For more than ten years, The Simpsons Hit & Run has been the home of a speedrunning arms race of blistering intensity, and I'm shocked that this is pretty much the first I've heard of it.
Last week, speedrunning YouTuber Summoning Salt released their history of the game's speedrunning scene, starting by revealing that for the first ten years of its life, Hit & Run was something of a no-go for runners. The grind for coins required to complete the game, coupled with a combination of both unforgiving late-game levels and the ability to simply skip past anything that gave you too much trouble, meant that runners largely ignored Hit & Run until the early 2010s.
