The best Simpsons game ever made has been ported to Sony’s old but still beloved portable console, the PS Vita. And it looks like a pretty awesome way to replay the classic game.
Released in 2003 to positive reviews, The Simpsons: Hit & Run was a semi-open-world GTA-like video game set in Springfield and starring characters from the long-running animated series. It was developed by Radical Entertainment and sold incredibly well and was beloved by fans of the show. It almost got a sequel with planes, but sadly, that never happened. While we never got a new Hit & Run, fans have spent the past 20 years modding and porting the original game. For example, someone has done the work and got this popular open-world game running nicely on a PS Vita.
As seen in a new video from Good Vibes Gaming, you can now play The Simpsons: Hit & Run on a PS Vita thanks to fan dev ZenoArrows. Here’s the game in action on a Vita.
It’s not a perfect experience—sometimes the game’s world doesn’t fully render for a bit and there’s a bit of slowdown here and there—but it’s nothing awful and it still looks very playable.
Now, to get this running on your PS Vita you’ll need to download some files from Github and you’ll also need the OG files from Hit & Run’s PC version, too. Follow the instructions and you’ll be driving around Springfield as Homer in no time.
This new port was built using code from the leaked Simpsons Hit & Run source code. ZenoArrows actually was behind a previous port of the classic game to Switch, and this Vita port seems to be built off that work.
While it continues to be great that fans are keeping Hit & Run alive in 2024, it’s bonkers to me that Disney, Fox, and everyone else involved have yet to pay some studio to port or remaster the beloved Simpsons game ASAP. It seems like money sitting on the table. Can you imagine how well a Nintendo Switch port of Hit & Run would do? And after it sold a bazillion copies, well then maybe we’d finally get a sequel. For now, though, I’ll just replay Hit & Run on my Steam Deck via Lucas’ Simpsons Hit & Run Mod Launcher and keep dreaming of an official port. Maybe one day…
Or hey, just play the brand new Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip as it’s about the closest thing to a modern Simpsons Hit & Run game we’ve gotten in the last 20 years.
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