When I was in elementary school I bought a cheatcode book that included some cheats for the Simpson's Hit and Run. This cheat was written in the book but I've never found any information that confirmed or denied its validity: "When in Homer's level, drive through Mr. Burn's factory. At the end, take a right and a quick left to get in front of a blue house. In the backyard, you will see a space shuttle that you will be able to use and fly over the city. There will be an alien in the UFO that you can talk to. It tells you how to use the shuttle."
blue house? closest thing i can think of is the rocket car in front of a yellow house? kind of looks like a shuttle too this is assuming its talking about the first level though
they're anti plagiarism measures. a lot of publishers at the time would just steal from other sources, so adding fake cheats as a watermark of sorts was a very common practice. the fake chocolate world from SMB1 comes to mind or 'Yeah Yeah Beebis 1' come to mind.
@@ennayanne And with your group of friends at school, everyone had to have the best "real" cheats back in Elementary. But only your older brother knew the cheat, and he won't tell you what it is so you can't give it to your friends.
One of my favorite things to do in this game is to turn the volume way down while playing at around 2 AM in the third area, get out of a car, and just stare at the setting sun with no music in the background and only hearing the quiet hum of my PS2 and the occasional clicking of the CD. It's not something a modern game can capture -- this feeling of being in between reality and a game. The graphics are just good enough to make everything feel sort of real, but still old and dated enough to feel like a cartoony game. The low hum of the console at night reminds me of so many other PS1 and PS2 experiences as a kid, and the sun is reminiscent of those magical Spyro skyboxes. I could live forever in those moments.
Reading this while laying in bed watching RUclips on the phone at 3am, in the background I can hear the clicking of that one bad PC fan I never bothered to replace. From time to time the PC noise will roar a little bit because it's doing god knows what. Sometimes the water pump makes that "spitting" noise, which had me concerned for the first half year, but now it's just a part of "the PC noises". The blue and red LEDs give of that artificial but cosy dimm light. Sometimes, when I listen to it, I get the eerie liminal space feeling. You know what I mean, right? Home.
Another thing I find very special about the Downtown area is that you start there as Bart, who is simultaneously the most out-of-pace and most fitting character for that setting. At first glance, it looks as if you're out of your depths, literally a child lost inside an adult's world, the imposing skyscrapers and structures almost hammering that point home, but once you start exploring more, it becomes an overractive 10-year old's paradise. This is where you find the comic book store, the Itchy and Scratchy parade balloons, the construction buildings offer plenty of opportunity for mischief, and the highway area is essentially a private race-track, which would play exactly to someone like Bart's tastes.
Really glad you're still uploading. Your channel is like a comfort thing to me. Your thoughts are so well articulated - it's very relaxing to chuck on your videos when I want to wind down after a long day. Thanks so much, dude.
May I just say I really appreciate how thorough and thoughtful you are when covering games, especially considering your not talking about them in the easy way by analyzing what was intended, but instead picking up on abstract things that was never considered by the people who made them. It’s such a unique insight. I remember playing Minecraft alone as a kid and feeling so much dread I couldn’t play it unless I knew someone was home with me. I started realizing I would have these moments in multiple games where I felt this looming unease and they weren’t ones that people talked about like half life 2 or whatever. They were games that didn’t have any horror elements but they still managed to cause me discomfort. I think your videos do a great job diving into everything that causes things to feel wrong in games. Your GTA3 video was one I especially appreciated. It’s always a treat when you upload!
I remember in Apu's level, there were those voting trucks that shout "Vote Quimby!". As a kid I never really put two and two together (And couldn't hear them well enough), and assumed specifically that level had distant megaphones saying something like "Hoolaheen" randomly. It made the whole level feel weirdly ethereal, like there was this weird secret just out of reach. I remember trying to trigger it on purpose for a long time. It was only when I watched Jerma play that I realized it was an NPC vehicle honking the horn.
I used to play the French version and it was the only "vocal" line to not be translated, and I understood it as "Roule plus vite" or, in English "Drive faster" Always leaving me with a weird feeling how an npc would repeat the same phrase for no reason
Ah, my first GTA game. Put hundreds of hours into this as a child in the early '00s, all the driving music stuck permanently in my head, Springfield looking like Whoville with its' weird buildings, and Homer and Bart ripped straight from that Halloween episode in Season 6; I was totally obsessed with SHaR. Brilliant adventuring around the open world and analysis from yourself, as always. Thank you Joyless!
Level 3, in particular, is one of my favourite video game worlds in terms of atmosphere. It's gorgeous and nostalgic and dreamlike all at the same time, and as such, I regard it as one of the best unintentional liminal spaces in gaming. I love it so much that I never want it to end, let alone as quickly as it does, and so I often try to complete as many of the optional objectives as I can before moving on.
exploring 2D environments re-imagined in 3D gave me a such a bizarre feeling growing up, this phenomena is truly an obsession, shit used to make me feel like I was floating. if anyone is interested in playing this game again I highly recc trying out the mpalko vhs shader to blend the aliasing and get that vintage color banding.
I really dig these new types of videos you've been doing the past few years, where instead of talking about the game as a whole, you zero in on some specific aspect of it or its world and explore that. Luxuriating in all the little details that are only ever meant to be driven or ran past at full speed, making the most of every little corner of the map and seeing what there is to find, and how what shortcuts they had to take or limitations they ran up against help contribute to an overall vibe the game has, intentional or not. It's really chill : )
This is one of the games that i feel was able to capture that "this really could be a place in the real world" feel. That because it gives us just enough to fill in the rest with our minds. Something that even some photo-realistic games fail to do.
