The Simpsons Hit & Run—a GTA-style send-up that somehow managed to be actually pretty dang good—came out in 2003 to some stirring commercial success. I have some fond memories of romping around Springfield as an accident-prone Homer, and while I'm certainly not alone, the game never had a sequel. Turns out, it very nearly had four.
According to an interview clip from the MinnMax YouTube channel, that's down to the publisher's bizarre lack of interest. "The Simpsons came back with an offer: five games for X amount of dollars. It was a really good deal, but Vivendi [the publisher] said 'no'," recalls John Melchior, executive producer on the game.
