Stunt Car Racer by Geoff Crammond: a tale of clever suspension modelling and PC port disappointment

Stunt Car Racer is an Amiga and Atari ST classic, an unusual diversion of Geoff Crammond simulating a thing which does not exist in real life, and also the source of some disappointment for 9 year old me when I got the PC version home and discovered the importance of checking which format the screenshots on the box come from.

But how does it handle all those jumps, twists and turns on a game that is eminently playable on everything down to the humble ZX Spectrum, even if it doesn't look quite as pretty as you'd hope on some of those platforms? I delve a little into the secrets of Stunt Car Racer's physics, its history, and why it's a suspension-bobbling anomaly in Crammond's stable of normally circuit-bound racers.

Many thanks to Frank Gasking of Games That Weren't (https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/) for the screenshots of Stunt Car Racer Pro. Also available in book form (https://www.bitmapbooks.com/products/...) - in addition to a wealth of research, exclusive interviews and games even I hadn't heard of it has the usual excellent quality you'd expect from Bitmap Books and is an ideal use for a spare £30.

As ever, this video would not be possible without the hardware photography of Evan Amos (or RMCRetro in the case of the BBC Micro) and stock footage from Pexels, or at least I would have to own more vintage hardware and do a lot more silly things in front of a camera.

A list of chassis-twisting landings:

0:00 I fail at planning
1:13 Polygons on the Amiga
1:53 The Division Bell
2:40 Low speed adventures of Evel Knievel
4:03 Enforced roof-having memory puzzle
4:50 Magazines with multiple Amigas
6:23 Brownaround
8:17 The odd one out?
9:36 Before Sir Geoff of Racingland
10:27 Yes, I was writing code in that shot
11:08 What else is "roving simulation" going to make you think of?
12:18 The bit about the physics
14:19 A game about springs
15:12 Any port in a storm
16:15 Ah yes, the CPC... er, PC
17:07 Timberwolf learns a lesson about screenshots
17:58 More musing about release dates
18:25 The curse of 1980s PC gaming
19:15 Positives of the PC port
19:53 What next?
21:10 Unity projects and a million mobile games
21:40 Spiritual sequels and crashing an MX-5

Comments are pre-reviewed to avoid spam. I aim to publish all comments, including dissent, but overly pedantic or negative ones may be moderated. Hearing about different experiences and what things were like in other countries adds a lot to the video! Please try to do so in a positive way while remembering that if I had to explain every minor international difference the video would be 2 hours long and boring, rather than 23 minutes long and boring. Failing that, at least make me laugh.

Bonus fact: notice how in some ports the speedometer reads to 240, while in other ports it reads to 300 or more? When you're promoted to the Super Division, the car can exceed 250km/h on the faster tracks. Ports with the 240km/h speedometer handle this by wrapping the display around and starting again from the left hand edge, whereas other ports are able to use the extra margin available to display those enhanced Super Division speeds.

#stuntcarracer #retrogaming