================================ The Simpsons Hit & Run Read Me ================================ Version 1.

0 October 15, 2003 This document provides useful information regarding The Simpsons Hit & RunTM. Please review it carefully. For further support, please visit our website at http://support.vugames.com. CONTENTS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Minimum System Requirements Recommended System Requirements Multiplayer Issues Troubleshooting Technical Support

1. Minimum System Requirements 100% DirectX compliant 3D video card with 32 MB VRAM Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP operating system Pentium III 700 MHz processor or equivalent 192 MB RAM 100% DirectX 8.1 or higher compatible sound card and drivers 4X Speed CD-ROM drive 100% Microsoft-compatible mouse and keyboard 2.2 GB of uncompressed hard disk space

2. Recommended System Requirements The recommended specification is exactly the same as the minimum specification with the following changes: 100% DirectX compliant 3D video card with 64 MB VRAM Pentium III 1 GHz processor or equivalent 256 MB RAM 100% Windows 98/ME/2000/XP-compatible 6 button, dual stick analog gamepad 3. Multiplayer Issues The Bonus Game in The Simpsons Hit & Run allows play for one to four players. If you have multiple gamepads or joysticks, they are assigned to each player in order. For example in a two player game, if a gamepad is plugged into DirectX or USB slot 3, and another gamepad is plugged into DirectX or USB slot 8 then the gamepad in slot 3 will be assigned to player 1, while the one in slot 8 is for player 2. Up to 2 players can use the keyboard in the Bonus Game. When using the keyboard, the keyboard will always be assigned to the highest player

number(s) not using a gamepad. So in a two player game, if one player is using a gamepad, then that will be assigned to player 1, while the keyboard will be assigned to player 2. In a four-player game, with two gamepads, players 3 & 4 will be assigned to opposite sides of the keyboard. As noted in the troubleshooting section, some keyboard hardware may experience problems with registering too many key presses at once. This may create issues when more than one player uses the keyboard. 4. Troubleshooting 1. If your game does not start, your video card may not be supported. Please check your video card against the list of supported video cards. The Simpsons Hit & Run has been tested on most, but not all of the major video cards incorporating the following chipsets: ATI Radeon ATI Radeon 7200 ATI Radeon 8500 ATI Radeon 9000 ATI Radeon 9700 NVidia GeForce 2 GTS NVidia GeForce 3/Ti series NVidia GeForce 4 MX NVidia GeForce 4 series The following graphics card chipsets are not supported by The Simpsons Hit & Run , or exhibit known problems: SiS730 SiS650 SiS315 Intel Extreme Graphics 845/865 ATI Radeon 7500 exhibits severe rendering artifacts with drivers dated prior to April, 2003 ATI Radeon 8500 exhibits minor rendering artifacts with drivers dated prior to April, 2003 Matrox Parhelia exhibits rendering artifacts on shadows with drivers that are not up-to-date ATI Radeon & All-In-Wonder 9000 & 9200 exhibits minor rendering artifacts You may also experience difficulties if your graphics chipset is integrated on the motherboard. If you are experiencing difficulties with your video card, please try upgrading to the latest drivers available for your card. 2. Do not connect or disconnect a USB device while the game is running.

3. Disc 1 of The Simpsons Hit & Run needs to be in your CD-ROM drive at all times while you are playing. Do not remove the disc from the

drive during the game. 4. If your car becomes stuck while playing the game, you can press the reset button to reposition your car on the nearest road. 5. If you experience problems with extremely slow installation of the game, or if you get unexpected errors during installation about the wrong volume being in your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, you may need to update the driver for your drive. Obtain and install the latest driver from your drive manufacturer and try again. 6. If The Simpsons Hit & Run crashes after you increase your video resolution, your video card may not support that resolution at your monitors current refresh rate. Under Windows 2000/XP, The Simpsons Hit & Run should be able to detect this situation and will attempt to warn you. However, under Windows 98/ME, The Simpsons Hit & Run is unable to determine your monitors current refresh rate. Lower your monitors refresh rate and try again. 7. Some video cards do not support adjusting the gamma setting when running in windowed mode. You may experience an inability to see the effects of setting this value when running in windowed mode. 8. In your video card configuration settings, ensure that your video card has 32 bit Z-Buffer enabled. Using a 16 bit or 24 bit Z Buffer setting can cause flickering artifacts in some areas of the game. 9. If you experience slow graphics performance, try using 16 bit color mode instead of 32 bit mode. 16 bit mode can run significantly faster when using older video cards. 10. If you hear bursts of static, you likely have the DirectX developer SDK installed and you are using the Debug version. You can remove the bursts of static by selecting the Retail version of DirectX: Click the Start Menu Click Programs - Microsoft DirectX SDK - Install DirectX RunTime - Install Retail DirectX Alternatively, if you are hearing static under Windows XP and have a SoundBlaster Live! Value 1024 Digital sound card, the problem is most likely related to your sound cards driver. Update your sound card Driver and try again. 11. The following sound cards are not supported by The Simpson Hit & Run , or exhibit known problems: Best Data Theatrix 12. If you are experiencing sound problems during game play, or the game becomes unstable (sound disappears, game drawing speed slows down severely, game crashes suddenly to desktop), the problem may be sound card related. The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, certain SoundMax Digital sound cards and the Audigy and Audigy 2 cards are known to make the game unstable if hardware acceleration is turned on. If you have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card, or are experiencing sound problems

