The Simpsons: Beyond Bartholomew is a cancelled Hit & Run sequel that was initially being developed by Radical Entertainment and was set to be published by Vivendi Universal Games, for Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows.
It was speculated that the game was set during the events of Hit & Run while Bart was in the UFO. Bart would've been the character to spearhead the first level of the game and would do things such as find other people who were captured and attempt to free them or search the UFO for any clues.
The game was announced to be in development in December 2004, over a year after the release of Hit & Run. An early version of the game was available to play at E3 2006, before the game was cancelled in mid-2007, following the release of The Simpsons Movie. Just two years later, a new Simpsons game was released that wasn't related to Hit & Run in almost any way.
Development[]
The game started development in the summer of 2004 following the success of The Simpsons: Hit & Run and was being worked on under the title of Beyond until being officially announced in December as The Simpsons: Beyond Bartholomew. The final title of the game wasn't decided, however.
Development went smoothly from May 2004 to May 2006, even receiving a November 2008 release date. But after production was halted in 2006 for nearly seven months due to unknown reasons, the game went through several behind-the-scenes changes, such as new modelers being hired after the previous ones ended up getting scrapped. Development went on for the next seven months rather shakily, however. This led to the game eventually being cancelled in July of 2007.
E3 Demo Reception[]
It was revealed in 2016 that the reception to the E3 demo was mostly negative, with some people comparing it to the universally panned game, The Simpsons Skateboarding. This explains why production was halted in May 2006, after E3 2006. The game needed to be salvaged.
According to some of the employees working at Radical at the time, Radical was trying to make the game feel like the first game and with the negative reception of the E3 demo, it was decided that the game would no longer center on Bart and would instead focus on other characters such as Flanders, Moe, Snake, Grandpa and possibly Maggie. It would've taken place the same time as Hit & Run.
Second Attempt Development[]
By the time 2007 began, development on the new version of game, rumored to be simply titled Hit & Run 2, was underway. It was expected that, since most areas and models from the first game would be recreated and no new areas needed to be designed, the game would still be released sometime in 2008.