Maybe it's the atmosphere of your video, or the atmosphere of the game. But I found this video very easy to fall asleep too. Sorry if that doesn't sound like a complement but I have insomnia, so I promise it is! Calm and nostalgic. And I also watched the parts that I missed when I fell asleep lol.
HOLY SHIT I also found that living chessboard area in level 1 when I was a kid! I had completely forgotten about that! I know that I had to have found it early because I never beat Lisa's level when I was a kid and haven't really gone back to it since. Forgot all about it until you featured it
As a kid I really loved this game (still do). Being from a city myself, Level 2 really stood out to me as a kind of digital comfort blanket, especially the area next to the Car Wash with the relaxing music. The game always reminded me of the Truman show where it felt like everyone else is just acting, all the locations are movie/TV sets and the game follows the protagonist as if you're the main character in the movie. Which technically we are, as the whole plot is just a game show for the aliens!
Upbeat AsukkaTV-style video but about the simpsons hit and run instead of depressed anime games, while being just as surreal? This is gold. It's 20:34 and I am subbed
As someone who played the game a lot and watched the show when I was little, all the levels in this game feel like a series of liminal spaces when all the NPCs and vehicles are removed.
The fact that this kind of your videos have a great amount of views makes clear that you are not the only one that thought that something with this game was, at least, 'weird'. Both with GTA 3 and this game (And, PoP: The Sands of Time) I always felt a great sensation of... loneliness, besides the fact that I was a lonely kid playing with his PS2, those games felt strange, although there was at least one element moving in screen and had ambience sounds/music, it was like that feeling somehow extrapolates to my own silent room, and sudden I was aware of all that happening at the same time. Weird and lonely as I said, and even if I was like 9 years old, playing my console in a lonely and small town in Mexico, that eerie sensation was already there, and I love your channel and your essays because it works like a pictureframe to those (not good, but simpler) days.
The sentiment you start expressing around 1:07:00 is really beautiful; I'll try to carry that with me the next time I start getting frustrated with something I play. I think the "urgency of story and context" has ruined a few games I might otherwise have enjoyed. Thanks for another great video, and a cozy Christmas Eve. :)
This man really got lucky with the timing, summoning salt releases Simpsons hit and run video, I get this on my front page only nine days after it came out
love your channel but sometimes i struggle to keep track of these run-on sentences. possibly the funniest example being 1:06:26: "And so, in conclusion, and to wrap this up in a way that i hope will tie it all together into the grander point im trying to make, fascinatingly, and with all that having been said, i've always loved how, that, if nothing else, the final level serves to perfectly frame my perspective on these feelings."
I pirated this game on a whim in middleschool. Had no idea what this game was up to being this good. Great driving. Surreal maps. This perpetual feeling of the polish from end to end. The nooks and crannies, the rpg potency with the fleshed out maps and microenvironments like the camp, astrotelescope. Such a game for all time.
I really like your videos. The mortal kombat one was my fav and it has me excited from this one. Don’t stop making these types of videos. The liminal feeling in video games is such a niche topic and you cover it so well. Sorry i’m tired and high. but i like your vids a lot❤❤
Beyond the Simpsons connection, for me something that makes the world of this game feel strange is that it is all laid out to form a single looping route, but also dotted with places that look and are structured like normal cities and countrysides. It's like it falls into this uncanny valley between a blatantly artificial racetrack with setpieces like driving through the reactor and also trying to be a real world where people live and work and travel through the streets.
I’ve always personally enjoyed walking through games just to take them in. Be it a call of duty multiplayer map, the long winding sands and abandoned structures of mad max (I refuse to stop talking about that game) I love to hunt for the little details, the things that you wouldn’t find as you’re being gunned down by that same bastard who’s been camping in the same spot the entire game, or the sound that you’d never hear through the endless gunfire. My favorite maps to explore are the call of duty zombies maps, because there’s always this implied sense of danger, no matter what the round. I spent an ungodly about of time playing black ops Cold War, and in doing so, I combed through every bit of playable space of the four zombies maps, as well as the outbreak maps and god, there’s some fantastic level of detail hidden behind all of the implied crunch.
I watched this video last night as I fell asleep, I've decided to rewatch/listen to it while I'm sitting at my desk of my boring data entry job. I'm so glad this game is getting a resurgence in interest. ❤
The editing and visuals are always so on point in Joyless vids. Sucks that these vids don't tend to get the reach they deserve but here's a comment for what it's worth
I remember renting this game 20 years ago and thinking "I've been here before" as if the game was some asset flip from an obscure Dreamcast game. 20 years later my instinct still tells me this.
I really want to like this video, I love the game and the concept for the video and I honestly think there is something there to talk about. I can also tell that this is really something that you care about which in a world of irony, its nice to see a bit of whole hearted sincerity! However, you really need to get someone else to read through your scripts and help you cut out a lot of the fluff dialogue, or when you are repeating yourself, or exaggerating something as being "infinitely" more important when it comes to this game (when in reality its not even slightly). You need to be more concise in a video essay, whereas at the moment it feels like you are literally saying everything that comes to mind. To be clear I am only criticising because I see potential for something really good here, and I honestly think that a second person reviewing your script and cutting out a good chunk of it would make for an excellent essay.
