The Simpsons: Road Rage

Play as a Simpsons character and drive around Springfield as you taxi around other famous Springfield residents.

Overview

 The Simpsons: Road Rage is a Mission-based driving game, created by Radical Entertainment which became a subsidiary of Sierra Entertainment after being acquired in 2005 , which developed the game for Fox Interactive who only publishes games mainly based on 20th Century Fox properties, like The Simpsons. It was first released for the PlayStation 2 game console on November 24, 2001, and soon went multi-platform. It is one of the lesser popular games in the franchise.

Gameplay

 The main mode consist of 5 total cars and 12 unlockable cars and 1 hidden car. There are 6 levels. You start off by Homer's house and the time clock starts ticking while you find your first passenger to drop off. There will be a blue light dome where the customer is waiting for a ride. You have to stop near that to pick he/she up. Every time you pick up a passenger, you get a little more time added to your clock. There is a small map in the bottom left corner for your convenience so you don't get lost. You earn money every time you drop off somebody which contributes to your final total of your fare. When time is running out, a trip timer pops up flashing red in the upper left corner of the screen letting you know that you have less then 10 seconds to drop off your passenger before times up. If you don't drop off your passenger to his destination in time, he/she abandons your car and insults you. Drop off areas are marked in golden light for easier view to your destination. After the level ends, the rating screen pops up and you get to see your high score and insert your initials. You'll often run into the  nuclear toxic transit buses driving ecstatically around the city ramming other cars off the road, all the while Smithers and Monty Burns are driving around looking for you and if they spot you, they will try to ram you and slow you down. 

Throughout each level, you will find several things with symbols of Mr. Burns municipal imperialism on it or the Springfield Transit Corporation bus stops. They can be smash for a time bonus that count towards your time meter. You can add more time to your clock by dropping off customers ahead of schedule. There are plenty of shortcuts to reach destinations a lot faster throughout the levels. You can knock almost everything down that's breakable except trees. Driving into cars will slow down your car immensely. If you get stuck behind a vehicle, it will be very hard to go around it. You will have to reverse and back up till you have enough space to go around the car you crashed into. Some critics would argue that's part of the problem in the game in which the game suffers from poor collision detection, though it can be avoided with proper skills. The game does suffer from weak controls. If you bump into things, you'll crash easily and your car will spin out of control. Since the controls aren't that fluid, you will be able to make quick turns but at the same time crash a lot more. 

You can jump off high steep areas to reach a destination faster and drive inside some specific locations that are popular in The Simpsons world. You will be able to enter the Nuclear Power Plant, where Homer works and if you go in you can find his work station in sector 7G. The Springfield Shopping Mall can also be found here. and you can go inside and you'll find many familiar stores from the show. You can go to the Stadium, in Downtown Springfield and you'll get to see the familiar Truckasaurus destroying cars.

There are three difficulty levels in the game: The first being Easy, the timer starts at 75 seconds and then there's Medium, the timer starts at 50 seconds and Hard, the timer starts at 40 seconds. The harder the difficulty the more money you earn for time left on your clock at the end of the trip.

Road Rage Trips and Safe Trips

Earn a $1000 bonus every time you complete a Road Rage Trip and $250 for a Safe Trip.
  • avoid traffic for bonus - to earn a safe trip bonus, you must avoid traffic at all cost without hitting more than two vehicles to earn a safe bonus trip.
  • destroy stuff for bonus - to earn a Road Rage bonus, you have to cause a lot of destruction in Springfield. Once you caused enough damage, your time bonus flashes on the screen.

Tips you make in the game

 Your tip averages from...
  • Slow  0% up to 20% of the trip timer left ($25)
  • Normal & Average 21% up to 50% of the trip timer left  ($50)
  • Fast 60% and above of the trip timer left ($100)


Gameplay Modes

Road Rage

The main story mode where Homer or the many characters can start their journey towards making 1,000,000 to buy back the transit system.

