The studio responsible for The Simpsons: Hit & Run and Prototype, Radical Entertainment, appears to be back under a new name: New Radical Games.
An amalgamation of “Radical Entertainment plus Hothead Games,” the studio’s new website says, “it all started with Radical Entertainment back in 1991. Fast forward to 2025 and we have amassed invaluable experience along the way. We know how to capture the essence of world-class intellectual properties, and deliver licensed games that delight fans everywhere.”
Vancouver-based Radical was bought by Activision in 2008, and was shuttered little more than five years later after living out its final years as a Destiny support studio. Hothead — also based in Vancouver — went bankrupt in 2024. The new studio is led by CEO Ian Wilkinson, who co-founded Radical, and COO Tim Bennison, who served as chief operating officer at Capcom’s Vancouver studio and had previously worked at Radical, too, as executive producer and VP technology.
News of the new studio from the people who brought us games like Prototype, Scarface: The World Is Yours, and The Simpsons: Hit & Run has clearly excited fans, with many now crossing their fingers that the new outfit could be set on bringing those dormant IPs back to life.
“I LITERALLY JUST TALKED ABOUT THIS IN A THREAD ABOUT WHAT DEV STUDIOS WE WOULD REVIVE IF WE WERE RICH A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO!! HOLY S***!! I WILLED THIS INTO EXISTENCE!! I’M A GOD!!” exclaimed one very excitable fan.
“A few months ago, rumors started going around about a Prototype remaster. Today, Radical games has seemingly relaunched and their website prominently displays their older titles including Prototype and Simpsons Hit & Run,” teased another.
Late last year, IGN reported that fans thought they’d uncovered proof that 2009 action game Prototype could be getting a new lease of life. While the game has mostly remained dormant on Steam since its release 16 years ago, eagle-eyed fans spotted a flurry of updates behind the scenes via SteamDB, as well as a revealing datamine effort that has discovered a mysterious change to the game’s credits that adds in remaster studio, Iron Galaxy, and a curious reference to Ubisoft Connect.
That’s not all, though. “So one of the OG modders for the game data mined the recent update and has found a lot of interesting things,” a fan explained on the game’s subreddit. “For Prototype 1, they have added some test maps and quite a few new names in the credits. There might be some hope for a remaster after all.”
This isn’t, of course, evidence that a remaster is actually happening — right now, we’re purely going on vibes and crossed fingers — but New Radical must have been established to work on something, so keep those fingers crossed!
Calls for an official Simpsons: Hit and Run remake have similarly cropped up from time to time in the 20+ years since the original’s release, but it seems an unlikely project. In 2021 we spoke to Simpsons writer Matt Selman who said that while he “would love to see a remastered version of [Simpsons Hit & Run]“, it would be “a complicated corporate octopus to try to make that happen.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
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