YMMV / The Simpsons: Road Rage

• Game-Breaker:
  • Professor Frink's hovercar has among the best stats, being among the best in both speed and turning ability. And you can unlock him at the beginning of the game, too!
  • The Nuclear Power Plant has very close together landmarks, which makes it easy to amass a large amount of money. However, if, after delivering a passenger to the Run-Off Stream, you reset your vehicle, you will be placed on the bridge over the river, directly into a fare to the Springfield Mall. Doing this instead of the natural strategy of going up the hill to the Leftorium fare (and traversing a tricky maze to get back on to the road) can allow you to gain time faster than you lose it- making it easy (if a little time-consuming and draining) to amass a lot of money in a single run.
  • The Entertainment District has several fares that want to go to the Box Factory, which is just a short drive down the road from where they are. What's more? They respawn by the time you've driven down there and back, making transporting them over and over again a good way to amass time and money. What's more is that you can drive through the alley they're connected to back and forth, and it'll save you enough time.
  • The Springfield Dam has considerable shortcuts - one can drop from the dam itself or from hills to skip winding paths to drop a passenger at Ranch Relaxo, with a path through a cave contributing as well.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: An impromptu taxi service run by average Springfield citizens? That sounds almost exactly like Uber!
• Non-Indicative Difficulty: You will generally find that the massive score and cash multiplier you get for playing on "Hard" far outweighs the safety net of the more lenient timer on "Easy". Even for a less-skilled player, you will progress a lot faster by playing lots of short Hard runs than a few long Easy runs.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus on the game. It's got funny dialogue and can be an engaging experience, but it's basically a reskin of Crazy Taxi with Simpsons characters tacked on (to the point Sega sued Fox and the developers) and Loads and Loads of Loading, and was overshadowed by The Simpsons Hit & Run just two years later.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The Evergreen Terrace theme borrows elements from both "Aqua Boogie" by Parliament and "Ffun" by Con Funk Shun.
• That One Level: Springfield Mountains, the last level in the game, is seen like this, since all stops are very far apart, making it a poor level choice for those who want to earn the most money. That it has a difficult ramp through the Springfield Gorge is no help in its defense.
• That One Sidequest: "Not the Trees" is easily one of the hardest missions in the game. Your goal is to simply hit 24 cut logs (each pile has three logs), but the piles are spaced VERY far apart from each other, and you get barely enough time to finish the mission; one mistake can easily cause you to fail. Oh, and it takes place in the aforementioned Springfield Mountains. If you fail five times and skip to the next mission, nobody will blame you.

---