Sunday Drive

 Sunday Drive is essentially a roaming mode. You have all day and time to get lost in Springfield and just drive around and look at all the cool stuff and notice things that you didn't notice before cause you were too busy driving Moleman to some alley and running him over purposely (you get points knocked off by running potential customers over) or dropping off Bart at the Quik-E-Mart. There's no clock ticking down in this mode and you can't drop off characters.

Mission Mode

 It consist of 10 missions that depend from driving a customer to a certain location in Springfield or to destroy, knock over, run over or break many objects in the game. You have a limit amount of time to do things before time runs out. You have to finish every task in order to move on to the next.
  1. Mission 1 - Willy's Paper Shredder
  2. Mission 2 - Homer on the Run
  3. Mission 3 - Barney's Rage
  4. Mission 4 - Otto's Driving Test
  5. Mission 5 - Snake's Day Off
  6. Mission 6 - They'll Never Take Me Alive
  7. Mission 7 - Save The Hovercar
  8. Mission 8 - Not The Trees
  9. Mission 9 - Krusty's Escape
  10. Mission 10 - Burns' Arena

Head To Head

 This mode is a two-player split-screen play to win romp in which you compete for a single passenger. In this mode, you get to adjust your target earning level ($5,000, $10,000, $15,000) to set the goal for the game. You can choose from four different starting locations to drive in (you have to unlock the other three locations by completing the main mode). Both you and your opponent start from the same location. Then when the race begins, you have to go get a passenger represented by a green circle in the area map. You get the whole $1,000 fare for driving your passenger to his/her destination. Whoever reaches the target money total wins. As soon as you pick up your passenger, you should drive really quickly and avoid any accidents. You compete with another player for 1,000 fares until one of the players reaches the target money total. Once you drop off your passenger, a new passenger appears somewhere in the area and the race is on again. You can steal passengers by bumping your competitor's car.

Plot synopsis

 Mr. Burns who owns the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant had just bought the Springfield Transit Corporation and raised the bus fare, making it hard for Springfieldians to get around because the bus fare costs too much. Mr. Burns even converted the buses to nuclear power, giving the drivers free reign to drive recklessly. Well the Simpsons and the citizens of Springfield are not happy with how greedy Mr. Burns is doing with the transit system, so they take matters into there own hands literally. Homer becomes a chauffeur to the eager citizens of Springfield and help the people of Springfield do their errands and pay cheap while at it. In order to stabilize the transit system, the Simpsons needs to earn $1,000,000 to buy back the transit system from Montgomery Burns so everything can go back to normal. 

Characters


 Family Sedan
Family Sedan

"The Homer"

Mr. Plow
Mr. Plow

Honer Roller
Honer Roller

Canyonero
Canyonero

Elec-Taurus
Elec-Taurus

Shriner's Cart
Shriner's Cart

Tractor
Tractor

Klown Kar
Klown Kar

Plow King
Plow King

Sports Car
Sports Car

Sedan
Sedan


School Bus
School Bus

Station Wagon
Station Wagon

Cop Car
Cop Car

Book Burning Mobile
Book Burning Mobile






  

Flying Car
Flying Car

Lil Bandit
Lil Bandit



























Levels

              
 Evergreen Terrace
Evergreen Terrace


Entertainment District
Entertainment District

Springfield Dam
Springfield Dam

Nuclear Power Plant
Nuclear Power Plant









  
Downtown
Downtown

Springfield Mountains
Springfield Mountains









Cheat Codes


Enter any of the following at the option screen while holding L1 R1 (you should hear a zing after you inputed the code successfully) To disable all active codes, press START four times.


More Secret Cars



Smithers - triangle, triangle, square, square

Thanksgiving Marge - triangle, triangle, circle, circle

X-Mas Apu - triangle, triangle,circle, triangle

New Year's Krusty - triangle, triangle, circle, square

Halloween Bart - triangle, triangle, circle, x

Red Soapbox Racer - triangle, triangle, square, circle

Monty Burns Transit Bus - triangle, triangle, square, x

Features



Flat Characters -  circle, circle, circle, circle

Show Collision Lines -  triangle, triangle, x, x

Night time mode - x, x, x, x

Camera angles - triangle, triangle, triangle, triangle

All code features - square, square, square, square
No map display - square, triangle, triangle, circle