This is an interesting topic i never really thought about before, just looking a bit beyond the given path for driving and walking around, and also, heard in an interview with a dev that level 7 was meant to also have the subarea where mr. Burns mansion is all spookified but they didn't make it timewise and cut the whole section out, and the level 3 area that repeats in level 6 was made last in a hurry to grt it done in time as opposed to the other levels, so that's probably why it feels differently to you that the other maps
I think you'd like the play Mr Burns if you can find a script or recording of it. It's set in a post-apocalypse (the idyllic suburbs parodied by the show are long gone), and a troupe of actors reenact old episodes from memory. The way the stories become distorted over time and between mediums reminds me of this
Reading this while laying in bed watching RUclips on the phone at 3am, in the background I can hear the clicking of that one bad PC fan I never bothered to replace. From time to time the PC noise will roar a little bit because it's doing god knows what. Sometimes the water pump makes that "spitting" noise, which had me concerned for the first half year, but now it's just a part of "the PC noises". The blue and red LEDs give of that artificial but cosy dimm light. Sometimes, when I listen to it, I get the eerie liminal space feeling. You know what I mean, right? Home.
I never consciously realized how much liminal space scenery is there in this game! What I find particularly interesting about this nostalgic liminal aesthetics is how much, at least for our generation it appease both to the real material world, dreams or memories and to video games as well in regards to their limitations and resources at that time. It all there visually in both realms.
After a decade of browsing YT I believe your videos are my favorite content on this website, and I am always happy to see another upload. I really do hope you keep making these kinds of videos for a long time.
This was one of the first games I remember playing. I loved just driving around and explorting. Doing cool tricks and races. I think it influenced my artist pallet tastes as well.
16:00 if you're autistic I like you even more ❤ One of my best friends is autistic and hes one of the greatest people I've ever met Not free of flaws but also very caring of others and stuff Idk if I am myself but I appreciate you regardless of it. These detailed analysis into things (that people generally don't stop to pay attention) are like a homage to every little decision made by the devs and it's really nice to see!
I actually agree with you. I feel like theres some reaching going on. Thats all I'll say about that. But, it is an entertaining video if you kinda just watch it from a detached perspective.
I agree, I tried watching the vid and wanted to get into it cause it seemed interesting and something I'm usually into but the way he was dragging on sentences and points quickly turned me off to the point where I couldn't be asked to watch anymore
I remember this game’s story beat per beat. And during this video, I was humming to all the background music, recognizing it immediately. This game means something special to all who played it, Simpsons fan or not.
There something about barts room during night or Halloween or whatever. Like the flowing window in the backyard. The feeling of me sneaking into the room to see what it looks like. The atmosphere in hit and run is so good
this. this is the video that perfectly captures the feelings i've always had about this game. ever since i was a kid i would always, after beating the game, or midways through my multiple gameplays, get out of my vehicle and just walk around the different levels of the game. i'm not joking when i say the scenery of this game is absolutely beautiful and just makes me feel these types of feelings that i cannot for the life of me describe. it's like feeling i'm truly there. and it's not a bad feeling. if i had the power to teleport to any real or fictional area, simpsons hit and run would definitely be one of them. every time i finish a level, homer 1 for example, the sudden switch-up of vibes of the second level just feels overwhelming in a good way, like you're exploring an entirely new zone. i've always felt like this, since i was a kid, and even now that i've just replayed the game a few weeks ago. the devs made a really, REALLY superb work in this game. it'll always be a game i will think of replaying any day i remember it.
You incorrectly mentioned that each level is set a few hours later than the previous, when it actually takes place over a week. The newspaper displayed during each level's loading screen are chronologically one day apart from each other, with the first at Oct 25th, and the last at Oct 31st (i.e. Halloween).
re: the clouds You maybe could have a flat sky that isn't an object in the world itself but is "fixed" to the camera and offset the UV cloud texture in one direction. That's kinda how some older games do it, so the clouds can still be seen moving from A to B but they can be seen travelling in a specific direction rather than in a circle where players might notice.
This video is fantastic, and it makes me want to speak about my OWN favorite game, Mad Max and how its atmosphere is beautiful, despite it being literally just sand, oil, dirt and suffering. I’ll have to get on writing that ASAP, thank you for the inspiration!
I am pretty sure the story of the game does not take place over the course of a single day but a week. Between levels when you see the newspaper headlines, the dates on the papers progress and the final zombie level occurs on Halloween.
I would like the add a weird glitch i never seemed to reproduce. Bart lvl 2 the parking lot full of the small cars near crusty burger would drop. They could be driven if i remember right.
