The Simpsons: Hit & Run - Reception

The game was released by Vivendi Universal for the Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Windows in the United States on September 16, 2003 and in Europe on October 24, 2003. Several reviews considered Hit & Run to be the best Simpsons game to date, and it was given generally favorable reviews, receiving an aggregated score of 81% from Metacritic for its Xbox version. Praise focused on the move from the Simpsons television series to the video game format, while criticism targeted some aspects of gameplay. Hit & Run won the award for Fave Video Game at the 2004 Nickelodeon Australian Kids' Choice Awards. Over one million copies of the game were sold as of June 2004, and three million as of June 2007.

A number of reviews complimented the transposition of the Simpsons television series to a video game. Game Informer and GameSpot commented on how well the game depicted the fictional city of Springfield from the television series, and called it the most accurate representation of Springfield ever put into a game. Official Xbox Magazine said that the game did the show justice, and Play Magazine felt that it was "essentially the show in real time", summing up its review by calling the game a "truly great cross-over product". GameSpot thought that the humor that the game offered included many excellent self-referential jokes, and TeamXbox concluded its review by predicting that the game would be extremely appealing to gamers, especially hardcore Simpsons fans. Entertainment newspaper Variety surmised that Hit & Run was the first Simpsons game to include humor comparable to what was in the television series.

Hit & Run's parodical take on the Grand Theft Auto III video game was praised by several reviewers. It was considered to "deftly satirize Grand Theft Auto while being almost as entertaining" in a review by GameSpy, which suggested that Hit & Run improved several gameplay aspects that it borrowed from Grand Theft Auto, including instant mission restarts, a superior guidance system, and an easily accessible collection of vehicles. Official Xbox Magazine agreed that Hit & Run was an excellent game in its own right, and found the game to be a "brilliant" clone of Grand Theft Auto. The combination of the Simpsons universe with the gameplay of the Grand Theft Auto series was also praised by IGN as "pure brilliance".

Positive reviews of Hit & Run focused on its graphics and gameplay. Play Magazine appreciated the virtual world that the game offered, describing it as "grandiose in its expanse and artistic rendering". GameSpot found the gameplay to be very engaging. The game was found to be "very fun and very funny" by Zach Meston of GameSpy, and Game Informer called it "nothing short of astonishing". Despite positive reactions, the game also had serious issues that were brought up in several reviews, which focused on the game's bugs and glitches. Both TeamXbox and Game Revolution pointed out that Hit & Run had a few gameplay issues and graphical shortcomings that included strange artificial intelligence behavior and a broken camera system, which they felt hindered the overall experience of the game.