Quotes from the game


  • Homer Simpson
  1. "Get in, I got candyyy"
  2.  "Did I do great or really great"
  3. "Hop in, I accept Duff as currency"
  4. "Careful, don't sit on my nachos!"
  5. "You have any barf bags? I don't feel so good."
  6. "Flanders! Oh why did I stop!"
  7. "That's the spicy meatball"
  8. "OW ! My ass!"
  9. "The sticker price is, 82,000 DOLLARS!"
  • Comic Book Guy (non-playable character)
  1. "To the arcade please, conquest and enemies forces await"
  2. "Worst Trip Ever"
  3. "I'm not gonna dignify that with a comment"
  4. "Require transport to the music store, my kazu has been repaired"
  • Dr. Nick (non-playable character)
  1. "Thanks, stop by my clinic for a free nose job"
  2. "Why isn't anybody stopping?Hellooo?"
  3. "If you get into an accident and decide to live, call Dr. Nick"
  • Chief Clancy Wiggum
  1. "Hey do you know where an honest cop can get a donut?"
  2. "Official police business. I'd tell you where I'm going, but then I'd have to kill ya"
  3. "Sometimes I keep a sandwhich in my holster."
  4. "Aw don't take my badge. I need it for stuff."
  5. "City Hall on the double. They just refilled the candy machine."
  • Ned Flanders
  1. "Hi diddily ho neighbor"
  • Hans Moleman (non-playable character)
  1. "Dating service please, I'm a very lonely man"
  2. "Your driving scares me"
  3. "Ow, I hit my head"
  4. "That was the best ride I ever had"
  5. "Take me somewhere happy"
  • Bart Simpson
  1. "I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell are you"
  • Lisa Simpson
  1. "Get ready for electric speed...oh boy"
  • Groundskepper Willie
  1. "Get ready for some Big Willie Style"
  2. "No tip! Hey, a fellow Scotchman"
  3. "Git out, I'm late to see the brute cleaners"
  4. "Where to? You pile of puke"
  5. "Ayy, this is so much better than scrubbing the urinals"
  6. "Never doubt a Scotchman"
  7. "My name is Willie, Grounsdkeeper Willie"
  8. "Don't make willie angry, you wouldn't like willie when he's angry"
  9. "Now git your stinkin arse out of me tractor"
  10. "Sorry about the stink, Willies been cleaning out the puke bucket"
  11. "I'm so happy, I'm gonna play my backpipes till they burst"
  12. "Get in, and don't sit on my hitchclippers " *
  13. "Get in you bathtaking underpants sweating Willie hugger"
  14. "Git out, or I'll wreck your face"
  15. "Hold on to your kilts"
  16. "Eat tractor!"
  17. "I did not cry when I caught my father stealing a pig and killed him, but I'll cry now" *
  18. "Get in, and help yourself to the long clippings"
  19. "I popped a willie!"
  20. "Oh, I hope me old tractor has enough gas in her"
  21. "You ain't an englishman usher" *
  • Nelson Muntz (non-playable character)
  1. "Your an Octowussy!"
  • Apu
  1. "Driving this car is more dangerous than a night shift at the Quik-E-Mart but what the heck"
  • Krusty the Klown
  1. "Heyyy, WOHAHA, now shut up and drive!"
  2. "Hey, thanks for helping out a clown in need"
  3. "Don't be frightened by my appearance. I'm a trained professional harlequin."
  4. "Can you take me to the studio. I gotta voice over some lousey video game."
  5. "Man that ride was over faster than Chevy Chase's talk show."
  6. "You're the worst driver I've ever seen, and I've driven with Mickey Rooney."
  • Bumblebee Man (non-playable character)
  1. "¡Andele! ¡Andele!"
  2. "Your driving, she stinks!"
* indicates, that I might be wrong with the phrase

Trivia

  • This happens to be the first time where it actually isn't Homer's fault that the citizens of Springfield can't blame Homer for doing something wrong.
  • This game resembles Crazy Taxi which was produced and made by Sega, and a few years later Sega sued Fox Interactive but they settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.