12:00 Fun fact, one of the Elder Scrolls games (I think it was Oblivion) had tried to fix this issue and give the world more realism by using an adaptive AI, where all characters in game would have humanlike behaviours. For example, all NPCs had to sleep and eat. If the NPC had gold they would buy food, if they had no gold they would go into the forest and hunt food, or if they had low morality, they would steal food. They apparently had to tone this back because it caused chaos in the game world. Shopekeepers would horde all the food, random NPCs would just be dead as the guards caught them stealing bread and challanged them to a dual. If the player dropped a powerful weapon, NPCs would pick it up and use it intead. All the loot chests would be empty and Bears from the forest would wander into villsges looking for food and kill everybody There is a great video on this by Karl Smallwood if you want to check it out
I think the fact that maps are separated and isolated like racetracks, they feel like prisons a bit. I remember trying to go from the harbor to downtown in a single drive, trying to push through the game borders by trying to get out of town
Even as a kid this world always struck me as.. sad? Like, I remember this one specific nondescript apartment building i think in the Marge level, with its little cosy orange lights against the night sky, I used to look at it and get sad. Stuff like that in real life implies life, like someone lives there and is home living right now but in a game it's just pixels and code or whatever, so your brain wants to transfer that feeling but can't because it knows what it's looking at is not real? Idk I guess somewhere in that process makes me sad. I think especially on the Lisa level, that level gave me nostalgia for my childhood when I was still a child, making Lisa's line in the game 'this reminds me of when I was a little girl..' when the character is only meant to be 8 kinda poignant. the twinkling sea with the sunset backdrop and golden hour lighting gives me like vaporwave vibes, Lisa even wears a vaporwave-esque outfit for one of the mission (the cool clothes), like I know it's reference to an episode of the show, but in the context of this bizarre, dreamlike world stuff like that takes on a whole new vibe for me. With other, later licensed cartoon games like the South Park games it kind of just feels like you're playing through an episode of the show so the jokes and references hit pretty much the same, but with older PS2 era 3D versions of familiar 2D world like this and the earlier Spongebob games take on an almost uncanny valley feeling of being an imitation of something you're familiar with, but due to the format and the graphical and technical limitations of the time, and also the fact that these fun cartoon world you are used to seeing in fast cut 11/22 minute periods and now suddenly you can just... sit in them, take them in, let them breathe around you as you would a real life space. idk. Looking at them through this new angle, you realise how lifeless they actually are, like the illusion is broken.
This is why the worlds of games 7th gen and older are so interesting and thought-provoking because before ps3 xbox 360 and such limitations just made games so much more fun and intriguing keeps you guessing intrested in exploring it all even if nothing quit there. Best examples in open world for me are the classic GTA trilogy on ps2 ❤ i love older games aesthetics and it's subliminal areas! You should do BULLY NEXT ON PS2
😳 this game exposes the REAL world of the Simpsons. Bart grew up to become a serial killer and the entire Simpsons TV series is his idealized version of his past life. That's why nobody ever ages in the show. The tree house of horrors specials showcase his truly disturbed mind. There are literally hundreds of clues in the series that prove that what we're watching is the retrospective memories of a serial killer. That's why the downtown area of this game is so starkly different, cold, impersonal and strange. Bart prowled these streets starting when he was 19 years old. The streets are empty because everyone knows there's a maniac on the loose. What we're seeing in this game is downtown Springfield through the eyes of 19 year old Bart as he prowled the streets.
When I was in elementary school I bought a cheatcode book that included some cheats for the Simpson's Hit and Run. This cheat was written in the book but I've never found any information that confirmed or denied its validity:
"When in Homer's level, drive through Mr. Burn's factory. At the end, take a right and a quick left to get in front of a blue house. In the backyard, you will see a space shuttle that you will be able to use and fly over the city. There will be an alien in the UFO that you can talk to. It tells you how to use the shuttle."
blue house? closest thing i can think of is the rocket car in front of a yellow house? kind of looks like a shuttle too this is assuming its talking about the first level though
Oh man, that's so cool. Thanks for sharing :)
inventing nonexistent cheats was a favourite hobby of gaming journos back in the 90s/00s.
they're anti plagiarism measures. a lot of publishers at the time would just steal from other sources, so adding fake cheats as a watermark of sorts was a very common practice. the fake chocolate world from SMB1 comes to mind or 'Yeah Yeah Beebis 1' come to mind.
@@ennayanne And with your group of friends at school, everyone had to have the best "real" cheats back in Elementary. But only your older brother knew the cheat, and he won't tell you what it is so you can't give it to your friends.
One of my favorite things to do in this game is to turn the volume way down while playing at around 2 AM in the third area, get out of a car, and just stare at the setting sun with no music in the background and only hearing the quiet hum of my PS2 and the occasional clicking of the CD. It's not something a modern game can capture -- this feeling of being in between reality and a game. The graphics are just good enough to make everything feel sort of real, but still old and dated enough to feel like a cartoony game. The low hum of the console at night reminds me of so many other PS1 and PS2 experiences as a kid, and the sun is reminiscent of those magical Spyro skyboxes. I could live forever in those moments.
yuhhhh
Spyro is massive ups
That's beautiful 🥲
this but with gamecube
Reading this while laying in bed watching RUclips on the phone at 3am, in the background I can hear the clicking of that one bad PC fan I never bothered to replace. From time to time the PC noise will roar a little bit because it's doing god knows what. Sometimes the water pump makes that "spitting" noise, which had me concerned for the first half year, but now it's just a part of "the PC noises". The blue and red LEDs give of that artificial but cosy dimm light. Sometimes, when I listen to it, I get the eerie liminal space feeling. You know what I mean, right? Home.
Another thing I find very special about the Downtown area is that you start there as Bart, who is simultaneously the most out-of-pace and most fitting character for that setting. At first glance, it looks as if you're out of your depths, literally a child lost inside an adult's world, the imposing skyscrapers and structures almost hammering that point home, but once you start exploring more, it becomes an overractive 10-year old's paradise. This is where you find the comic book store, the Itchy and Scratchy parade balloons, the construction buildings offer plenty of opportunity for mischief, and the highway area is essentially a private race-track, which would play exactly to someone like Bart's tastes.
