The futuristic racer subgenre tends to mostly be attributed to Nintendo’s F-Zero series these days, but there were a number of other companies experimenting with the formula too.
One such company was Atari Games, who put out the arcade version of S.T.U.N. Runner in 1989, a good year before F-Zero hit the Super NES. Running on a variation of the Hard Drivin’ hardware, its polygonal graphics and blistering speed impressed anyone who was lucky to come across a machine.
Its home ports… well, they did their best, and despite the ST version being what can politely be called “barely passable” I had a surprising amount of fun with it…
Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.
I remember the magazines reviews for this being horribly negative but seeing you play it now it’s not that bad! Considering my brother and I played Hard Drivin’ on the ST this looks a lot better and would have got a fair amount of play time.
The Lynx version was the product of black magic or someone with arcane godlike powers – it’s an amazing piece of work.
The Lynx was capable of some astonishing feats using that sprite scaling tech. Did you ever play Electrocop? That was, I think, the game that impressed me the most on that platform, but S.T.U.N. Runner was definitely right up there.
Electrocop was a real showcase too! Those full screen walls zooming in and out was just not something you saw on many games at all.
I think there was an early article that advertised it as being a Lynx version of Impossible Mission and you see there’s a lot of evidence to suggest it was going to be. 🙂
That would make a lot of sense, there’s a lot in common there. Both by Epyx, too.
Ahh, I miss my Lynx, silly old lump of endearing crap that it was. One of a few things that I’ve given up over the years which I now regret!