A fan remake that started in 2022, has finally reached it’s milestone conclusion – but you can’t get your grimy yellow paws on it.
Reubs (Reuben Ward) is a New Zealand based YouTube personality that remakes games, mostly as a personal challenge – usually cranking out a pretty serviceable simulacrum of famous titles over an absurdly small period of time, with examples such as Skyrim, GTA V or COD: Zombies. One of his more fleshed out offerings was a remake of The Simpsons: Hit & Run, which evolved beyond it’s initially rapid deployment into a longer passion project.
Over 8 developer diaries and many months, the game has now been completed to the best of his abilities – exciting many, but of course the sad (and brutal) truth is that he absolutely cannot provide a download to his work.
In the simplest of explanations, copyright will never allow him to share it. While he has toiled and sweat to create this modern masterpiece, the actual property is still outside of his hands and releasing it would likely see Reuben crushed under the terrifying fist of intellectual property law.
Instead Reubs has used his experience as a tool to teach others the many facets of game creation – or recreation, as the case may be here. He has spotlighted all manner of incredible gaming pitfalls, from texture mapping creating nightmarish citizens of Springfield to completely busted AI offerings turning the game into a mire of mediocrity. I have followed his videos as a casual observer for a long time, and the accessible nature of his explanations does a ton to fill in the gaps in my own gaming knowledge – drawing back the considerable curtain of game development.
While Reubs may be closing the chapter on Hit & Run, his next remake is right around the corner – and we can all hope that the attention of this project perhaps reaches the right eyes to consider a real life remake of the game, which is still fondly remembered as a slammin’ title of yesteryear.
Did you play The Simpsons: Hit & Run back in the day? Are you bummed you can’t play this one? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
Make sure to check out Reubs on YouTube.
Known throughout the interwebs simply as M0D3Rn, Ash is bad at video games. An old guard gamer who suffers from being generally opinionated, it comes as no surprise that he is both brutally loyal and yet, fiercely whimsical about all things electronic. On occasion will make a youtube video that actually gets views. Follow him on YouTube @Bad at Video Games