Sorry to correct but the comic book store is in Lisa's level. It still kinda counts since you later go back to that level as Bart anyway
@@snnnaaaaaakeeeee4470 You're right, I misremembered because Comic Book Guy has quests in Bart's level.
@@snnnaaaaaakeeeee4470 Level 6 is bart in "Lisas Level"
Really glad you're still uploading. Your channel is like a comfort thing to me. Your thoughts are so well articulated - it's very relaxing to chuck on your videos when I want to wind down after a long day. Thanks so much, dude.
Thank you so much!
I don't know what specific brand of autism I have which makes videos like this so engaging for me, but I'm glad I have it.
May I just say I really appreciate how thorough and thoughtful you are when covering games, especially considering your not talking about them in the easy way by analyzing what was intended, but instead picking up on abstract things that was never considered by the people who made them. It’s such a unique insight. I remember playing Minecraft alone as a kid and feeling so much dread I couldn’t play it unless I knew someone was home with me. I started realizing I would have these moments in multiple games where I felt this looming unease and they weren’t ones that people talked about like half life 2 or whatever. They were games that didn’t have any horror elements but they still managed to cause me discomfort. I think your videos do a great job diving into everything that causes things to feel wrong in games. Your GTA3 video was one I especially appreciated. It’s always a treat when you upload!
Well said and agreed!
This means so much man, thank you :')
Word. I felt like I was watching AsukkaTV dissect DDLC but with a more upbeat tone and less harsh editing
I remember in Apu's level, there were those voting trucks that shout "Vote Quimby!". As a kid I never really put two and two together (And couldn't hear them well enough), and assumed specifically that level had distant megaphones saying something like "Hoolaheen" randomly. It made the whole level feel weirdly ethereal, like there was this weird secret just out of reach. I remember trying to trigger it on purpose for a long time. It was only when I watched Jerma play that I realized it was an NPC vehicle honking the horn.
I love how Jerma comes up whenever this game is talked about/played lol, like that stream is just part of the game's legend now
I used to play the French version and it was the only "vocal" line to not be translated, and I understood it as "Roule plus vite" or, in English "Drive faster"
Always leaving me with a weird feeling how an npc would repeat the same phrase for no reason
I'm so glad this game included Bart Simpson's famous line "Eat my ass"
I still remember Jerma’s stream😭
Eet pant
Ah, my first GTA game. Put hundreds of hours into this as a child in the early '00s, all the driving music stuck permanently in my head, Springfield looking like Whoville with its' weird buildings, and Homer and Bart ripped straight from that Halloween episode in Season 6; I was totally obsessed with SHaR. Brilliant adventuring around the open world and analysis from yourself, as always. Thank you Joyless!
You call yourself joyless but your channel notifications fill me with joy
Level 3, in particular, is one of my favourite video game worlds in terms of atmosphere. It's gorgeous and nostalgic and dreamlike all at the same time, and as such, I regard it as one of the best unintentional liminal spaces in gaming. I love it so much that I never want it to end, let alone as quickly as it does, and so I often try to complete as many of the optional objectives as I can before moving on.
exploring 2D environments re-imagined in 3D gave me a such a bizarre feeling growing up, this phenomena is truly an obsession, shit used to make me feel like I was floating. if anyone is interested in playing this game again I highly recc trying out the mpalko vhs shader to blend the aliasing and get that vintage color banding.
I really dig these new types of videos you've been doing the past few years, where instead of talking about the game as a whole, you zero in on some specific aspect of it or its world and explore that. Luxuriating in all the little details that are only ever meant to be driven or ran past at full speed, making the most of every little corner of the map and seeing what there is to find, and how what shortcuts they had to take or limitations they ran up against help contribute to an overall vibe the game has, intentional or not. It's really chill : )
This is one of the games that i feel was able to capture that "this really could be a place in the real world" feel. That because it gives us just enough to fill in the rest with our minds.
Something that even some photo-realistic games fail to do.
Between this and Summoning Salt, Simpson’s Hit and Run is doing great in the media recently.
Maybe it's the atmosphere of your video, or the atmosphere of the game. But I found this video very easy to fall asleep too. Sorry if that doesn't sound like a complement but I have insomnia, so I promise it is! Calm and nostalgic. And I also watched the parts that I missed when I fell asleep lol.
Your videos are so well thought out and peaceful. They're awesome
You truly cover a RUclips niche I never thought I needed in my life.
I am very experienced in this niche (and it's neighbors) and I was missing a new exponent, and this is a great one
HOLY SHIT I also found that living chessboard area in level 1 when I was a kid! I had completely forgotten about that! I know that I had to have found it early because I never beat Lisa's level when I was a kid and haven't really gone back to it since. Forgot all about it until you featured it
As a kid I really loved this game (still do). Being from a city myself, Level 2 really stood out to me as a kind of digital comfort blanket, especially the area next to the Car Wash with the relaxing music.
The game always reminded me of the Truman show where it felt like everyone else is just acting, all the locations are movie/TV sets and the game follows the protagonist as if you're the main character in the movie. Which technically we are, as the whole plot is just a game show for the aliens!
