Classic Racer

[Ganelon]

#7404

I had a blast playing Stunts in the early 90s where it ran comfortably on a 386. The goofy opponents were a blast, and even more so in 4D Driving for the FM Towns, which uses live action video acting.

The track editor was very intuitive and added insane replayability with friends. It’s actually possible to create a custom track so long that while you can technically reach the finish line, the game interprets the race as a DNF. This glitch was present in version 1.0; not certain if it was fixed in 1.1.

In retrospect, Distinctive/Broderbund’s loop de loop racer isn’t very innovative coming off the heels of Atari’s Hard Drivin’ and Sphere/Spectrum Holobyte’s Stunt Driver. However, Stunts’s visuals, music, controls, vehicles, and track editor really stood out compared to its predecessors.

Fun fact: Distinctive Software, the developer behind Stunts and Test Drive I & II, was co-founded by Don Mattrick, who later led Xbox.

[rappscal]

#7414

I put so many hours into this game as a kid. Both building and playing my own maps, and playing other people’s maps. Our game had scores of pre-made custom maps. I was never sure if they were added by the developers or if it was accumulated as people copied the software around.

[jeronimorivero]

#7420

A great game at that time, the record option was an excellent addition… sometimes game physics went crazy and the car began to make weird movements like fly away really up in the sky after colliding against objects at high speed. The car interiors in this game are really neat even today.

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[jeffrey]

#7444

This was a game that I played for hours and hours as a kid, my friend had a pirated copy with a printed out list of answers from the manual that he got from a friend with a printer. Like others have mentioned, it ran super well on at what the time I thought wasn’t very advanced hardware.

One thing that I forgot about but then was promptly brought back to when playing was the car interiors – this was an early version of the absolute joy that I got out of games like Need for Speed and eventually sims like Gran Turismo and the Forza series – I got to see the inside of what I would consider super cars.

Games like Stunts and other early racing games like this sparked an excitement for cars and driving that carries on today – I was surprised to find that the game holds up so well even in DOSbox still, I enjoy playing it in spite of its mushy controls – and the framerate is actually pretty reasonable.

Fast forward to flashing back to the mid 2010s when my friend had purchased my favourite car from the game, the Lancia Delta HF Integrale and I got to confirm the 90s digital version was very similar.

If you couldn’t tell this was one of my suggestions when I first heard DOS Game Club! Maybe it’s time I recorded something and sent it to the club.

[Cas]

#7450

Cheers, guys! I’m new here 🙂

So, Stunts is one of the first games I obtained when I had my first 386. I agree that it already played very smoothly on it. A friend of mine had it on his 286 and it was playable, but kind of uncomfortable there.

It’s always been a favourite to me, mostly because you could make your own tracks and crash in fantastic ways and then record it and replay it and show that to your friends. For racing, at a time when having more than one computer in the same room was a luxury, having scoreboards for each track was inviting to hot seating and endless afternoons trying to get to the top.

No sooner had the internet become an omnipresent thing than someone came up with the idea of taking it to the next level and exploiting the replay saving capabilities to actually compete online with people around the world. You won’t find many DOS games, especially from so early, that are still so alive today!