Radical Entertainment’s 2003 game turns Springfield into an open world you cross on foot and by car, voiced by the cast of the show. Over seven levels you play as Homer, Bart, Lisa, Marge and Apu while robotic wasp cameras turn up all over town, and the trail leads to Kang and Kodos. If you own the GameCube version, Nagori lets you play it on iPhone and iPad.
What you need
- An iPhone 12 or newer, or an iPad with an A14 chip or newer, with iOS 17.6 or later.
- Nagori from the App Store. Your first game is free.
- A disc image of your copy of the GameCube version:
.iso,.gcm,.rvz,.cisoor.gcz, or a.zipor.rarcontaining it. The game fits on a single disc.
No BIOS file is needed.
How to play The Simpsons: Hit & Run on iPhone
- Install Nagori from the App Store.
- Copy your Hit & Run disc image to the Files app, in iCloud Drive or On My iPhone.
- Open Nagori, tap + and select the file. Add GameCube games from inside Nagori: the Files app’s Open in menu doesn’t hand formats like
.rvzand.gcmto Nagori. Nagori copies the game into its own storage, so you can delete the original file afterwards. - Find Hit & Run on the GameCube shelf and press Play.
- Switch to a layout with two sticks. The default Standard layout has no stick. Pause, open Settings → Touch Layout and choose Twin Sticks or DualShock: both add a right stick for the camera. With a controller connected, you can skip this step.
Controls: on foot and behind the wheel
Hit & Run switches between walking and driving all the time, and the control stick does both jobs: it moves your character on foot and steers once you’re in a car. The camera is on the C-stick, which Nagori puts on the right stick.
On touch, your left thumb stays on the stick for whole drives across town. Open Edit Layout in the pause menu, make the stick bigger and move it to where your thumb rests.
A controller makes steering through traffic much easier. Bluetooth controllers that iOS supports, including DualSense, DualShock 4 and Xbox controllers, work with Nagori. A is the bottom face button, B the left one, X the right one and Y the top one. Z is on the right shoulder button, and L and R are the triggers, which register as full presses in Nagori. Press the left stick to open Nagori’s pause menu.
Timed missions and the Hit & Run meter
Many story missions run against a clock: reach a place in time, beat another character in a race, or chase down a car and wreck it before it gets away. Meanwhile, every crash into cars, people and property fills the Hit & Run meter. Fill it and the police come after you, and getting caught costs you coins you’d rather spend on cars and outfits.
Save states help with both. Pause and choose Save before a mission that keeps beating you, then Load to start again from that moment, or to undo a run-in with the police. Nagori keeps your last four saves per game.
Saves
Hit & Run keeps your progress on the memory card, and that card works in Nagori as it did on the console. It stays inside the app, though: it isn’t in the Files app, isn’t part of Export Saves and doesn’t sync to iCloud.
If you leave the app in the middle of a mission, Continue puts you back exactly where you were. Keep the game’s own saves going as well: a save state may not load after some Nagori updates, while the memory card save stays.
Best settings
Go to Settings → Quality in the pause menu. Medium, the default, is the place to start. Low keeps the device coolest, at a lower frame rate, and High gives the smoothest motion on the newest iPhones and iPads. Collecting every card and gag in Springfield takes long sessions, so drop to Low if your device warms up. Nagori shows GameCube games at their original resolution, and Full Screen stretches the picture to fill the display. The controller doesn’t rumble in GameCube games.
