Matt Groening Teases The Simpsons Hit and Run Return at D23, New Radical Games Hype Stacking Behind It

Matt Groening just did the closest thing the cult 2003 Simpsons game The Simpsons Hit and Run has had to a confirmation in over two decades. On stage at the D23 Stories from Springfield panel over the weekend, the show's creator was asked whether a sequel or return to the GTA-style spin-off was on the cards, and he answered plainly: I do not know if I am speaking out of turn, I think the original game is coming back in some form. Current showrunner Matt Selman immediately jumped in with the kind of half-arsed corporate backpedal you only get when something real just slipped, and said ...or not. That is the kind of on-stage verbal fumble that ends up being a press release, and it is the most interesting Simpsons gaming news to hit since The Simpsons: Tapped Out launched a mobile gacha empire more than a decade ago.

What Groening Actually Said, and Why It Matters

The exchange itself is short and almost throwaway, and that is exactly why people are reading it as meaningful. Groening was on a panel celebrating the show's 800th episode alongside Selman, who was a writer on the original Hit and Run back in 2003. The fan question that prompted the answer was a simple whether there is a sequel on the way, and the creator of the entire Simpsons universe answered with a hedge that still implied an active project. Coming from a man who has spent the last thirty-plus years guarding what is essentially the family business of The Simpsons, throwing out I think the original game is coming back in some form in front of a room of press cameras and D23 fans is not a slip you make on a lark. Selman's immediate ...or not reads less like a real correction and more like a producer trying to walk back a comment he was not cleared to confirm on stage. It is a classic on-stage reveal pattern, and the fact that the comment then sat for the rest of the panel without any further clarification tells you it landed exactly the way it was meant to.

New Radical Games Is Already Hinting at the Same Thing

Groening is not the only one pointing at this. Earlier this year, the studio that made the original 2003 game, Radical Entertainment, quietly rebranded as New Radical Games, and the new outfit lists a very specific specialty on its site: remastering classic titles. The company was the one studio that ever built an open-world Simpsons game that fans actually liked, after the Eidos and Vivendi contracts ran out, and Hit and Run appears prominently on the new studio's promo material. That is not a coincidence. New Radical is staffed by many of the same developers who built the original game under the Vivendi Universal Games umbrella, and if any modern outfit has the tooling, the source code knowledge, and the will to bring the title back, it is them. The brand-new identity lets them pitch publishers and platform holders without dragging the baggage of the old Vivendi-era contracts that complicated every Hit and Run remaster rumour for the last decade.

What We Know About the Original Sequel That Never Was

There is precedent for a sequel that almost happened. Producer John Melchior confirmed in 2023 that Radical had actually started work on Hit and Run 2, alongside a separate medieval-themed Simpsons game pitched by Groening himself, before publisher Vivendi walked away from a five-game Simpsons deal. Vivendi never told the team why, and the project was shelved, but the design work, the gameplay loops, and a lot of the engine plumbing already existed before the plug was pulled. That is the most useful piece of background for anyone trying to guess what a 2026 or 2027 Hit and Run revival would look like: the bones of a sequel are not starting from zero, and the people who would build it already know what they were planning to ship. If the Groening slip is genuine, expect the eventual reveal to lean heavily on that 2003-2007 prototype work and the New Radical Games team that has been quietly maintaining the tooling for two decades.

Community Reaction Is Loud, Mixed, and Earnest

Hit and Run has one of the most stubborn fanbases in gaming, and they have not been shy this week. Within an hour of the D23 clip landing, Spanish outlets 3DJuegos and Xataka Esports were running headlines calling it the best game in the franchise's history, fans were posting clips of themselves playing the 2003 version to mark the moment, and several long-running fan-remake projects openly asked whether the official return would finally acknowledge or hire any of the volunteer teams that have spent years reconstructing the game in their spare time. The reaction is mostly positive and a little bit incredulous. There is also a defensive, slightly nervous undercurrent from people who saw what happened with the recent Kingdom Hearts mobile cash-grab, the Simpsons mobile gacha era, and the long graveyard of Simpsons licensed games that have made a mint without ever matching the original's design quality. The community wants this to be a real, full, single-player-or-coop game, not a live-service skinner box.

CriticalPixel Take: This One Actually Has Legs

Most of the D23 gaming teases that surface every two years are exactly that: teases. They get two weeks of cycle coverage and disappear when the next wave of press cycles hits. This one is different because the timing is structurally right for once. Disney wants to monetise the Simpsons IP outside the show more aggressively, Groening is publicly comfortable talking about games again, the original studio is back in business under a new name, and the fanbase has spent twenty-plus years loudly saying they will show up for a real return. We are not going to predict a release date, because the last time anyone tried that with a Simpsons game, Vivendi said no and that was the end of it. But the conditions for a real Hit and Run revival are better right now than they have been at any point since 2003, and Groening's verbal slip on a D23 stage is the clearest signal yet that something is actually moving behind the curtain. If New Radical Games confirms a remaster in the next six months, expect it to land on every modern platform, expect a Switch 2 build, and expect a price that the publisher will have to justify against a game that originally shipped for thirty-nine ninety-nine in 2003 dollars.

What Comes Next

Watch the D23 follow-up cycle closely. Selman, the showrunner, has hinted before that nothing is set in stone but also that he knows the fan love for Hit and Run is real and persistent. If Disney or the Simpsons team were going to do a clean walk-back, they would have done it within forty-eight hours of the panel. They have not, and that silence, combined with the New Radical Games rebrand and the original dev team's tooling being maintained for two decades, is the closest thing to a quiet confirmation the gaming side of The Simpsons has ever had. We will keep tracking the story and update if and when anything official lands. For now, file this one under the highest-confidence rumours of the year, and start clearing your September 2027 calendar, because the most likely reveal window for whatever this turns out to be is the next big Disney gaming event.