or unexplained crashing of any kind, disable hardware acceleration: Click on Start->Run.... Type "dxdiag" and press Enter. Observe the application while it loads, wait until the progress bar completes. Click on the Sound tab. Under the "DirectX Features" frame, locate the "Hardware Sound Acceleration Level" slider Slide it all the way to the left until it reads "No acceleration". Click Exit, re-run the game. Alternatively, if the above does not help, and you are still experiencing sound problems, try the following: Double-click on the My Computer icon on your desktop, or rightclick on the icon and choose the Open option. Double-click on the Control Panel icon. Find the Sounds and Multimedia icon and double-click on it. On the Audio tab, click on the Advanced Properties button under Playback. Select Basic or No Hardware acceleration from the Performance tab. Click on OK. Restart the game. 13. If you perform a minimum install and then experience problems with skipping audio, it may be due to inadequate performance from your CDROM or DVD-ROM drive. Try performing a full install to alleviate this problem. 14. Keyboard beeping. Many PC keyboards limit the number of simultaneous button presses to 3. If your keyboard exhibits this problem, you may hear a beeping noise from the computers speaker or some keys will appear to have no effect. This limit sometimes only applies to keys close to each other on the keyboard. To improve the situation, try changing your keyboard mapping to move game keys further apart. 15. If you have an InterAct SV-233 PC Gamepad, you must turn off the auto feature. Use of the auto feature causes incorrect control behavior in The Simpsons Hit & Run . 16. If you are using a wireless gamepad, removing the batteries during game play may cause the camera controls to become stuck. Exit the game prior to changing the gamepad batteries. 17. If you have 2 CD-ROM drives and are attempting to run the game with the CD in the second CD-ROM drive, but it will not start from the Autoplay application, please start the game from the Start Menu shortcut. 18. If you are running Windows 98 or Windows ME and movie playback is choppy or slow, try the following: Open the Control Panel Double click "System" to open the System Properties dialog

Open the "Performance" Tab Click on the "Virtual Memory..." button Make sure "Let me specify my own settings" is checked, and set "Minimum" and "Maximum" to the same value (512 MB is reasonable) Click OK Click OK Click OK to reboot

19. When playing with the keyboard, if pressing a key results in the key appearing to be stuck, for example, pressing A and releasing results in the character always moving left, try pressing the key in question again. 20. If you are running Windows ME, and the game stops responding to button presses on your gamepad, please exit the game, unplug and replug your gamepad into its port, and restart the game. 21. If you are running Windows 2000 or XP, and if you have only Limited User privileges, you will have to have your system administrator install/uninstall the game for you. You also will not be able to save games. 22. If you are running antivirus software while playing The Simpsons Hit & Run , you may experience stability problems. It is recommended that you close all other applications and disable any antivirus software prior to running the game. 23. If you are running Microsoft Windows with StickyKeys enabled and you use keys such as Shift, Ctrl or Alt to control the game, you may inadvertently trigger StickyKeys. Either disable StickyKeys in your Windows settings, or use another key for game play. 24. If your computer goes into standby mode while playing the game, you may experience instability when the computer comes out of standby mode. If you are going to be leaving the computer idle for long periods, either exit The Simpsons Hit & Run first, or disable standby mode in your Microsoft Windows settings. 25. you not the While installing the game on Windows XP, the dialog box allowing to enter an explicit install path may lose focus, causing you to be able to type in the path. To rectify this, simply re-click on dialog in question and re-type the path.

26. When playing the game on Windows XP, if you are using the Windows XP Style desktop setting, you may be able to click in the corner of the game window and return to the desktop, due to the rounded window corners. Use care when clicking near the extreme corners of the window, or change your desktop style to not use windows with rounded corners. 5. Technical Support Technical Support

Internet: http://support.vugames.com Phone: (310) 649-8030 Fax: (310) 258-0755 8 a.m. 4:45 p.m. PST, Monday - Friday Customer Service Phone: (310) 649-8031 Fax: (310) 258-0744 8 a.m. 4:30 p.m. PST, Monday Friday Mail Vivendi Universal Games 4247 South Minnewawa Avenue Fresno, California 93725 If you decide to telephone our Customer Services, please try to be sitting in front of your computer and have a pen and paper at the ready. Before contacting us, please try to have the following information ready so that we may help you more efficiently: The name of the product. The make and model of your computer. The processor and its speed. Any peripherals attached to the computer. The graphics card, driver date and version. The sound card, driver date and version. The version of Windows you are using. Total memory installed. The exact error message (if any). The version of DirectX installed. The type of CD-ROM drive. The total system resources free before running the program. The name of any programs running in the background. If you decide to email our Customer Services, to ensure a prompt reply please summarize your issues as concisely as you can, giving details, as above, of the product, the problem or error and any circumstances that you feel relevant and your particular computer system.