Stunts

The late 80s and early 90s were filled with "true 3D" polygon-based first-person driving games. There was Hard Drivin' in the arcade by Atari, Geoff Crammond released Stunt Car Racer, Spectrum Holobyte published Stunt Driver, to name a few. But the one game that proved to capture the hearts of many and remains being played competitively to this very day is 1990's Stunts (aka 4D Sports Driving), developed by Distinctive Software ("DSi"), famous for making such games as Test Drive as well as Grand Prix Circuit, which we covered in episode 2 of this podcast.

We dove deep into the world of Stunts to see what sets it apart from the competition and why it still has an active following to this very day. That's why we're excited that hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") are not only joined by DGC club members Rob ("Spoonboy") and newcomer Shawn ("DJ_HiP"), but also by two members of the Stunts forum over at stunts.hu. Lucas ("Cas") is the organiser of the Race For Kicks competition and has developed several tools and utilities for the game. Mark ("KyLiE") keeps a detailed list of custom cars on his website, has worked on custom cars of his own and helps out with hosting several Stunts projects. They're both keen racers and have been active in the Stunts community for years.

Enjoy!

[ download mp3 ] (184 mins, 211 MB)

We got help from DGC member console, who edited the majority of this episode. Many thanks to him and all who make this show possible!

RELEVANT LINKS:

* DGC Stunts Leaderboard

* Our Mastodon racing games poll which was won by Stunts

* Marco Plays DOS Games is a great YouTube channel on which, well, Marco plays DOS games. He took our leaderboard by storm, dedicating several streams to it!

* stunts.hu acts as a Stunts community portal site, with links to many subsites and projects.

* stunts.kalpen.de is a very old Stunts fansite that's still online

* The forum at stunts.hu is one of the central places where the Stunts community gathers to discuss things.

* The wiki at stunts.hu is one of the central places where the Stunts community documents their knowledge and history.

* Some years ago members of the Stunts community managed to get a hold of Kevin Pickell, the main programmer of Stunts, for an interview: wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/Kevin_Pickell

* Mark's Stunts Custom Cars is one of the best curated lists of Stunts custom cars on the web.

* The Stunts Retro Game YouTube channel is host to the Stunts Driving Academy series, among other things.

* thread on our forums in which members have gathered articles and reviews

* DGC episode 2 on Grand Prix Circuit about another game developed by DSi

* twitch.tv/martijnf where host Martijn tries to stream DOS Game Club games about once a week, some of which are archived on YouTube.


13 Sep 2023

3 Replies to “Stunts”

jeffrey says:

Great episode! It was jarring to hear my own name be asked to come back and participate, but I definitely was inspired to come back and join the fun. 😛

Tijn says:

Welcome back, jeffrey! Happy to see you’re still around 🙂

Rogue says:

Thanks for the memories! Relatively new listener and at first I thought I only knew a couple of games, but when you discuss classics like this it all comes flooding back! Thanks guys!
P.s. Another Aussie here haha!

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