The Simpsons: Hit & Run Writer Does Not Rule Out a Re-Release

Matt Selman, a writer and producer of the animated series The Simpsons, who contributed to nearly 600 of its 800 existing episodes, the movie adaptation, and several games, commented on the possibility of reviving The Simpsons: Hit & Run. The topic has become particularly relevant following the return of the studio that originally developed the game.

Hit & Run is so interesting. I’m a thousand years old, and when I was in my mid to late 20s, I helped write Hit & Run. I had no idea it would become a cult game, a cult success. Of all the games, the thousands of Simpsons games... that one...

Of course, it’s so long ago, but I remember being in a meeting with whoever made it and GTA III had just come out, and so we were like, ‘This has to be The Simpsons version of that. You have to be able to get in and out of the cars’. They so did not want people to get in and out of the cars. So, that was a huge battle we had to fight of getting in and out of the cars. We luckily won that battle because it is fun to get in and out of the cars.

Nothing is set in stone. But my quote about Hit & Run would be, ‘Never say never’. Because we know people love it. We know they want it, so that’s good. If we know people want it, never say never.

The writer has discussed these topics before. Five years ago, he also spoke about the possibility of a remaster of The Simpsons: Hit & Run and the influence of GTA 3 on the original game.

I’d love to see a remaster, but it’s very difficult within such a complicated corporate octopus.

We were playing Grand Theft Auto, while the publisher wanted another racing game. We argued that everyone was playing different versions of GTA, and that players needed to be able to get out of their cars. There was a lot of debate about whether it should just be a driving game with missions or a game where you could leave your vehicle and complete missions on foot.

Selman, however, personally prefers The Simpsons Game, which was released in 2007 just a couple of months after the premiere of The Simpsons Movie.

That to me is the funniest and most innovative love letter to video games and great story, sort of a movie-level of storytelling that we did in the writing of that game.