Completion Time: 13h:34m:00s
Rating: 7/10

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Yeah, Simpsons Did It

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Well, we’ve done arcade beat ‘em up, platformer, point and click, a sort of reverse “Lemmings”, wrestling, skateboarding… I guess we can do a “Crazy Taxi” clone with “The Simpsons” characters, sure! Oh “GTA” clone sounds fun, lets wait a bit for that one. But if you can play as Otto Mann flying over Springfield Gorge with Hans Moleman on board while Smithers is gunning for you, well that sounds like the premier gaming experience to me! Why is Smithers coming after you? Well Burns is in the car too, of course. He has nuclear powered buses that have upset the town, and he’s trying to quell an uprising of renegade citizen-ran taxis, of course! Don’t worry, we’ll get Dan and Julie and all them in here, it’ll make sense.

Could you NOT front flip into my car, please? I'm not liable for damages from you doing that

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Outta My Way, Jerkass!

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Your initial instinct is probably to play a couple of Arcade mode matches to get into the groove of things, understand the control scheme better and all that. But start with Mission Mode and play it all the way through, I beg you. The goals are simple to achieve (sans maybe Mission 10), and you get to play as a wide variety of vehicles in different locations. This is a good way to understand how to function in this madcap environment without also having to think about taxiing and a monetary component. Mission 10 is a little odd just because there’s a camera angle completely different from anything else you’ll really see in the game, but finish them all and you’ll get a sweet new car for Homer. Now that’s a treat!

Seriously, what the hell is with this angle?!

After you’ve made your way through that and start playing the game in earnest, you’ll start to see just how the levels fit together. Things like the different grids always containing a larger populous to pick up, where the bus stops to destroy are (getting you a nice addition to the timer), and all the various shortcuts that’ll make your runs even quicker and more efficient. Springfieldians want to go to all kinds of places, and their timeframes aren’t always reasonable. Eventually you’ll get to the point where you have 5 seconds to book it across town, only for them to do a tuck and roll and berate you as they cause a three car pileup. The addition of Smithers and Burns in their limo trying to ram into you as well as Burns’s chaotic buses breaking everything in sight and stalling you in your tracks be complete accident. Nothing in the game wants you to succeed, and it can be invigorating!

Oh Glavin, here comes the deadly nuclear bus

Invigorating until you start to get a little tired of the lack of scenery and lines available to you. There are six total levels, and this isn’t a bad amount of variety at all. But due to how I play these types of games, I was getting extremely tired of running back and forth, up and down in the same environments and hearing the dialogue being repeated between characters. Especially if you get on those long runs, because at a point the characters don’t even have special interactions anymore, they just repeat stock sentences that drive you nuts. The gameplay is spiced up a tad through the inclusion of the occasional Road Rage bonus (where you need to destroy a certain number of objects before dropping off your customer) and Safe Driver bonus (don’t hit anything on the way to the drop off point, three strikes your out!), but even then the Road Rage one becomes less feasible over time because everything is already destroyed. I don’t know if these are necessarily problems with the game itself, they might instead be a myriad of issues with the completion and unlock cycle presented. And I go to that in depth below, don’t you worry.

We'll drive through grass, pummel lampposts, and jump gorges. But don't worry, I won't tap any cars!

Eventually, I was even contributing to the tedium myself because I found an optimal route on the Power Plant stage, where I would just continue to run over and over and over through a loop to maximize my cash and time. I got as high as $200,000 in a single run, only ending it because I got bored, and that ran for close to two hours (not continuously, I do have things to do!). Apparently, there’s a run on each stage that you can use to optimize things in this way, but I could only get one to work on Power Plant (funnily enough, one I discovered myself years ago when I was first playing this!). Suffice it to say, Power Plant is the stage I’m most comfortable with, and I only learned late into my game that there is a difficulty setting, and moving it to hard mode will increase cash output. Great…

Fill 'er up, boys! I'm staking out the Power Plant with $200,000 in my bank account!

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Completing the Game

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So, the first thing is straightforward enough, I already mentioned it! If you beat all the missions in Mission Mode, you’ll unlock the season 2 vehicle “The Car Built for Homer” (pretty sure it’s just called “The Homer” in the show, but we won’t split hairs). This is a fun little number that plays La Cucaracha whenever you honk the horn, and it’ll be added to Homer at the character select screen so that you can always choose between that car and his classic pink sedan. Just be aware that his new mode of transport is a lot bulkier.

What a behemoth!

The longest trek here will be the monetary unlocks. And when I say long, I mean it! There are a lot of characters to unlock from Flanders to Krusty to Snake, and a series of 5 stages to unlock. And how do you unlock all these? Through cash, of course! All the while you’re racing along, picking up customers and dropping them off, you’ll get cash towards your next unlock. Early on, unlocks come frequently and fast, because you’ll be spinning up on the gameplay and it weans you into more variety to play. However, very quickly they cost more and more to reach those goals, eventually becoming spread apart by $100,000 exactly. This is a hell of a grind, and you’re going to want to use a route like the one mentioned above to maximize your cash collection there! And don’t worry about eventually reaching the end and seeing a character still being locked. That box is for the special holiday characters, because on Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc. you’ll have a character you can use on that day only. Love stuff like this, I really do.

Money can be exchanged for goods and services

Finally, what is the end goal? Well, to reach $1,000,000 of course! If you’ve already been grinding unlockable cars and locales, then you’ll be well equipped to get here with a minimum of $900,000 sitting in your bank. So just go on another epic run until you’re sure you have enough, and then drive into a brick wall and sit there by yourself while Springfield residents stand around and judge you. The round will end, and you have $1,000,000! But what does this mean for you? The answer is a small cutscene wherein Mr. Burns says you’ve beat him and drops you into a trapdoor pit in his office. Then the credits roll. That’s… upsetting. Not worth it at all, to be honest, but a lot of games function this way to be fair. My main complaint isn’t even just the 8 seconds of video, it’s that there isn’t anything else. No final car or secret location or anything like that. Bogus, I want to play as Mr. Burns without needing to enter a cheat. I want unique Smithers lines for picking up passengers. Something, anything, please!

Miserable old buzzard

Don't forget the obligatory Kang and Kodos appearance!

“Road Rage” is fun as an arcade style game, much in the same vein as its predecessor “Crazy Taxi” but quickly manages to wear out its welcome with its improperly inflated completion time. Granted, this isn’t the type of game that you’re supposed to complete all in one sitting, but that isn’t helped by remarkably few drivable areas and a lackluster ending that left me in stunned silence. Though with that, I’m now officially done with “Simpsons” games on the GameCube. Consider that a notch in my belt I suppose.

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 43/652