15: Stunt Car Racer

Number 15
(211.5 points)
Stunt Car Racer
1991: 10 (9.1)
1992: 28 (14.6)
1993: 68 (13.2)
1994: 30 (42.6)
1995: 26 (60.0)
1996: 29 (72.0)

Perhaps an unlikely choice for the seventh of our six-time appearances, since you wouldn't expect that a game with 3D graphics would hold such appeal for so long, yet the playability of this one clearly shone through.

It's a first-person racing game, with the twist being that instead of driving on a standard race track, you are lifted onto an elevated stunt course, complete with ramps, slopes and jumps. You have to finish the race ahead of your opponent, but you must take care not to fall off the track. You have a turbo function to speed up, but your car will take damage if you're too rough in bouncing around the course. The game most likely got a boost in its ranking due to its ability to play two-player with two Amigas via a link cable, a feature which may be difficult to replicate in emulation.

It probably looks a bit ugly nowadays due to the low framerate, but the game uses the three-dimensional aspect very well, and takes a lot of practice to master. It's certainly the kind of game I can imagine booting up for a few minutes of fun, but like many driving games, learning the courses will help you greatly. Someone offered a bounty of several hundred pounds to up the framerate on this game, but as of this writing, nobody has claimed the reward.

Recommended TOSEC disk(s):
Stunt Car Racer (1989)(MicroStyle)[cr QTX]