Dec 17, 2001  The Simpsons Road Rage for GameCube game reviews & Metacritic score: Mr. Burns is up to his greedy ways in Simpsons Road Rage, purchasing Springfield's busses and jacking up the fares. Now, Springfield residents must turn their.

The Simpsons: Road Rage is a clone of Crazy Taxi, but with Simpsons characters. It's so blatant, Sega even stepped in and sued all parties involved in creating the game for infringing on their patent. Way to go, Radical.

• 1Unused Graphics
• 2Placeholder Dialogue
• 4Unused Models
• 5Misplaced Objects
• 7Debugging Functions
• 9Console Differences

Unused Graphics

A large number of unused images are only present in the GameCube edition.

Chief Wiggum sprite

A leftover sprite of Chief Wiggum that would have been used in the character selection screen. This sprite is identical to the one used in the E3 2001 prototype. The image is titled LWiggum.png while the sprite that is actually used is located in the same folder and titled LChief.png.

Beer Bottles

Leftover beer bottles that were used in the HUD in the E3 prototype. They would have been used for the 'destroy stuff' and 'avoid the traffic' tasks.

Coin

A coin sprite that would have been displayed in the HUD next to the total money earned. This sprite was used in the non-E3 prototype.

Hourglass

An hourglass sprite that would have been displayed in the HUD next to the remaining time. Like the coin, this sprite was used in the non-E3 prototype.

GameCube Buttons

Graphics for the GameCube controller buttons. The font is different and the X, Y and Z buttons are the wrong shape.

Language Selection

Graphics for an apparent language selection menu, namely for English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Blackboard

A blackboard image inside a directory titled 'loading', which implies it was going to be used in the loading screen. In the non-E3 prototype, the loading screen does have a blackboard with Bart writing on it, but the image is less detailed.

Krusty Burger

Leftover textures for Krusty Burger which would have been used when the game had a more 'cartoony' look during development, as seen in the E3 prototype.

Burns' Mansion

Leftover textures for Mr. Burns' mansion in the 'Springfield Mountains' level. Again probably used when the game was more 'cartoony'.

Placeholder Dialogue

Placeholder Pedestrian Dialogue

Located in the 'Female' directory of dialog.rcf in the GameCube release of the game, these robotised female voice clips are obvious placeholders for when a female pedestrian gets hit by or dodges your car. These clips bear a remarkable similarity to some of the placeholder voices heard in the non-E3 prototype. Interestingly, none of the female pedestrians included in the game have any voice clips, so these provisional files never needed to be replaced.

Unused Pedestrian Folders

Inside dialog.rcf, there are three subfolders inside sound/dialog/english named BGMurphy, Drzweig and Lurleen, referring to the characters Bleeding Gums Murphy, Dr. Zweig, and Lurleen Lumpkin, respectively. All three of these folders contain another subfolder named Pedestri, which contains an 8 byte .dlg file used as a placeholder. Both Dr. Zweig and Lurleen appear in-game as low quality, unvoiced pedestrians - Bleeding Gums does not, however.

Unused Music

Three unused tracks. Their filenames suggest they were intended for gameplay in 'Road Rage' or 'Head to Head' mode.

Unused Models

Dr. Hibbert

Dr. Hibbert who is untextured but has material. He was probably intended to be a passenger at some point.

Kent Brockman

Kent Brockman who normally only appears in the FMV cutscenes. He also has material but no textures.

Misplaced Objects

If the player uses the cheat for additional camera views, they can glitch out of the level boundaries using the 'Look Camera' option. The boundaries were put in place when the game was forced to shift from an open world design, instead having individual levels late in the development cycle.

Evergreen Terrace

At a distance behind the wreckage at the beginning of the level, there is an identical wreckage. This was most likely used to indicate where the level connects to the Springfield Mountains level.

Downtown

If one glitches out of bounds to where the Springfield Mountains should be, they should see an unused stream of water along with a misplaced dot. It's also worth noting that there are unused collisions and spawn points for the streets and terrain that can't be seen even with the routing cheat.

Springfield Mountains

There is an unused, cheaply made sign saying 'Soft Shoulder, Blind Curves, Steep Grade, Big Trucks, Good Luck!' placed behind the wreck at the beginning of the level. In this area, there is also a Burns Transit Bus Stop, a power line and a speed limit sign.

Unused Spawn Points

In Downtown, there are two unused spawn points that cannot be accessed without glitching or cheating out of the map. The first spawn point is behind the crashed truck at the beginning at the level at the other end of the tunnel, which leads to nowhere. The second one is located out of bounds on an invisible hill near the other exit of the level near the unused river stream.

Debugging Functions

Collision Debug

In the options menu, enter one of the codes below (depending on platform) to enable debug collison lines and boxes during gameplay.

Debug Display

Enable Action Replay Code

in the European GameCube version to add a debug display to the bottom right of the screen. This code also enables the above mentioned collision debug.

Development Text

All files determining the properties of individual vehicles start with the following comment:

The file traffic.cfg includes a number of comments:

Console Differences

Additional Ending

Upon completion of the game, a cutscene where Mr. Burns admits defeat will play on all three console versions. However, an additional cutscene featuring Kang and Kodos appears only on the GameCube and Xbox versions. The cutscene reveals that the two aliens were playing Road Rage, but have grown bored and decide to play an 'alternate game', namely a version of PONG as their spaceship flies off. It was removed in the PlayStation 2 version for unknown reasons.

Removed Passengers

In the PlayStation 2 version, a passenger in Evergreen Terrace (Barney, Captain McCallister or Squeaky-voiced Teen) will be standing outside an alleyway and will ask to be dropped off at Smithers' apartment. However, they don't make an appearance at all in the GameCube and Xbox versions. This is most likely because the distance between the passenger and the drop-off location is so short that the player can take advantage of this by using these passengers to rack up an unlimited amount of money without running out of time.

