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Stunts Spawns A Spiritual Successor
Siliron writes "Back in the heyday of DOS gaming, there was one game that had more of a BBS addons-trading scene than any other, and that was Stunts. Now a German developer, Moon Byte, has decided to update the game in full 3D glory. Check it out at the official Crashday site." The new game, which is still in development, seems to be influenced by the original Crash (which was called 4D Sports Driving outside the US) in its custom track creation and stunt-making capabilities.
Stunts was probably one of the few racing games I ever enjoyed; going fast around a set track repeatedly isn't very exciting, but flying off a ramp, getting 100ft of air and then flipping repeatedly till you slam into the ground, that is fun. Between the different cars, and the ability to create your own tracks, Stunts took a simple game model and made it into something that you could play over and over, different everytime. Though the graphics were nothing special, racing in Stunts still supercedes many of todays uninspired racing games.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
You can download Stunts at:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=2162
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Back in my dorm in the early 90s, when a few of us had such blazing machines as a 386-25 and a 486-66, we played the hell out of Stunts. We had two primary modes of play. One, we had built a special speed track that let you exploit a bit of a bug that would max out your speed at some ridiculous, otherwise unattainable value (the exploit had something to do with catching some air and tapping your brakes, or somesuch), and then scream around the track. We took turns shaving hundredths of a second off each others times. Two, we built tracks that facilitated getting the most ridiculous crash animations. Max out your speed as above, and run up a ramp with a couple of wheels off the track, and watch the 2 minute, car flying 2 miles into the air crash animation ensue. :-)
JRjr
You can download the game here.
The site has 3 different versions with special features.
From the website:
"The game is FREEWARE as we checked with the former distributors BRODERBUND and MINDSCAPE, who do not have any copies of the game left. Thus you may download three different versions of the game from our site."
More information, screenshots and a player how-to is here.
Adi Gadwale.
There's an interview with one of the Moonbyte guys available. Also referring to Stunts.
I hope they do the crashes is a realistic fashion in this game. I can't count the number of PC and console racers that talk about their realistic damage engine, only to end up being really lame when I play them. Yes it's cool to see my car get bashed up, but I don't want predefinded levels of 'crashed.' Most games now seem to use the method of 'point x on the car has been hit, load pre determined damage model to point x'
I want crashes that are different everytime, and if the game claims to have 'realistic damange' end the race if I had a wall head on going 100+ miles an hour. I find few aspects of racing games quite so lame as the whole "I hit a solid wall at speeds that would surely kill me, and all it did was stop by car and load a pre loaded 'my hood is slightly messed up' model" problem.
I've been wanting to see something like this for a long time, honestly I'm suprised it has taken as long as it has. Stunts had some amazing gameplay, back in a day when successful games depended a lot more on gameplay than graphics.
One major disappointment with a lot of the modern day racers is the lack of expandability. Take Need for Speed as an example. It's always had good graphics and gameplay. But they never provide any expansion packs, or ways to add more card or tracks. They are much more interested in just pumping out another sequel. I've seen where people have come up with their own tracks for it, but basically you have to hack up the game to do it, its certainly not a built-in feature of the game.
So what this means is that typically you get about a dozen tracks or so, then you get a couple of variants for each track, usually by driving it in reverse, and thats it. By the time you end up beating the career mode, or whatever the main objective is, you are sick of driving the same tracks and promptly quit.
This always struck me as such a stark contrast to a lot of the first person shooters out there that strive to make themselves as moddable as possible. You can even find driving games coming out of FPS engines.
But unfortunately for racing games, you really don't see the same kind of innovation. Instead there seems to be more of a focus on putting out yearly updates like other sports titles where you rarely see any great gameplay improvements, but usually just a few graphical ones.
Sadly, I guess that is the point. Software companies would much rather sell yearly sequels as opposed to making a moddable game that could provide years of playability like Half-Life.