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Title Stunt Car Racer
Game Type Driving
Players 1 or 2 via Serial
Submission mparsons@mcb.net

Review
Stunt Car Racer is old. And it shows, especially in this age of
millions of texture mapped polygons being hurled around a real-time
rendered track.
Unlike many more recent games of this genre, however, Stunt Car Racer
is *still* remarkably playable.

The objective of this game is to race hell-for-leather around a race
track, and complete the course faster than your opponent. Points can
be scored for winning and achieving the best lap time. No points for
running spectators over (there are none) or shooting your opponent to
bits (hey! This game is supposed to be realistic :P)

If you haven't got any friends, then your only choices are to
practise driving around the courses (a *very* good idea...), or join
in the leagues against loads of computer drivers, some of whom are
quite good. And nasty ;) This is pretty good fun for a while, until
you get to one of the really tricky levels. There's *still* one track
that I can't do ;(

If you have a friend, and each of you has a similar Amiga (e.g. both
A1200's) then this game really shines. Link the two computers with a
null-modem cable (only cost a couple of quid, or you can DIY), and
race head-to-head (bumper-to-bumper?) against each other around
insane, twisting, bumpy, scary stunt tracks.

There are no rules - no black flag for unfair driving, and no warnings
of impending dangers ;)
All you do is drive around the course, possibly slowing a little for
the corners (otherwise you'll fall off the edge) and turbo-boosting up
the hills. Hills? Yup! The courses are most definitely designed with
all three dimensions planned for, although those with a weak
heart/stomach may not appreciate it!. Seeing the ground fall away
beneath you, and then accelerate towards you is truly horrifying ;)

As you may expect, treating your car (???) in this manner won't do it
much good. Each time you crash, either zooming off the edge, or taking
a dive from a great height, or jumping a gap incorrectly, and hitting
the opposite wall, a crack appears above the windscreen to the left,
and spreads to the right. When this reaches the right hand side of
the screen, your vehicle is a wreck, and the race is over! Be careful!

VERDICT:

If you have two Amigas, and someone else to lose friendships with,
then this game is a fantastic idea, especially since it can be picked
up for about a fiver! Splendid!

Motto's of this game : 1) Don't judge a book by it's cover.
2) Shunt your opponent off ASAP ;)

The Making of Stunt Car Racer
=============================
Format: Commodore 64
Release: 1989
Publisher: Microprose
Developer: Geoff Crammond

Although never one for self-aggrandisement, Geoff Crammond is one of the few veterans of the early days of home videogaming whose moniker continued to sell product long after the turn of the millenium. His work on well-loved titles for the venerable BBC Micro Computer quickly ensured that journalists and, more crucially, gamers came to see his name as a badge of quality, while work on the Grand Prix franchise in the ’90s sealed his reputation, alongside the likes of John Carmack and Sid Meier, as one of the industry’s elite.

Crammond’s calling card is undoubtedly his ability to simulate the nuances of real-world systems, something that can be traced back to his professional work prior to entering the videogame industry. “With a degree in physics, I was working in industry, where I wrote programs which did mathematical modelling of physical processes,” he reveals. “I also did algorithm development and came into contact with realtime simulation work, programming in Fortran and C.”

Then came the UK’s first home computer boom of the early-’80s, with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore VIC-20 and Acorn BBC Micro Computer leading the charge. Crammond chose to dip his toes in the water with Acorn’s platform, writing his own interpretation of Space Invaders as a way of learning the machine’s 6502-based assembly language.

His next two efforts were flight simulation Aviator and racing simulation Revs, both published by Acornsoft. The latter game proved particularly challenging, with the unforgiving learning curve leaving some players unable to complete a single lap without incident. The game did, however, reward the more patient gamer with a racing experience uncharacteristically realistic in comparison to other half-baked simulations of the day.

His next move was to switch development to the Commodore 64, the newly introduced successor to the VIC-20. The C64 was another 6502-based machine, but although the architecture of Acorn’s BBC-brand machines made vector-style 3D relatively accessible, the graphics chip in Commodore’s computer instead favoured 2D effects through hardware sprite support (then rarely seen on a home computer). Nevertheless, Crammond stuck with solid-shaded 3D for his next project The Sentinel, a foray into strategy gaming, before resuming his experiments with real-world simulation in the game that would literally push the 3D racing genre to new heights.



While those halcyon days of gaming are typified by lone programmers crafting masterpieces in their bedrooms, the reality was rather more mundane and originality was a surprisingly scarce commodity. Many programmers simply looked to the charts for inspiration, or at least the technologically superior fare of the arcades, rather than letting the design grow naturally through experiments with visual styles, control systems or environmental choices.

