Stunt Driver

The Good
Released over twelve years ago, this game still has more features than most modern driving games. Stunt Driver wasn't the first simulation game of this kind released, but it was the first one that made me feel like I was actually driving, crashing, and jumping drawbridges at 120 mph!

The game started with a very nice looking opening picture, and some not-so-nice sounding music. The copy protection was based on looking up maps in the back of the manual. That was fairly unobtrusive compared to some of the other copy protection ideas at the time. The menus were also packed full of options.

Stunt Driver included a track editor in the course selection window, and was easy to use, allowing you to drop drawbridges, loops, banked turns and hills with ease.

The replay camera was the best from any game I had seen up to that point. It has many camera angles, including ones from custom cameras you can place with the track editor. You can also zoom in from any of the cameras.

The Artificial Intelligence was quite good, and the three opponents really seemed to act their part. The manual had descriptions of the different drivers and their personalities. Just like those personalities, you would notice the Camaro driver just rocketing recklessly down the straight-aways and then barely making it around the corners. The Porsche owner was great around the corners, but was kind of a jerk, always tailgating and drafting behind you, and cutting you off. The granny in her VW Bug just drove unbearably slow, and always seemed to lose the race unless everyone else had wrecked their cars.

The best part was the "semi-secret" configuration editor that was an undocumented feature. You could run a program called CFGED from the game directory, and you had access to change gravity, wheel grip, collision damage and quite a few other game options. You could also drive seven "hidden" cars and change their colors and tire grip.

The Bad
I remember I had to turn off the background (with the "Z" key) to speed it up on my ancient 386. The sound and music were never that good in it, and of course the DRIVING part of Stunt Driver was never all that realistic.

The Bottom Line
A must have for someone collecting old games. Stunt Driver didn't get a lot of publicity at the time (what game did?) but it took up many hours of my time. I think it was the first game to have this many features, and STILL has more features than almost any new driving game.