Upbeat AsukkaTV-style video but about the simpsons hit and run instead of depressed anime games, while being just as surreal? This is gold. It's 20:34 and I am subbed
Wow, got back from work about half an hour ago. Watching the latest Joyless video. What a great way to start my 3 day holiday off!
As someone who played the game a lot and watched the show when I was little, all the levels in this game feel like a series of liminal spaces when all the NPCs and vehicles are removed.
God, I love when you post a new video. Highlight of my day! Keep it up, Joyless!
I just gotta comment and say wow, ur channel is from 2008, 3 years after RUclips was created…damn ur an OG og, I thought I was an OG lol
The fact that this kind of your videos have a great amount of views makes clear that you are not the only one that thought that something with this game was, at least, 'weird'.
Both with GTA 3 and this game (And, PoP: The Sands of Time) I always felt a great sensation of... loneliness, besides the fact that I was a lonely kid playing with his PS2, those games felt strange, although there was at least one element moving in screen and had ambience sounds/music, it was like that feeling somehow extrapolates to my own silent room, and sudden I was aware of all that happening at the same time.
Weird and lonely as I said, and even if I was like 9 years old, playing my console in a lonely and small town in Mexico, that eerie sensation was already there, and I love your channel and your essays because it works like a pictureframe to those (not good, but simpler) days.
The sentiment you start expressing around 1:07:00 is really beautiful; I'll try to carry that with me the next time I start getting frustrated with something I play. I think the "urgency of story and context" has ruined a few games I might otherwise have enjoyed. Thanks for another great video, and a cozy Christmas Eve. :)
This man really got lucky with the timing, summoning salt releases Simpsons hit and run video, I get this on my front page only nine days after it came out
love your channel but sometimes i struggle to keep track of these run-on sentences.
possibly the funniest example being 1:06:26:
"And so, in conclusion, and to wrap this up in a way that i hope will tie it all together into the grander point im trying to make, fascinatingly, and with all that having been said, i've always loved how, that, if nothing else, the final level serves to perfectly frame my perspective on these feelings."
You're absolutely right but this is literally just how I talk irl 💀💀💀
amazing hahah. great hook
Absolutely gorgeous video mate
damn I been playing this every night lately 😭 much luv keep droppin vids and music brody
This is a really, really good video, dude. Well done. Now imma binge your other stuff
I pirated this game on a whim in middleschool. Had no idea what this game was up to being this good. Great driving. Surreal maps. This perpetual feeling of the polish from end to end. The nooks and crannies, the rpg potency with the fleshed out maps and microenvironments like the camp, astrotelescope. Such a game for all time.
Another banger to add to the pantheon of videos that get me through working long shifts.
I love this video, you’ve articulated every emotion I’ve felt playing this game I wish I could now but this will do plenty!
the goat has blessed us with another banger
I really like your videos. The mortal kombat one was my fav and it has me excited from this one. Don’t stop making these types of videos. The liminal feeling in video games is such a niche topic and you cover it so well. Sorry i’m tired and high. but i like your vids a lot❤❤
Oh we eating good tonight 😌
Beyond the Simpsons connection, for me something that makes the world of this game feel strange is that it is all laid out to form a single looping route, but also dotted with places that look and are structured like normal cities and countrysides. It's like it falls into this uncanny valley between a blatantly artificial racetrack with setpieces like driving through the reactor and also trying to be a real world where people live and work and travel through the streets.
i am so jazzed to always see a Joyless video in my notifications
I’ve always personally enjoyed walking through games just to take them in. Be it a call of duty multiplayer map, the long winding sands and abandoned structures of mad max (I refuse to stop talking about that game) I love to hunt for the little details, the things that you wouldn’t find as you’re being gunned down by that same bastard who’s been camping in the same spot the entire game, or the sound that you’d never hear through the endless gunfire. My favorite maps to explore are the call of duty zombies maps, because there’s always this implied sense of danger, no matter what the round. I spent an ungodly about of time playing black ops Cold War, and in doing so, I combed through every bit of playable space of the four zombies maps, as well as the outbreak maps and god, there’s some fantastic level of detail hidden behind all of the implied crunch.
I watched this video last night as I fell asleep, I've decided to rewatch/listen to it while I'm sitting at my desk of my boring data entry job.
I'm so glad this game is getting a resurgence in interest. ❤
This game just feels like one big liminal space and I love it😊
The editing and visuals are always so on point in Joyless vids. Sucks that these vids don't tend to get the reach they deserve but here's a comment for what it's worth
Ironically enough it's always an absolute joy when joyless posts.
I remember renting this game 20 years ago and thinking "I've been here before" as if the game was some asset flip from an obscure Dreamcast game.
20 years later my instinct still tells me this.
I really want to like this video, I love the game and the concept for the video and I honestly think there is something there to talk about. I can also tell that this is really something that you care about which in a world of irony, its nice to see a bit of whole hearted sincerity!
However, you really need to get someone else to read through your scripts and help you cut out a lot of the fluff dialogue, or when you are repeating yourself, or exaggerating something as being "infinitely" more important when it comes to this game (when in reality its not even slightly). You need to be more concise in a video essay, whereas at the moment it feels like you are literally saying everything that comes to mind.
