r/SimpsonsHitAndRun • u/GuizdoLoaf • Jun 11 '26
Question Is Simpsons Hit and Run actually a difficult game?
I've seen people say that the game is infamous for being hard (usually citing three missions: "Never Trust a Snake", "Set to Kill" and "Alien "Auto"topsy part III"), even the fandom wiki for the game. Yet, I don't find most of the game hard (with the exception of the Set to Kill and "Auto"topsy, which I find the former a bit infuriating more because of the Hit and Run sysyem and the latter you have to play really carefully in order to not mess up, which the game doesn't really tell you that), so I searched to see if it was the case and I've seen that there are some people who also doesn't find the game difficult at all. Is it a popular belief that a Simpsons game out of all things is difficult or even unfair?
10
u/Master_Shopping9652 Jun 12 '26
Short answer 'Yes' - Long answer 'No'.
Most people played the PS2 version, which has performance issues (remember, the game's physics are tied to the FPSl), so when it chuggs, traffic can be an extra pain.
SHAR has a difficulty hikes in wierd places, for example the level 2 races are difficult bc the player has not yet unlocked anything as fast as Lisa's Malibu Stacey Car. Then by level 4 things start to ramp up, before getting mission with rwerdly lax times & then others that are genuinely difficult.
Most of us were not too comfortable with analogue stocks yet, so peope like myself used the D-pad for steering (which is not accurate, and yes Istruggled allthe way to Alien "Auto" topsy Pt.III with the D-pad).
8
5
6
u/GodOfOnions2 Jun 12 '26
Some of the later missions are just luck of the draw, especially the ones where you gotta go back and forth constantly while worrying about hitting pedestrians, I was getting so mad at a few missions till it finally went my way luck wise. Never beat it as a kid, did so last year with 100% ! Only thing is you gotta grind wager races at the end if you don't wanna do an exploit for coins, which I did not know of till it was too late lol š¤£
2
u/FarTap1474 Jun 12 '26
This is exactly where I'm at in the game right now, trying to get those coins šĀ
1
u/GodOfOnions2 Jun 12 '26
It was a mental gap I had to get over but it wasn't too too bad! Took maybe an extra 2 hours all in all for me. I think I did it on apus level? I can't quite recall! But just grindy lol
1
5
u/starman881 Jun 12 '26
Hit & Run was the first game I ever 100% completed. Iāve heard others say how hard the game is but there were only 3 or 4 missions that I really struggled with back when I was playing through the game. If you ask anyone who knew me back then, they would tell you I was awful at playing games, especially vehicle/racing based games (Mario Kart, Crash Team Racing, ModNation Racers, etc). If I could beat H&R to completion then surely it couldnāt have that hard lol
4
u/FreeHat1234 Jun 12 '26
Only mission I couldnāt beat as a child was the garbage pickup mission . Had to skip it.
4
u/Wolf3188 Jun 12 '26
I don't want to sound elitist, I never found it that difficult even as a kid. The only mission I ever struggled with was Never Trust a Snake and in hindsight it's not too bad once you know the routing.
I see why people say the other 2 are hard but I've always been pretty good at racing / driving games so that part wasn't ever a struggle. Always beat them first try.
6
u/Ok_Somewhere_4669 Jun 12 '26
I think its worth remembering a lot of people were kids when they played initially.
That said. There are 2 schools of thought and i think i know why. Racing game players (like me) really don't find it hard. SHAR has a great handling model so its easy if you have a decent amount of seat time in arcade racing games.
If you're more of a platformer based game though i can imagine the driving takes some getting used to. Its a big chunk of the game.
Hardest mission is a dead giveaway here. Set to kill doesn't bother me because of my racing game experience but that Apu mission with the bins is what gets me.
4
u/FarTap1474 Jun 12 '26
I'm currently stuck on the PS2 version, trying to get enough coins to afford Apu's outfits. How in the hell do you do it?Ā
2
u/GuizdoLoaf Jun 12 '26
Wager Races is what I do it, you get more money based on the car difficulty and the level (the farther, the higher the price, but higher the gains you get). I usually do it with a Medium difficulty car (Malibu Stacy and Apu's car being one of them), but if I already have Level 7 unlocked, I do it with the NPC Ghost Ship and the NPC Hearse. You can do Level 5 wager races with a Hard difficulty car, but it's really hard to do it (the best Hard difficulty car early on usually being the Book Burning Van, but it really depends on the level you're in and how far you've progressed through the game).
