The Simpsons Hit and Run Remaster is a promising passion project that is being set up to let you relive cherished childhood memories. Your occasional reminiscing of shenanigans around Springfield won’t need to be in your head for much longer.
With fans discussing the possibility of a Simpsons Hit and Run remake for what has felt like forever, we’ve finally seen a few passionate fan-made remaster projects emerge.
However, there have been some forks on the road leading up to a full release of the earlier fan-made projects that popped up. The most recent one involves YouTuber Reubs who remastered the game by adding 4K resolution scaling and ray tracing to improve its visual fidelity. The effort went beyond just the clarity and there were even some voice line changes, UI updates and character model upgrades.
Still, the project was axed citing copyright concerns. Unfortunately, the demo is all we really got to see from that. It took about a week of work to complete, so hopefully it didn’t hurt the team too much.
Recently though, the newest take on a remaster for The Simpsons Hit and Run is an exciting development that holds a lot of promise.
Currently in development by content creator El Gato Del Tejado, the entire The Simpsons game is receiving an overhaul spanning the cutscenes, textures, environments, animations and character models.
We’ve taken a peek at how it’s looking so far thanks to some updates from El Gato on his YouTube channel, and The Simpsons Hit and Run Remaster is truly impressive to witness. In what seems like an arduous process, the game is being remade to feel just like a remake. The art direction is more in line with what we’ve seen on the TV show and it has us captivated with the incredible animations.
Regarding the impressively similar animation style to the show, El Gato revealed that he personally reanimated the scenes shown by hand. In order to match the appearance of the show, he studied Matt Groening’s art style and capture that iconic essence. The hard work is definitely paying off as this project feels like a legit remake.
Meanwhile, we can’t help but paint some similarities between this The Simpsons Hit and Run Remaster and South Park games like The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole. The way those South Park games feel like 1:1 replicas of the show gave them a seamlessly believable extension of how it felt to watch it on TV.
Meanwhile, the Hit and Run 2003 version was a fun but detached experience from the way the show felt. That was mainly due to the dissimilar art style between the two. However, this is bound to change once we get our hands on this remaster. It sells a much more solid level of immersion for the characters and in-game world of Springfield.
We don’t currently have a release date on the mod, but there’s no pressure attached. It’s a passion project that is already satisfying enough to follow on El Gato’s channel. However, fans can support his efforts through the Patreon link he has set up. There is a high chance that possible discussions on its release date will be brought up on that platform before any others.