“Stunt Car Racer was definitely a good example of a game evolving over several months,” says Crammond. Needless to say, the starting point was another of Crammond’s dynamic vehicle simulations, this time dropped in a more abstract 3D environment than the formulaic 3D tracks depicted in Revs: “I had started with a sort of roving vehicle on a rough random terrain, thinking the system might become a tank shoot ’em up-type game. One day I was driving this vehicle over the landscape bouncing around and came across a bit of the random surface which formed a small ramp. I drove up it and launched into the air. I found this to be the highlight of the trip and that started me thinking.”

Soon he had ditched the idea of an undulating landscape, instead creating a flat environment upon which a network of ramps could be placed, those initial thoughts about a combat bias giving way to a design focused on stuntwork. Further refinement of the way the jumps could be integrated into the environment followed. “It became obvious fairly quickly that locating the ramps was too difficult, particularly lining up with them, so I decided they had to be joined by a track,” says Crammond. “I didn’t want cornering speed to be the main feature, as it is with road racing, so I banked the corners. Then I started experimenting with the height profiles to create some interesting new challenges.”

“Stunt Car Racer was a good example of a game evolving over several months. I'd started with a sort of roving vehicle on a rough random terrain, thinking the system might become a tank shoot ’em up-type game. One day I was driving this vehicle over the landscape and came across a small ramp. I drove up it and launched into the air. I found this to be the highlight of the trip and that started me thinking.” Geoff Crammond

With the concept of a high-rise, rollercoaster-like track in place, Crammond’s initial intention was to make the game a pure driving experience, with players simply facing a challenge to beat lap times: “I remembered how much I had enjoyed honing my lap times in Revs, and also to some extent was thinking about the overhead in processor time involved with including anything more than the player car. Eventually, however, I decided that it had to involve a race against an opponent. Once I’d managed to implement that, I had the basic game. The addition of damage and speed boosts then spiced up the challenge.”

Although relatively simple, this formula proved highly effective, principally because of the learning curve and depth imbued by the careful vehicle modelling and associated control system, but also because of some wonderfully malicious track layouts. “Coming up with the track designs was probably the hardest thing,” says Crammond. “But although it was hard work, I did enjoy working on them and trying out new ideas.”

Split over four racing divisions, a total of eight circuits were included. While introductory track ‘The Little Ramp’ served merely to familiarise players with the intricacies of a control system far more temperamental than in the likes of contemporary coin-op hit OutRun, others, such as ‘The Stepping Stones’ and ‘The Big Ramp’, demanded near-flawless use of the accelerator and boost controls. One badly timed jump would result in the car leaping into the air only to sail right past the edge of the track, tumbling to the ground a hundred feet below.



Final track, ‘The Drawbridge’, even required drivers to time their leap with the lowering of the bridge, or else face being spectacularly catapulted clean off the track. In addition to inducing a surprising amount of vertigo, such tumbles seriously damaged the stunt car chassis and also incurred delays while the car was laboriously winched back up onto the circuit. In truth this latter device penalised the player too harshly, making it almost impossible to turn in an acceptable time. But many gamers were willing to overlook this, so strong was their desire to see all the available tracks and nail the fastest possible laps.

Although Stunt Car Racer was the result of more than two years of intense work (an extraordinarily long development period at the time), Crammond confesses he was far from certain how the game would be received: “Aviator, Revs and Sentinel had all been number-one games, but you can never assume something is going to be a hit, particularly if it is an original concept.”

In fact the game scaled to the top of the chart, the success prompting conversions to other formats, with Crammond recoding the game for the next generation of home computers, the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. It speaks volumes about the quality of the original version that few adjustments were necessary, although one key enhancement would ultimately bestow Stunt Car Racer with near-legendary status. “I thought it would be cool to play against a real opponent, so did a serial-link two-player option – it turned out to be very popular,” says Crammond, with a certain amount of understatement.

After Stunt Car Racer, Crammond devoted his time to thoroughbred racing simulations with the Grand Prix series. The need to radically ramp up the complexity of the visuals, physics simulation and various supporting game elements have, he admits, necessitated a shift to a team-based development model: “The good thing about those days was having complete knowledge of the code. I could feel confident about its integrity and the effects of any change. F1GP and Grand Prix were done like this except I didn’t know the menu code. In Grand Prix 3 I didn’t know the menu code and hardware graphics code, then in Grand Prix 4 I only really knew the simulation code. The fact is that modern games are simply too big to be done by an individual.”

It was this reason that led to him joining forces with UK development team Lost Toys in 2003, with the aim of finally launching a much anticipated SCR sequel, Stunt Car Racer Pro. “At the end of almost every interview I ever did for the last three Grand Prix games there was always one last question: ‘When are you going to do a new version of Stunt Car Racer?’,” said Crammond at the time. “There’s clearly still a huge amount of interest in the Stunt Car concept." Lost Toys closed in 2003, however. Quite what lies in Stunt Car Racer's future - and Crammond's - is currently anyone's guess. Either way, though, it would be fascinating to see what a talent like Crammond could achieve with modern hardware.

This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in E125