To be clear I am only criticising because I see potential for something really good here, and I honestly think that a second person reviewing your script and cutting out a good chunk of it would make for an excellent essay.
i read the ''world'' in the title as ''world record'' and was very confused when this was going to become a speedrunning video
This is an interesting topic i never really thought about before, just looking a bit beyond the given path for driving and walking around, and also, heard in an interview with a dev that level 7 was meant to also have the subarea where mr. Burns mansion is all spookified but they didn't make it timewise and cut the whole section out, and the level 3 area that repeats in level 6 was made last in a hurry to grt it done in time as opposed to the other levels, so that's probably why it feels differently to you that the other maps
I think you'd like the play Mr Burns if you can find a script or recording of it. It's set in a post-apocalypse (the idyllic suburbs parodied by the show are long gone), and a troupe of actors reenact old episodes from memory. The way the stories become distorted over time and between mediums reminds me of this
Reading this while laying in bed watching RUclips on the phone at 3am, in the background I can hear the clicking of that one bad PC fan I never bothered to replace. From time to time the PC noise will roar a little bit because it's doing god knows what. Sometimes the water pump makes that "spitting" noise, which had me concerned for the first half year, but now it's just a part of "the PC noises". The blue and red LEDs give of that artificial but cosy dimm light. Sometimes, when I listen to it, I get the eerie liminal space feeling. You know what I mean, right? Home.
47:20 I like how the sun is obviously just sitting in the middle of the ocean.
I never consciously realized how much liminal space scenery is there in this game! What I find particularly interesting about this nostalgic liminal aesthetics is how much, at least for our generation it appease both to the real material world, dreams or memories and to video games as well in regards to their limitations and resources at that time. It all there visually in both realms.
After a decade of browsing YT I believe your videos are my favorite content on this website, and I am always happy to see another upload. I really do hope you keep making these kinds of videos for a long time.
Such a great video. Instant subscribe.
This was one of the first games I remember playing. I loved just driving around and explorting. Doing cool tricks and races. I think it influenced my artist pallet tastes as well.
16:00 if you're autistic I like you even more ❤
One of my best friends is autistic and hes one of the greatest people I've ever met
Not free of flaws but also very caring of others and stuff
Idk if I am myself but I appreciate you regardless of it. These detailed analysis into things (that people generally don't stop to pay attention) are like a homage to every little decision made by the devs and it's really nice to see!
Remember the 50 foot bounce cheat? Then falling through the world and driving below
I loved the game. This isn't a terrible video. But in my opinion it really screams "I'm trying to be creative"
I actually agree with you. I feel like theres some reaching going on. Thats all I'll say about that. But, it is an entertaining video if you kinda just watch it from a detached perspective.
I agree, I tried watching the vid and wanted to get into it cause it seemed interesting and something I'm usually into but the way he was dragging on sentences and points quickly turned me off to the point where I couldn't be asked to watch anymore
@@crafttobaffto absolutely same lol. It's quite pretentious.
I remember this game’s story beat per beat. And during this video, I was humming to all the background music, recognizing it immediately. This game means something special to all who played it, Simpsons fan or not.
I used to drive around level 1 and just pretended to drive to work, stop by the kwik e Mart on the way home.
There something about barts room during night or Halloween or whatever. Like the flowing window in the backyard. The feeling of me sneaking into the room to see what it looks like.
The atmosphere in hit and run is so good
This just got recommended to me
Holy cow, new Joyless video! Thank you!
this. this is the video that perfectly captures the feelings i've always had about this game. ever since i was a kid i would always, after beating the game, or midways through my multiple gameplays, get out of my vehicle and just walk around the different levels of the game. i'm not joking when i say the scenery of this game is absolutely beautiful and just makes me feel these types of feelings that i cannot for the life of me describe. it's like feeling i'm truly there. and it's not a bad feeling. if i had the power to teleport to any real or fictional area, simpsons hit and run would definitely be one of them. every time i finish a level, homer 1 for example, the sudden switch-up of vibes of the second level just feels overwhelming in a good way, like you're exploring an entirely new zone. i've always felt like this, since i was a kid, and even now that i've just replayed the game a few weeks ago. the devs made a really, REALLY superb work in this game. it'll always be a game i will think of replaying any day i remember it.
cool video but i think you kinda overestimate how unique these luke warm takes are.
Has this take ever been made anywhere else before??
Just to be a massive nerd; the game takes place from October the 25th to the 31st, not all on one day 🤓
Damn T_T
@Joyless yeah. The news paper loading screen is there to tell you what date the level is set in
You incorrectly mentioned that each level is set a few hours later than the previous, when it actually takes place over a week. The newspaper displayed during each level's loading screen are chronologically one day apart from each other, with the first at Oct 25th, and the last at Oct 31st (i.e. Halloween).
In the grand scheme of the history of the universe, that's a few hours
I love the entire video!
Also I think you might want to take a look at the original Mafia game, especially Freeride Extreme mode
Hell yeah man
re: the clouds
You maybe could have a flat sky that isn't an object in the world itself but is "fixed" to the camera and offset the UV cloud texture in one direction.
That's kinda how some older games do it, so the clouds can still be seen moving from A to B but they can be seen travelling in a specific direction rather than in a circle where players might notice.
What a perfect addition to new Summoning Salt!
This video is fantastic, and it makes me want to speak about my OWN favorite game, Mad Max and how its atmosphere is beautiful, despite it being literally just sand, oil, dirt and suffering. I’ll have to get on writing that ASAP, thank you for the inspiration!
