Before he began to make "serious" racing sims like Formula 1 Grand Prix, Geoff Crammond created this Amiga classic. It is set in a fictional (or let's say I hope it is fictional) Stunt Car league. There are four divisions and the player of course starts in the fourth. In each division there are two courses on which all three drivers (of the division) have to race against each other in head-to-head duels. Points are awarded for the best lap and the winner. At the end of the season, the best driver of each division gets to the higher division, while the last one is relegated.

The special aspect of the game are the courses. You don't drive on an ordinary road on the ground but on a track built some feet to many metres above the ground! If you're not careful, you'll just fall down. In this case, a kind of crane will put you back on the track, but you've lost worthy time of course then. And your car is of course not unbreakable! Too much damage will simply destroy it. There's a "bar" on the top of the screen which indicates how much damage you've already taken. If the crack spans the whole width, you're wrecked and have lost.
The courses are overall well designed, with many curves, hills and jumps. Sometimes, they're not even static, but move around a bit. When e.g. a draw bridge is just about to go up, you'd better slow down or otherwise you'll crash right into it...
There are many options that will keep you playing a very long time! Single players can try to win the championship, but even if they win in the first division, there's still the "Super League". The save funtion makes is much more comfortable because it's not necessary to start all over again everytime. Then there's the option to link two computers to race against each other. Great idea, although I doubt it'll work with an emulator - too bad!
Stunt Car Racer is simply quick fun. The seasons and races don't take hours to complete, everything's always moving. Just the way I like it!

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The same game has also been reviewed for one or more other systems. Please be aware that the versions the following reviews are based on might be vastly different from the one talked about in the previous reviews and shown on the screenshots.

To be sincere, I was planning something else for this review. I was convinced I had the geOS disks in my C64 ROMs collection, but I couldn't find it (it gets harder and harder with a 2000+ disk collection).
Err...I...found it :) and it was, as I assumed, broke. Instead, I found something more interesting - one of Geoff Crammond's first games: Stunt Car Racing.
You might have heard about this. In fact, I played it on the PC a little bit, but since I didn't have a PC at the time, my stunt adventure took place on the Commodore machine. And I liked it!
In fact, you can't fail to like Stunt Car Racer. If you don't know the idea, here it goes. You are dropped on a race track, with one opponent near you. There are no walls - if you go past the margins: bye-bye! But that's not the only thing. What makes the game so darn interesting is the fact that the cars have a dazzling speed, and, besides that, the tracks have dazzling jumps. It reminds me of the hop-scotch...
Speaking of hop-scotch, you will find the graphics quite poor in terms of racetrack detail, but the in-car view is decent. In fact, it's well ahead of its times.
And not only is the car-view ahead of its times. The game is well ahead, too. There are racing seasons, and they are organized in four divisions. The fourth is the easiest, and you start off there. As you improve, the difficulty of the tracks grows, and so does the strength of your opponent.
There is also a design idea which I haven't really found in other games; while the cars are similar, there is one thing that makes the players different: the way they use turbos. Turbos are unlimited, but it makes your car less controlable and this means that you have to be careful.
What makes this game even more playable and long-lasting is the multiplayer option. It is, indeed, impressive how a game that appeared in the C64 era has graphics that look even better than PC games which appeared some time after it. There's only one problem with it: the tracks are huge for its time, and this means that Stunt... is pretty slow, and the sensation of speed is quite inexistant. Still, the jumps have a lot of spectacle and the sensation of competition is well in it; play!

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