The Simpsons Road Rage Nitro Burner

Dude, That Looked Painful

Dec 04, 2001  In a twist on Crazy Taxi's gameplay, The Simpsons Road Rage has two additional ways of earning money-some fares will give you bonuses for either driving safely or going on a. In a twist on Crazy Taxi's gameplay, The Simpsons Road Rage has two additional ways of earning money-some fares will give you bonuses for either driving safely or going on a rampage, and in these.

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.

The Simpsons Road Rage Part 1

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.

7 /10

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TheSimpsonsRoadRage

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The Simpsons: Road Rage is a 2001 video game developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts. It is one of a series of games based on the animated television series The Simpsons.

The game has many similarities to Sega's Crazy Taxi, to the extent that Sega sued the developer and publisher in 2003 for patent infringement.

Mr. Burns has bought all transit systems in Springfield and has begun to overcharge everyone for the transportation services. Even worse, the buses are nuclear powered, thus irradiating whoever rides it.

The citizens of the city (managed by the game player) must earn money by driving cars around town in order to regain control of the transit systems. The game contains 17 different drivable/collectible vehicles, six starting locations (five of which are unlockable), and 10 different missions. In order to collect the vehicles and unlock starting locations, players must earn progressively more money for each vehicle or starting location they want to get. In order to complete missions, players must do certain things (such as knocking down 12 baseball team mascots in 45 seconds or running into Gils within a time limit).

To earn money, players must drive around a vehicle for a given amount of time, picking up passengers and taking them to their destinations. Any of the vehicles that the player has collected can be used as taxis. Players have to avoid certain hurdles, such as other vehicles that spin out of control, rocks, flying street objects, Smithers's car, Mr. Burns' nuclear transit buses, and houses on difficult curves.

The Simpsons Road Rage Online Game

The game features six locations familiar to Simpsons fans, which have varying levels of difficulty for completing tasks.

• Evergreen Terrace: Is the location of the Simpsons' house, the Flanders' house, Gerald Ford's (formerly George H. W. Bush's) house, the Maison Derriere, Milhouse's house, the Kwik-E-Mart, Smithers's apartment, Principal Skinner's house, Chief Wiggum's house, Springfield Elementary School, Willie's shack, the First Church of Springfield, Reverend Lovejoy's house, Edna Krabappel's house, Apu's apartment, Hans Moleman's house, the grocery store, the Springfield Retirement Castle, Barney's apartment, a Krusty Burger restaurant, Spinser City Apartments and a gas station.

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• Entertainment District: Is the location of Moe's Tavern, the King Toot's Music Store, the She-She Lounge, the Duff Brewery, the Rusty Barnacle, the Guilded Truffle, Planet Hype, a milkshake shop, Sir Putt-A-Lot's, the Aztec Theatre, the Gogolplex, the Frying Dutchman, the Noiseland Arcade, the Girlesque, the Springfield Mini Mall, Barney's Bowl-O-Rama, Circus of Values, the Try-N-Save, Moe's house, Fiesta Terrace, Candy Most Dandy, the Box Factory, a dating building, a pet shop, the Duff Center, the office of an insurance company, three Krusty Burger restaurants, five gas stations, a 24-Seven, a Pineas Q. Butterfat's Ice Cream Parlor and a Lard Lad Donuts restaurant.
• Springfield Dam: Is the location of the Springfield Dam, Mayor Quimby's Mansion, Kamp Krusty, the Stonecutters Lodge, Jittery Joe's Coffee Shop, the office of K Radio, Rancho Relaxo, an interesting home, a builder's shack and a trailer park.
• Nuclear Power Plant: Is the location of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, the Springfield Mall, the Springfield War Memorial Stadium, the Springfield Community Center, a run-off stream, a Lard Lad Donuts restaurant and two gas stations.
• Downtown: Is the location of Herman's Military Antiques, Helter Shelter, the Springfield Plasma Center, the Veterans of Popular Wars, the office of Burns Transit, the Springfield Observatory, the Android's Dungeon, the Springfield Stadium, a cathedral, Saint Sebastian's School for Wicked Girls, the Springfield Airport, Area 51A, the Little Black Box, the Legitimate Businessman's Social Club, the DMV, Professor Frink's apartment, Snake's hideout, Krusty's house, the Springfield Drive-in, Springfield Park, Whacking Day Park, the Happy Sumo, the Singing Sirloin, Chez Pierre, Clown College, the Springfield General Hospital, Channel 6 Studios, the Popsicle Stick Skyscraper, the 50-Foot Magnifying Glass, the Escalator to Nowhere, the Springfield Revolving Restaurant, the Monty Burns Casino, two car parks, a convention center, the Springfield Natural History Museum, Springfield City Hall, the Springfield Court House, the Springfield Public Library, the Springfield Police Station, Copy Jalopy, the Springfield post office, a savings and loan, three Krusty Burger restaurants, two Lard Lad Donuts restaurants, two 24-Sevens, two Big T's, a Phineas Q. Butterfat's Ice Cream Parlor and four gas stations.
• Springfield Mountains: Is the location of Mr. Burns' Mansion, the Springfield Pet Cemetery, the Gold House, the Tire Fire, the office of KBBL, the Springfield Gorge, a gas station, the world's largest toilet and an inspiration point

