I received Stunt Island as either a birthday or Christmas present in (I think) 1993 when I was 12. I had seen it reviewed in PC Format magazine and was immediately fascinated by it.
I remember falling in love with the gorgeous box art, and then stunned at the size of the enormous manual! It was a proper book. And it quickly became clear why it was so large given the ambition and complexity of the game. It’s a surprisingly detailed guide on using a visual form of a programming language to get the game objects to behave and react as you want. Plus a film editing suite!
My sister and I would spend hours creating our own little stunt films. Often I would like to recreate moments from my favourite movies of the time, like a man jumping off a bus just before it’s hit by a train (The Fugitive), an aqueduct motorbike chase (Terminator 2) or a helicopter crashing on top of a skyscraper (Die Hard). I particularly enjoyed searching for the best location on the island to set these up, then adding objects and scenery to make my “film sets”.
This stuff was not easy to figure out but I somehow got most of these working to some extent. And I think I still have a couple of 3.5″ floppy disks that we filled up with our stunt films (and no way to currently read them!).
It’s a shame that the game’s planned expansion packs never released and that the game faded into near obscurity, although I was delighted to discover that it still has an active fan community making things with it.
Is there any other game like this?
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