Dude, That Looked Painful

Somewhere in the depths of the Springfield nuclear power plant, Mr Burns has been carrying out hideous genetic experiments, grafting Simpsons DNA into Crazy Taxi. The result is Simpsons Road Rage, an amusing if somewhat shallow driving game. The basic premise is simple enough - ferry your passengers around the mean streets of Springfield at breakneck speed with the aim of earning as much cash as possible. Depending on which difficulty level you choose you may start with anything up to 75 seconds on the clock, but when this runs out your car coasts to a halt and it's game over. Luckily whenever you pick up a passenger you get some extra seconds on the clock, although the further you get into a session the less time you're given for each journey and the more frantic things get. Reaching your destination ahead of schedule earns you a few seconds more as well as a modest cash tip, and sometimes you're also offered the chance to earn Road Rage and Safe Trip bonuses. The former involves causing as much mayhem as possible by knocking over trees, lamp posts, signs and innocent bystanders, while the latter rewards you for avoiding collisions with other vehicles. I'll let you guess which is more fun. You can even eke out an extra couple of seconds by knocking over one of the stops for Mr Burns' evil atomic bus fleet, which you can find scattered around each of the game's six neighbourhoods.

That Monkey Is Going To Pay

Taking to the roads of Springfield for the first time you only have access to one neighbourhood - Evergreen Terrace, home to Springfield Elementary School and the Kwik-E-Mart amongst other landmarks. You're also initially limited to a choice of the five main Simpson family members as your driver, including Lisa in an electric car and Marge's gas guzzling Canyonero. The rest of the game's neighbourhoods and vehicles must be unlocked by earning enough cash in the main Road Rage mode, which can be a rather tedious undertaking. You need several hundred thousand dollars to unlock everything, and a cool $1,000,000 to defeat Mr Burns' plans and complete the game outright. Bizarrely I actually found the tougher difficulty levels far easier than the .. er .. easy option - the tighter time limits are more than compensated for by the higher fares you charge your passengers - but whichever level you choose to play on, you'll be hard pushed to earn much more than $10,000 in a single run without cheating. Given that you only have six neighbourhoods to drive around, this means constantly circling the same few square miles of town over and over again just to unlock a few more drivers and the rest of the levels. A little more variety would have been welcome. The same goes for the voice acting. From Professor Frink, the fat comic store owner and Springfield's leading quack Dr Nick to the well-spoken kleptomaniac Snake and bumbling Police Chief Wiggum, many of the best loved Simpsons regulars are included in the game, with voices provided by the original actors. The bad news is that there's a relatively limited set of lines on offer for each, and as you hear at least two of them in any given car journey, after a few hours they may start to get a little grating.

Worst Trip .. Ever

If you want a break from the mayhem there's not much on offer in the way of alternative game modes either. Sunday Drive lets you tootle around in your own good time, giving you an opportunity to hunt for shortcuts, learn the layout of the maps and admire the scenery, but without any kind of time pressure or scoring system it soon gets dull. There's also a Mission mode, but this merely consists of a linear series of ten tasks. Most can be finished within two or three attempts, and all feature a time limit of under a minute, which makes this option rather shortlived. The tasks are also incredibly repetitive, as eight of the ten involve knocking over a certain number of specified objects, whether it's a drunken Barney running down mascots or Otto smashing into lamp posts in the school bus. The other two are simply a case of getting from A to B without being run off the road by Mr Burns. To make matters worse, traffic is entirely random, so you could lose before you've even got into gear because a bus has parked itself in front of your starting position. It's an amusing enough diversion from the Road Rage mode, but it isn't likely to occupy you for long. Finally there's the fast and furious two player split-screen option, which sets you and a friend loose on the streets of Springfield in a duel to see who can reach the target fare total first. To make things more interesting, you must both fight over the same punter, so if your opponent gets to them first you'll have to smash into the car to hijack their passenger and complete the ride.

I'm Bart Simpson, Who The Hell Are You?

Looking under the bonnet, the engine doesn't exactly stretch the Xbox hardware to its limits. Textures are blurry low resolution affairs and characters have a worrying tendency to run through walls and other vehicles to get into your car. Having said that, the toon renderer does a reasonable job of recreating Springfield in three dimensions, and the town's best known landmarks are instantly recognisable, even if many of the less important buildings are just poorly textured Frinkahedrons. Everything from the town hall and the nuclear power plant to Moe's Tavern and Flanders' Leftorium are included, although Simpsons purists will no doubt complain that everything's in the wrong place. Geographical inaccuracies aside, the level design is a mixed bag. Some of the locations are fairly satisfying to drive around, while others seem to have been hand crafted to be as annoying as possible. For example, both of the out of town stages feature broken bridges which you can jump across in one direction (if you time it right) but not in the other. This means that if you carry a fare to the wrong side of the Springfield gorge you have to waste time taking a circuitous route back to the main part of the map again. Factor in the shortage of side streets and shortcuts and a lack of familiar landmarks and these two settings aren't as much fun and often leave you with lower fares to boot. Given that the game only has six 'neighbourhoods' to start with, it's a little disappointing.

Conclusion

Simpsons Road Rage is surprisingly entertaining in short bursts, but the charm tends to wear off fairly quickly thanks to the lack of variety on offer. Missions, locations, music and voice acting all get repetitive after just a few hours, and there's little incentive to keep you coming back long enough to earn the $1m you'll need to win the game. It's probably worth renting if you're a fan of the TV series, but it's hardly a must buy.

Simpsons Road Rage Wii

7 /10