Simpsons creator Matt Groening implies that a Hit & Run remaster is c…

First reported by Empire on X, "The Everything App," Simpsons creator Matt Groening may have let slip the existence of some upcoming return for The Simpsons: Hit & Run⁠—though this was immediately disputed by another grandee of the Simpsons Industrial Complex.

"I think the original game is coming back in some form," Groening said in response to a question about the series at a Simpsons panel discussion, part of the ongoing D23 Disney fan event. Current showrunner Matt Selman immediately poured cold water on the idea, declaring "Or not," in response to Groening's statement.

Groening seems to firmly operate in an "emperor emeritus" role when it comes to day-to-day operations of The Simpsons, and it's perfectly plausible that his supposition was based on out-of-date information, and Selman, who's more hands on with things, is correct. slot-chickenroad.org

But I'm inclined to think this was a "It's a secret⁠—Ssshut uuuuuup" sort of interaction. We're living in a time of endless remakes and remasters⁠—Spongebob Squarepants: Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated from a few years ago feels like it rhymes with Hit & Run, for example. Most persuasive of all, Selman himself, who wrote the original game, said "never say never" about the possibility of the series coming back just this year.

Groening's choice of words, "the original game is coming back in some form," seems to preclude a sequel and imply a remake or remaster to my eye. But if it turns out he was talking about an art book or retrospective documentary or something, well that'd just be poor form on his part I think.

The reason for all the hubbub was a clever little cult classic of a tie-in game from 2003, a PS2-era, GTA-lite sort of deal where you drove or ran around Springfield getting up to hijinks. I never played it myself, but some of my friends swear by Hit & Run. I think, for a certain band of zoomers and late millennials, it was a way of getting in on the GTA craze if your parents wouldn't let you touch the real deal, leading to lifelong loyalty and nostalgia. Jak 2 ticked that box for me.

No Man's Sky had one of the most controversial game launches and high-profile comebacks of the decade - you likely don't need me to remind you - but lead developer Sean Murray says the weight of its botched launch didn't lift until about three years later.

"We used to have a little running joke in the studio," Murray says in an interview with GamesRadar+ to mark the space exploration sim's 10th anniversary. Hello Games' inside joke was that the team would put out one of their famously transformative updates, and each time, online coverage "would always [mention] the disastrous launch of No Man's Sky" first. "Like that would be their opener, and then talk about the update."

Rain or shine, Hello Games kept pumping out huge, free updates that added everything from new features (base-building, a proper narrative, multiplayer, etc) to general improvements to the game's graphics or procedural generation, say. (Although, Murray still has fun playing No Man's Sky's original version.)

"I think it was about three years in and we had one article, and it never mentioned the launch. It just talked about the update, and honestly, I felt like a weight had lifted," Murray continues. "Until that point, it felt like we were really trying to like, you know, update the game and maybe no one really wanted it or something like that."

Before then, Hello Games felt like it was "fighting this real uphill battle" and releasing updates to an audience that sometimes received them with hostility. Things only became much clearer when the studio realized "that there's a community who really loves the game."

"But there was two or three years where it was a battle, where every time you posted about the game, every reply was laced with some slightly mean things and stuff like that," he adds. "You felt like you were doing it almost against some people's wishes or something… But over time, that changes, and… you learn who your community is and who your player base is."

"There is probably some end" to No Man's Sky, says Hello Games boss, but he'll probably come back 10 years later for a surprise update anyway