• Simpsons Road Rage Rewards Code
• Simpsons Road Rage Games
• Simpsons Road Rage Rewards Codes

Dec 07, 2001  At first it was fun to play as several of the Simpsons characters but when they started repeating their dialogue for the 50th time it became mighty tedious and tiresome. The gameplay is very simple. If GTA: Vice City is the Lego Technic of road rage games then Simpsons: Road Rage is, without a doubt the Lego Duplo. It is SOOO aimed at kids. Burns is up to his greedy ways again, purchasing the Springfield Transit Corporation and jacking up the fares. Refusing to shell out the high rates, Springfield citizens are forced into humorous Simpsons' 'road rage' as they brave commuters, jam-packed back-routes and the challenge to make enough money to buy back the Transit Corporation before time runs out.

Dude, That Looked Painful

Somewhere in the depths of the Springfield nuclear power plant, Mr Burns has been carrying out hideous genetic experiments, grafting Simpsons DNA into Crazy Taxi. The result is Simpsons Road Rage, an amusing if somewhat shallow driving game. The basic premise is simple enough - ferry your passengers around the mean streets of Springfield at breakneck speed with the aim of earning as much cash as possible. Depending on which difficulty level you choose you may start with anything up to 75 seconds on the clock, but when this runs out your car coasts to a halt and it's game over. Luckily whenever you pick up a passenger you get some extra seconds on the clock, although the further you get into a session the less time you're given for each journey and the more frantic things get. Reaching your destination ahead of schedule earns you a few seconds more as well as a modest cash tip, and sometimes you're also offered the chance to earn Road Rage and Safe Trip bonuses. The former involves causing as much mayhem as possible by knocking over trees, lamp posts, signs and innocent bystanders, while the latter rewards you for avoiding collisions with other vehicles. I'll let you guess which is more fun. You can even eke out an extra couple of seconds by knocking over one of the stops for Mr Burns' evil atomic bus fleet, which you can find scattered around each of the game's six neighbourhoods.

That Monkey Is Going To Pay

Taking to the roads of Springfield for the first time you only have access to one neighbourhood - Evergreen Terrace, home to Springfield Elementary School and the Kwik-E-Mart amongst other landmarks. You're also initially limited to a choice of the five main Simpson family members as your driver, including Lisa in an electric car and Marge's gas guzzling Canyonero. The rest of the game's neighbourhoods and vehicles must be unlocked by earning enough cash in the main Road Rage mode, which can be a rather tedious undertaking. You need several hundred thousand dollars to unlock everything, and a cool $1,000,000 to defeat Mr Burns' plans and complete the game outright. Bizarrely I actually found the tougher difficulty levels far easier than the .. er .. easy option - the tighter time limits are more than compensated for by the higher fares you charge your passengers - but whichever level you choose to play on, you'll be hard pushed to earn much more than $10,000 in a single run without cheating. Given that you only have six neighbourhoods to drive around, this means constantly circling the same few square miles of town over and over again just to unlock a few more drivers and the rest of the levels. A little more variety would have been welcome. The same goes for the voice acting. From Professor Frink, the fat comic store owner and Springfield's leading quack Dr Nick to the well-spoken kleptomaniac Snake and bumbling Police Chief Wiggum, many of the best loved Simpsons regulars are included in the game, with voices provided by the original actors. The bad news is that there's a relatively limited set of lines on offer for each, and as you hear at least two of them in any given car journey, after a few hours they may start to get a little grating.

Worst Trip .. Ever

If you want a break from the mayhem there's not much on offer in the way of alternative game modes either. Sunday Drive lets you tootle around in your own good time, giving you an opportunity to hunt for shortcuts, learn the layout of the maps and admire the scenery, but without any kind of time pressure or scoring system it soon gets dull. There's also a Mission mode, but this merely consists of a linear series of ten tasks. Most can be finished within two or three attempts, and all feature a time limit of under a minute, which makes this option rather shortlived. The tasks are also incredibly repetitive, as eight of the ten involve knocking over a certain number of specified objects, whether it's a drunken Barney running down mascots or Otto smashing into lamp posts in the school bus. The other two are simply a case of getting from A to B without being run off the road by Mr Burns. To make matters worse, traffic is entirely random, so you could lose before you've even got into gear because a bus has parked itself in front of your starting position. It's an amusing enough diversion from the Road Rage mode, but it isn't likely to occupy you for long. Finally there's the fast and furious two player split-screen option, which sets you and a friend loose on the streets of Springfield in a duel to see who can reach the target fare total first. To make things more interesting, you must both fight over the same punter, so if your opponent gets to them first you'll have to smash into the car to hijack their passenger and complete the ride.

I'm Bart Simpson, Who The Hell Are You?

Looking under the bonnet, the engine doesn't exactly stretch the Xbox hardware to its limits. Textures are blurry low resolution affairs and characters have a worrying tendency to run through walls and other vehicles to get into your car. Having said that, the toon renderer does a reasonable job of recreating Springfield in three dimensions, and the town's best known landmarks are instantly recognisable, even if many of the less important buildings are just poorly textured Frinkahedrons. Everything from the town hall and the nuclear power plant to Moe's Tavern and Flanders' Leftorium are included, although Simpsons purists will no doubt complain that everything's in the wrong place. Geographical inaccuracies aside, the level design is a mixed bag. Some of the locations are fairly satisfying to drive around, while others seem to have been hand crafted to be as annoying as possible. For example, both of the out of town stages feature broken bridges which you can jump across in one direction (if you time it right) but not in the other. This means that if you carry a fare to the wrong side of the Springfield gorge you have to waste time taking a circuitous route back to the main part of the map again. Factor in the shortage of side streets and shortcuts and a lack of familiar landmarks and these two settings aren't as much fun and often leave you with lower fares to boot. Given that the game only has six 'neighbourhoods' to start with, it's a little disappointing.

