Future Publishing
1st August 1994
Edge suffers from a severe bout of nostalgia as yet another title from the distant videogames past succeeds in putting current offerings to shame...
Stunt Car Racer
Back in the late 1980s, when everyone was busy producing naff, flat-looking 'into the screen' Pole Position clones, programmer Geoff Crammond was busy putting the finishing touches to one of the most enjoyable 3D racing games ever conceived.
The idea behind Stunt Car Racer is simple: you have to drive your specially prepared stunt car around a series of tracks, competing against the other computer or human opponents to become champion stunt car racer. Simple.
So why is it so enjoyable? Well, to start with, the tracks themselves are a little unusual, to say the least. They're just about wide enough for two cars to go down side by side, they're constructed from polygons (the sole preserve of flight sims back then), and many of them wouldn't look out of place in a fairground boasting the world's biggest and scariest rollercoaster.
The only thing that keeps your car on these narrow, undulating tracks is skill. There are no barriers to stop you from plunging off to your doom, no banking to slide around, nothing; just a track with a sheer drop on either side. And in most cases this drop is considerable. Luckily, your car is incredibly resilient. It's not indestructible though - cracks appear around the windscreen to indicate how much damage you've sustained and how much more you can afford to take.
Unlike many of its contemporaries, Stunt Car Racer doesn't allow you to see your car on-screen - you're always stuck behind the windscreen. But this doesn't detract from the gameplay in the slightest: in fact, it enhances that all-important feeling of 'being there'. And that kind of immediacy is only just beginning to be incorporated into modern-day racers.
Stunt Car Racer bears out that predictable old whinge, "they don't make 'em like they used to". In fact, it's surprising that no-one has bothered converting Stunt Car Racer for 16-bit consoles; with today's in-cart technology, SNES and Mega Drive owners could have enjoyed one of the greatest racing games ever.
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