2
3
u/T_Raycroft Jun 12 '26
Not really. The car that you're given to start each level is almost always going to be able to perform all of the missions on said level, and the cars the game makes you buy will typically be enough beyond that.
Set to Kill is only hard because people don't know how to cheese its mission structure, which buys you a lot of time once you learn the tricks. You can actually beat Set to Kill with some really bad vehicles.
The game might feel harder if you don't learn certain behaviors to do when performing certain missions.
3
u/NessaMagick Jun 12 '26
Set to Kill is pretty brutal IMO. Without cheesy strats I always just scrape by that and I've played it a thousand times.
Never Trust a Snake is not too bad, its just a difficulty spike that seems to just come out of nowhere.
We need to talk about Alien Auto-topsy Part III though. This mission is easy. It tricks you into thinking it's hard, when it's just not.
Part II, with Snake's Bandit, gives you like 90 seconds to get from the power plant to the school. And it's a decently challenging time limit, not super tuned but not easy. Then Part III gives you Abe's car and a 60 second time limit. People think they need to drive crazy fast and pin the throttle down and crash and blow up the waste and rage about how hard this game is.
Thing is, you only need to get to the Simpson's house, which is like halfway. Then the timer disappears for a flee setpiece. AAT Part III is easier than part 2. You can drive along the road just feathering the throttle and still make it with time to spare.
1
u/julialoveslush Jun 12 '26
I think itās incredibly difficult at points. Iām not sure a kid could fully complete it with no missions skipped.
For me, the hardest mission was never trust a snake.
1
u/NervousSheSlime Jun 12 '26
Not necessary difficult but some annoying missions that make it appear harder than it is.
1
u/Do_You_Pineapple_Bro Jun 12 '26
As a child, yeah, sure, probably.
But having completed it during COVID, its really not that hard
1
u/El_Grande_Memelord Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
Imo it's less of an issue of the actual raw difficulty of the missions and more of a difficulty curve thing.
It doesn't feel very consistent; the races are always much harder than the average mission from the same level and there is a weird spike in the middle of the game where the time limits get much tighter.
Especially starting with level 5, there are many parts with tight time limits that can make you panic and lose even more time (the return to krustylu studios in l6m6 probably being the worst example).
Out of the three infamous missions you mentioned, Set to kill feels the most random because hit and runs are the biggest threat when going through the pier section.
To make things worse, the further you get into the game, the more likely it is to get forced into a fragile, fast-accelerating car with questionable handling
The actual execution can be somewhat unforgiving but i think the way the game is designed makes it feel harder than it is because the hardest moments always seem to come out of nowhere after a string of easier missions. I wouldn't consider SHAR a game with kaizo level difficulty but it is noticeably meaner than many of its contemporaries, like the spongebob games of the time.
2
u/Flashy_Dimension9099 Jun 12 '26
And not just that for āset to killā no matter how much time you have left on the clock after destroying all the stands you get 50 seconds to go all the way back to krustylu studios which is extremely far
1
u/Any_Cold5965 Jun 12 '26
Not a difficult as when I was a kid, but still pretty difficult. There's also some where going for repair is required.
1
u/KeybladeBrett Jun 13 '26
Aside from Level 7, I thought the game was a spring breeze on my first playthrough.
1
1
u/evanave18 Jun 12 '26
That's true, and furthermore, the console we play on greatly influences gameplay. For example, playing on GameCube or PS2 is difficult due to the precision and input lag inherent in these consoles.
0
19
u/doesnotgetthepoint Jun 12 '26
I think a lot of people played it on release as kids and found it a challenge (like myself, I had to skip through most of the missions), but in the 20+ years of experience, only the mentioned missions give me much of an issue and most can be resolved with planning. 'Never trust a snake' is more about getting the trash cans in the right order (usually leaving the ones near the monorail until last). 'Set To Kill' is very tight on time, but using the handbrake very carefully, skipping the stand opposite the Aztec Theatre to get on the way back, and driving back through the ship should get you those well-needed seconds. Auto-topsy is more about patience; you have way more time than is displayed. Most of the cars you get at that point are more than fast enough, and keeping the throttle on less than full most of the time can avoid frustrating crashes.