The Simpsons Road Rage

The Simpsons Road Rage is a video game made by Electronic Arts and released in 2001 for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and Game Boy Advance.

Synopsis
Mr. Burns has converted the Springfield buses into nuclear powered ones and now they are wreaking havoc on the streets of Springfield. However, the citizens of Springfield are now gaining money by taxi-ing people around Springfield to their wanted destinations for money. Once they raise $1 million they'll have enough money to buy back the buses.

Plot
On an ordinary day, Bart is playing a video game. Homer then blocks the TV, telling Bart to quit playing "those stupid video games" as he wants to watch TV. Bart begrudgingly obeys, and Homer then turns the channel to a news feed taking place at City Hall as the rest of the family is coming in. At City Hall Mr. Burns is announcing his new line of nuclear powered buses known as the Burns Atomic Mega-bus. He claims the buses to be "faster, cheaper, and completely safe!" however, Hans Moleman stood next to one of the buses, begs that someone kill him as he twitches and is embued with a radioactive glow. Lisa believes that the buses are an obvious threat to public health. Homer, upon hearing those words, gets the idea to make his own taxi service. After painting the side of his car with the words "Homer 4 Hire", he speeds off, breaking his mailbox in the process.

Eventually, Homer and other townspeople collaborate on the taxi service and earn a million dollars to buy the bus service back. Mr. Burns insists this isn't the last they've seen of him.

Afterwards, it is revealed that Kang and Kodos have been controlling the townspeople in a video game. Kang says he is tired of the game, and Kodos inserts a version of PONG, which they call the ultimate game. The two laugh as they play the game in their ship, and the ship flies away (Note: This scene does not appear in the PS2 version).

Gameplay
The player has to drive around an area of Springfield picking up townspeople and dropping them off at their desired location. The passenger will pay an amount of money depending on how far the destination is and a bonus which depends on how quickly they arrived. Some passengers will either ask for the driver to avoid the traffic or to destroy obstacles along the way. If the player succeeds then they will receive a higher bonus.

The player starts off with the level and the Simpson family as playable characters (including Grampa but excluding Maggie). Additional levels and characters are unlocked as the player earns more money. The player has to earn $1000, $10K, $30K, $50K, $75K, $100K, $125K, $150K, $200K, $250K, $300K and then every $100K to $1,000,000 for unlockables.

There are four types of gameplay: Road Rage, Sunday Drive, Mission Mode and Head to Head.
 * The Road Rage gameplay allows the player to earn money but has a time limit for each level. This is the main gameplay type and the only one which allows the player to earn the $1,000,000 to complete the game.
 * Sunday Drive is a practice version of Road Rage: it is identical except that no money can be earned and there is no time limit.
 * Mission Mode gives the player ten missions outside of regular gameplay (for example, Krusty the Clown wants to knock over all the street signs which point to his house), which, when they are all completed, unlocks the Car Built For Homer.
 * Head to Head is a two-player mode where each player aims to earn more money than the other by dropping off the most passengers. The first player to earn $10,000 (by dropping off ten passengers) wins. In this gameplay only one passenger is available until they are dropped off and players can steal the passenger before they arrive by ramming into the other player's car.

Worlds
There are 6 playable worlds. Evergreen Terrace is available from the start, the other five you need to unlock. These worlds are:



Vehicles
The Simpsons Road Rage has 16 characters that can drive 18 vehicles, and four vehicles with a holiday theme. Five of the cars are available from the start, while 12 of them the player must earn by driving. Additional vehicles can be driven by entering a cheat code.

Development
The Simpsons: Road Rage took approximately eleven months to complete.

An image found in early builds of the game shows a logo for The Simpsons: Racing, suggesting that it was originally going to be a racing game. However, this was actually just a placeholder and Radical Entertainment were reluctant to make a racing game as kart racers had become a sort of cliché in the early 2000s.

Originally the graphics had more of a cartoon-like style similar to that of the show. This style was shown in the E3 build of the game. The reason for the eventual change into the more 3D environment was because Matt Groening wanted the game to be presented in a style typical of most games at the time, as opposed to looking like an imitation of the TV show.

The original intention was that the game would consist of a single, giant world where players could freely move between areas. However, this caused issues for the framerate in the PS2 version so the six levels had to be blocked off from each other.

Reception
The game largely received mixed reviews. The main criticism was the gameplay becoming dull very quickly and other problems mentioned were bad collision detection, over-sensitive vehicle control and bland graphics. However, the game was praised for its humorous voice acting. According to GameSpot, who gave the game a 6 out of 10 score, "The only saving grace Road Rage has is that it's a Simpsons game".