The Simpsons: Road Rage Review

My first time playing The Simpsons: Road Rage was two years after the PS2 came out at a friend’s house. The Simpsons was one of my favorite shows at the time, and I couldn’t believe they made a game where I could drive around Springfield. I never got to do too much in the game then, and I ended up immersed in The Simpsons: Hit & Run shortly after. Recently, I decided to see if the game was as memorable as I thought it was, or if it was just a stopgap until Hit & Run.

Story

The story is straightforward. Mr. Burns has bought all the transit systems in Springfield. He uses his nuclear-powered Burns Transit Bus, which he claims is safe and charges a much higher price. The citizens of Springfield don’t believe that the buses are safe and want to return fares back to normal. Because of this, they decide to use their vehicles to earn enough money to repay Mr. Burns for the transit system and restore the town to normal. It’s a basic story, but the game didn’t need much more.

Game Modes

Road Rage Mode

If you’ve played Crazy Taxi at all, you’ll be very familiar with the mechanics of The Simpsons: Road Rage. They’re nearly identical. So much so that Sega sued them because of those similarities. The case was settled during private mediation for an undisclosed amount. Road Rage mode is the game’s primary mode. You select one of 17 characters (most of which have to be unlocked through gameplay), and you’re plopped into a vehicle specific to the character. You’re tasked with picking up passengers and taking them to their desired destination before time runs out.

You earn money when passengers are in your car and get bonuses for getting them to their destination on time. The total gratuity is based on how quickly you drop them off to the time allotted for the trip. Some fares allow you to get a Road Rage Trip, where you must destroy a specified number of objects. Others have a Safe Trip bonus in which you try not to hit more than two vehicles on your way to the destination.

The goal is to earn as much money as possible before the time limit runs out. The higher the difficulty level, the less initial time you have to complete fares. This can be increased by picking up and dropping off passengers promptly and destroying bus stops. When you reach monetary milestones in the game, you can unlock more characters and starting points to see more of the town of Springfield. What’s the point in unlocking these characters if there’s nothing more to do?

Mission Mode

Mission Mode gives you 10 missions to go through with 10 different characters. Most of them last no more than a couple of minutes, and the whole mode can be completed within around an hour. The only reason to play it is to unlock a car you can’t unlock any other way. It’s a tacked-on mode added because they knew the primary mode didn’t have enough substance. This doesn’t help that issue.

Gameplay

While all the cars have slightly different handling and varied attributes, the gameplay remains essentially unchanged. There are no advanced moves to pull off, no collectibles to grab, and nothing to increase the replay value. It’s challenging to play this game for more than 30 minutes at a time because everything starts to blend. You’re just driving. You can reverse and do a donut here and there. There’s nothing else to it.

Presentation

Graphics

One of the bright spots in The Simpsons: Road Rage should have been the graphics. As an early PS2 title, some concessions seem to have been made, with a lot of pop-in and relatively short draw distances for a game like this. The cars look pretty good, and the environment is full of that Simpsons charm, but it still looks closer to a PS1-era game. The characters I felt were well-done for what they were. They stood out compared to the scenery, which seemed to have a lot of low-resolution textures.

Sound

The sound design in the game is decent. All of the characters in the game have their real voices from the show. There are plenty of one-liners as you drive around, like Ralph saying, “The leprechaun tells me to burn things.” It gets repetitive, but the whole game does. The music seems to be very heavily inspired by the show. I didn’t notice it too much beyond sounding like The Simpsons.

Multiplayer

There is a multiplayer mode in The Simpsons: Road Rage. It’s a fun concept that mimics Capture the Flag. You must race to the passenger and take him to the destination. Your opponent can steal them, so it’s a constant game of keep away. It’s hard to see the value in a mode like this without any advanced mechanics. If one person is a good driver, the other person will never be able to catch up. It’s nice that it’s included, but I can’t see many people spending more than a round or two on it.

Conclusion

It would have been hard to recommend The Simpsons: Road Rage in 2001, and it’s impossible in 2025. Even if you love The Simpsons like I do, there’s just not enough to do in this game to warrant playing it for any length of time.