A promising fan-made remake of the beloved 2003 video game The Simpsons: Hit & Run has been completed, but it will unfortunately never see the light of day.
Over the past year, YouTuber Reuben “Reubs” Ward has taken it upon himself to remake Hit & Run in Epic’s Unreal Engine 5. Inspired by Rockstar’s iconic GTA III, Hit & Run was originally developed by Vancouver’s Radical Entertainment. Switching between The Simpsons family and Apu, players must explore different open-world areas of Springfield to unravel a strange conspiracy.
As part of his remake project, Reubs aimed to combine Hit & Run‘s separate stages into one unified open world, all powered by the modern Unreal Engine 5. Of course, that would be a massive undertaking, so his project wasn’t intended to recreate everything from Hit & Run, instead serving as a tech demo of sorts.
A previous version of the remake had to be pulled due to a copyright strike from The Simpsons owner Disney. For that reason, this new version of the remake can’t ever actually be released, so all we can do is admire Reubs’ impressive work. Reubs also offers a game development course through Patreon.
Still, the whole undertaking has clearly been a labour of love for Reubs, and his previous version of the game — made in just a week — even won praise from the original lead designer on Hit & Run, Joe McGinn. “Amazing what you accomplished! Really gives a taste of what a full modern remaster could be. Impressive work!”
While many beloved titles from the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube era have become available on modern consoles through backwards compatibility or streaming, Hit & Run, sadly, has never made that jump. It remains to be seen if and when Disney might release a port or even remake of the classic game.
Another beloved Canadian game has its 20th anniversary this year, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. To celebrate, we spoke with several of the iconic RPG’s creators — read more on that here.
Image credit: Disney
Source: Reubs
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