Do it! That sounds awesome :)
God, I need to play H&R and RR again. Amazing games.
I am pretty sure the story of the game does not take place over the course of a single day but a week. Between levels when you see the newspaper headlines, the dates on the papers progress and the final zombie level occurs on Halloween.
I would like the add a weird glitch i never seemed to reproduce. Bart lvl 2 the parking lot full of the small cars near crusty burger would drop. They could be driven if i remember right.
Now THIS is content
I absolutely love this form of analysis. Same with the GTA 3 video you made
The Halloween atmosphere isn't the scary part of Level 7. The missions are.
PTSD
your videos are amazing, I don't know if you're fond of it, but please consider making a video about Bully
Love the long form video content you make
Thanks so much man
this game was pretty good for its time
12:00 Fun fact, one of the Elder Scrolls games (I think it was Oblivion) had tried to fix this issue and give the world more realism by using an adaptive AI, where all characters in game would have humanlike behaviours.
For example, all NPCs had to sleep and eat. If the NPC had gold they would buy food, if they had no gold they would go into the forest and hunt food, or if they had low morality, they would steal food.
They apparently had to tone this back because it caused chaos in the game world. Shopekeepers would horde all the food, random NPCs would just be dead as the guards caught them stealing bread and challanged them to a dual. If the player dropped a powerful weapon, NPCs would pick it up and use it intead. All the loot chests would be empty and Bears from the forest would wander into villsges looking for food and kill everybody
There is a great video on this by Karl Smallwood if you want to check it out
He’s back!!!
I think the fact that maps are separated and isolated like racetracks, they feel like prisons a bit.
I remember trying to go from the harbor to downtown in a single drive, trying to push through the game borders by trying to get out of town
Absolutely!
H&R Video Essay??
I'm IN
9:06 Am I the only one who noticed the stick of wood attached to the skull of that skeleton?
30:03 that is Krustey's mansion.
Even as a kid this world always struck me as.. sad? Like, I remember this one specific nondescript apartment building i think in the Marge level, with its little cosy orange lights against the night sky, I used to look at it and get sad. Stuff like that in real life implies life, like someone lives there and is home living right now but in a game it's just pixels and code or whatever, so your brain wants to transfer that feeling but can't because it knows what it's looking at is not real? Idk I guess somewhere in that process makes me sad. I think especially on the Lisa level, that level gave me nostalgia for my childhood when I was still a child, making Lisa's line in the game 'this reminds me of when I was a little girl..' when the character is only meant to be 8 kinda poignant.
the twinkling sea with the sunset backdrop and golden hour lighting gives me like vaporwave vibes, Lisa even wears a vaporwave-esque outfit for one of the mission (the cool clothes), like I know it's reference to an episode of the show, but in the context of this bizarre, dreamlike world stuff like that takes on a whole new vibe for me. With other, later licensed cartoon games like the South Park games it kind of just feels like you're playing through an episode of the show so the jokes and references hit pretty much the same, but with older PS2 era 3D versions of familiar 2D world like this and the earlier Spongebob games take on an almost uncanny valley feeling of being an imitation of something you're familiar with, but due to the format and the graphical and technical limitations of the time, and also the fact that these fun cartoon world you are used to seeing in fast cut 11/22 minute periods and now suddenly you can just... sit in them, take them in, let them breathe around you as you would a real life space. idk. Looking at them through this new angle, you realise how lifeless they actually are, like the illusion is broken.
Next youre gonna tell me that the show isnt real either!
(jk I actually love this perspective, thanks for making this video)
HOLY SHIT NEW VIDEO BY GOSTIEPOOH YES YES
i WILL WATCH THEN COMMENT GOOD JOB YES YES
Honey, wake up, joyless posted new video
This is why the worlds of games 7th gen and older are so interesting and thought-provoking because before ps3 xbox 360 and such limitations just made games so much more fun and intriguing keeps you guessing intrested in exploring it all even if nothing quit there. Best examples in open world for me are the classic GTA trilogy on ps2 ❤ i love older games aesthetics and it's subliminal areas! You should do BULLY NEXT ON PS2
Wait, how come I never saw that pool at 30:07?
It's not easily accesible in lvl 1, only in lvl 4
😳 this game exposes the REAL world of the Simpsons. Bart grew up to become a serial killer and the entire Simpsons TV series is his idealized version of his past life. That's why nobody ever ages in the show. The tree house of horrors specials showcase his truly disturbed mind. There are literally hundreds of clues in the series that prove that what we're watching is the retrospective memories of a serial killer.
That's why the downtown area of this game is so starkly different, cold, impersonal and strange. Bart prowled these streets starting when he was 19 years old. The streets are empty because everyone knows there's a maniac on the loose. What we're seeing in this game is downtown Springfield through the eyes of 19 year old Bart as he prowled the streets.
WTF, I just saw a Salt video from yesterday with the same topic.
This feels like an essay on Mario 64 but it's for simpsons hit and run
This video was awesome :)
I miss the Early 2000's, All the Simpsons Themed stuff was so cool and weird!😅
Prince of Persia when?
Tbf the simpsons game on Xbox 360 was the most accurate 3D Springfield bit Hit and Run hits different
One of the Greatest Games of All Time!
I’m glad I still have my PS2 & a clean Disk of this game lol
Clean Ps2 disks are Underrated Blessings lol
I love this game I was 8 when this came out in 2003 😍😍😍