The Simpsons: Road Rage contains the following tropes:

• Artificial Stupidity: The buses in the game crash into things themselves, and crash into you all the time. The introduction in the game's manual attempts to justify this by claiming Mr. Burns gave the drivers 'free reign to wreak havoc' all over Springfield.
• Big Bad: Mr. Burns. He usually appears in his limo (driven by his partner Smithers) to stop you from progressing.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Near the end of the introductory cutscene, Bart says to just start the game already.
• Continuity Nod: Arguably the strongest source of praise for this game is the various winks and nudges to the Simpsons universe, such as various sight gags and the vehicles the playable characters drive (including the unlockable Mr. Plow truck).
  • A lot of the characters have specific interactions with each other that you would expect based on their relationship in the show and everyone says 'hi' back to Dr. Nick after his Catchphrase. Try to find all of the special interactions!
• Drives Like Crazy: The point of the game, just like Crazy Taxi, is to drive your charge to their destination quickly. Some passengers will specifically ask for a destructive ride and give you a huge bonus if you destroy a certain number of objects before you arrive at the destination. Other passengers, however, will offer a bonus if you arrive before hitting less than three vehicles.
• Holiday Mode: If you play the game on Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day or New Year's Day (Or just set the system clock to those dates), you'll get access seasonal variants of Bart, Marge, Apu and Krusty respectively:
  • For Halloween, Bart is wearing a Frankenstein's Monster costume and his Honor Roller is painted like a jack o’lantern.
  • For Thanksgiving, Marge is dressed like a pilgrim and her Canyonero is painted in autumnal colors.
  • For Christmas, Apu is dressed as Santa Claus and his car is painted a festive green and red.
  • For New Years, Krusty is wearing a tuxedo and conical party hat, and his car is decorated with confetti and champagne bottle decals.
• Kids Driving Cars: Bart and Lisa are able to drive vehicles despite only being ten and eight years old, respectively, though they're limited to just driving the Honor Roller and the Electaurus.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: Another major criticism among critics, other than its clone-status mentioned above. We're talking 50 seconds of loading for a task that only lasts for 20 seconds.
• Self-Deprecation: In Simpsons tradition. The game opens with a cutscene of Bart playing a game in the living room, to which Homer tells him that the game is just a waste of time. The music from the game is also music from Road Rage, and the tiny parts of the screen visible seem to indicate it is, indeed, Road Rage.
• Shout-Out:
  • If you do a good job bringing Krusty the Clown to a destination, he'll remark 'Boy, that was over faster than Chevy Chase's Talk Show.' Krusty will also criticize a bad ride by negatively comparing your driving skills to Mickey Rooney's.
  • In the Entertainment District, one of Bart's reasons for heading to the Ice Cream Parlor is to look for Betty and Veronica.