Conclusion

Simpsons Road Rage is surprisingly entertaining in short bursts, but the charm tends to wear off fairly quickly thanks to the lack of variety on offer. Missions, locations, music and voice acting all get repetitive after just a few hours, and there's little incentive to keep you coming back long enough to earn the $1m you'll need to win the game. It's probably worth renting if you're a fan of the TV series, but it's hardly a must buy.

7 /10

Simpsons Road Rage Rewards Code

'Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers' ' is the fifteenth episode of The Simpsons'tenth season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on February 21, 1999.^[1] After Homer purchases a Canyonero sports utility vehicle, he discovers he bought the model intended for women, so he gives the vehicle to Marge. Despite disliking it at first, Marge grows fond of it, and quickly develops clear road rage against other motorists. The episode was written by David M. Stern and directed by Mark Kirkland.^[2]

Plot[edit]

The Simpson family attempts to leave Springfield Elementary after watching a poor talent show by the school's teachers. As they sit at the parking lot due to Marge's timid driving, Homer sees Krusty driving a Canyonero and buys one for himself. However, Lenny and Carl tell him he bought the 'F-series', which is intended for women. Embarrassed, he gives the vehicle to Marge, who dislikes it at first due to its size and features, but soon grows fond of it and develops road rage. Later, Marge is given a traffic ticket by Chief Wiggum for cutting through a funeral procession and ordered to take a defensive driving course. While leaving the class, she accidentally drives the Canyonero into a prison, letting some inmates escape, and loses her license.

Later, Homer, Bart, and Lisa visit a zoo, where Homer sling-shoots a rock at a lemur, causing a chain reaction that makes the rhinoceroses go berserk and escape. The police ask Marge to use her Canyonero to stop the wild animals, but she declines until she sees her family in danger. She succeeds in rounding up the animals and saving the children, but one escapes with Homer on its horn. She chases the angry rhino into a construction site and deliberately crashes the vehicle, making it explode. The rhino attempts to stamp out the fire, allowing zookeepers to capture it and Homer to escape.

Production[edit]

The idea behind the episode came from a study performed that showed women had more cases of road rage than men.^[3] The names of the other car salesmen on the board in the car garage are friends of Mike Scully from high school.^[4] The road rage film which Chief Wiggum shows during the road rage class was originally titled 'Screaming Yellow Honkers'.^[5] The road rage film was originally to have been presented by Troy McClure, but voice actor Phil Hartman died the previous year.^[4] The group of people running out of the zoo, before Homer, Bart, and Lisa, are caricatures of Mike Scully, his wife, and his children, who are also seen running behind Kent Brockman's news report.^[4] The Fox Broadcasting Company executives were displeased with the positive references to NBC made near the end of the episode.^[4] As a compromise, the writers added in the sequence during the end credits where Homer reads a statement at gunpoint that disparages NBC and praises Fox (and briefly praises CBS, resulting in him being shot).^[4]

In an attempt to stop the rhinos, Homer shouts 'Jumanji!', a reference to the film Jumanji.^[4] Marge mentions Dateline NBC and former anchor Stone Phillips.^[4] Ms. Krabappel does a balloon dance singing 'Fever', a 1958 hit for Peggy Lee.^[2] The other teachers parody songs from Fame.^[2] Singer Courtney Love is advertised on a box of Wheaties breakfast cereal.^[2]

Reception[edit]

In its original broadcast, 'Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers' finished 43rd in ratings for the week of February 15–21, 1999, with a Nielsen rating of 8.7, equivalent to approximately 8.6 million viewing households. It was the third highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following Ally McBeal and The X-Files.^[6]

Peter Brown of If notes in his review of The Simpsons' tenth season that 'Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers', alongside 'Lard of the Dance', 'Wild Barts Can't Be Broken', and 'Homer Simpson in: 'Kidney Trouble', was 'some of the best episodes of the season'.^[7]

The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, wrote in their review of the episode: 'very clever, very dry humour and showcasing the last person you might expect to suffer road rage. Some lovely moments (Marge losing patience with Agnes and Kearney is great), especially her drive across the cornfield. Sadly the Canyonero doesn't survive the experience of this episode, which would have been nice, if only to see Marge regularly at the wheel rather than Homer.'^[2]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^'Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers''. The Simpsons.com. Retrieved 2008-09-07.
2. ^ ^abcdeMartyn, Warren; Wood, Adrian. 'A new car brings out Marge's aggressive side'. British Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 2008-09-07.
3. ^Meyer, George (2007). The Simpsons The Complete Tenth Season DVD commentary for the episode 'Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers' (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
4. ^ ^abcdefgScully, Mike (2007). The Simpsons The Complete Tenth Season DVD commentary for the episode 'Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers' (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
5. ^Hauge, Ron (2007). The Simpsons The Complete Tenth Season DVD commentary for the episode 'Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers' (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
6. ^Associated Press (February 24, 1999). 'Prime-time Nielsen ratings'. Associated Press Archive.
7. ^Brown, Peter (August 7, 2007). 'The Simpsons – The Complete Tenth Season'. If. Archived from the original on March 2, 2009. Retrieved 2008-09-07.

External links[edit]

• 'Marge Simpson In: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers' The Simpsons.com
• 'Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers' episode capsule'. The Simpsons Archive.
• 'Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers' on IMDb
• 'Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers' at TV.com

Simpsons Road Rage Games

Simpsons Road Rage Rewards Codes