movie.
The panel featured members of The Simpsons’ creative team, including Groening and showrunner Matt Selman, who at one point took questions from the audience.
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
The full panel can be watched on YouTube and around the 23:20 mark, one audience member asked about the possibility of a second Hit & Run game, which elicited a few whoops from the crowd.
Selman only responded that such a sequel would ‘be a treat,’ but then Groening jumped in to add, ‘I think the original game is coming back in some form.’
It definitely seems like Groening said something he wasn’t supposed to as Selman followed up with, ‘Or… not,’ and Groening shifted to discussing a different game, The Simpsons: Road Rage, and how they were initially told they couldn’t use that title because it could encourage actual road rage.
Selman also cracked a joke about how ‘money changed hands’ regarding the lawsuit Sega filed against publisher EA for Road Rage’s blatant similarities to Crazy Taxi.
Since then, there’s been no official statement or follow-up comment correcting Groening, to say that there are no plans for a Hit & Run remaster.
If it is indeed coming back, then that would mean all the licensing issues have been resolved, which have been the main reason preventing any sort of re-release for all these years.
As a reminder, Hit & Run was made by Radical Entertainment and published by Vivendi Games, and though multiple sequels were considered, Vivendi opted not to keep the Simpsons licence. Both Radical and Vivendi were later acquired by Activision and are pretty much non-existent nowadays.
Coincidentally, though, former Radical Entertainment staff revived the studio independently of Activision under the name New Radical Games earlier this year.
Its websiteproudly displays Hit & Run as an example of the team’s best work, which sparked some hope that the studio would work on a remaster. Perhaps New Radical Games reached a deal with Disney to finally go through with the idea. It’d certainly be the best pick for it given its familiarity with the original game.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.