Stunt Race FX Review (Super Nintendo, 1994)

The Super FX chip was one of the most impressive things to come out of the 16-bit era. This wasn’t a hardware add-on like the Sega CD/32X, nor was it a brand new console. This was a little chip that fit neatly into a Super Nintendo cartridge without increasing the price, and allowed the console to push polygons in some really impressive ways. Many of the titles that used it could pass for something released on more powerful hardware like the Atari Jaguar or Panasonic 3DO. Not all of these games could be winners though. For every Star Fox you had a Stunt Race FX. The latter just happens to be the topic of our review today. Let’s put the petal to the polygons and give this one a whirl.

Stunt Race FX is a 3D racing game. It is not a serious one. I mean come on. The cars have eyeballs. They also explode and then re-shape when crashing. If you’re looking for a realistic racer then this is not it. Stunt Race FX clearly targets kids. That’s certainly not a bad thing because most of Nintendo’s best games are for all audiences. Anyway. Your basic goal is to come in first place in a series of races around various courses. That’s pretty standard for a racing game. If there’s any one disappointment it’s that Nintendo failed to innovate here. Traditional racers can still be fun though. Unfortunately this one isn’t that good.

Let’s start with the gameplay. Stunt Race FX doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. The course designs, while sometimes bordering on fantastical, are a little boring. They do have varying degrees of turns and even hills/bridges. That’s pretty good for a 16-bit racer. Unfortunately very little of it is fun to explore and traverse. What’s more is there aren’t very many vehicles to actually choose from. You have three from the start including a buggy, an F1 style car, and a monster truck. They’re rated in three different categories; body, acceleration, and top speed. Honestly I find it a little weird that traction isn’t a factor. There’s a fourth unlockable bike, but it goes so fast I struggled to use it. There’s a pretty steep learning curve to Stunt Race FX, but it’s not because the game is well designed.

It’s the controls that take getting used to. Stunt Race FX suffers from some pretty major input lag. There’s a noticeable delay between pressing a direction on the d-pad and your car actually steering that way. Even though this game doesn’t require pinpoint precision it still causes some major problems. To make things even worse the framerate is choppy. This was a common issue in most games that use the SuperFX chip. Unfortunately it really hinders gameplay here. A lesser, but still obvious problem, is why did the developers designate the A button for brake? Holding B is fine for acceleration, but it’s not exactly comfortable to maneuver your finger on the control to slow down. The shoulder buttons are used for sharp turns, but it feels like they over correct to the point that it’s not useful. Your vehicle starts instantly skidding.

What’s also disappointing is the fact that the gameplay doesn’t take up the entire screen. Unfortunately there’s a border of sorts which makes the playfield downright small. I imagine that this was due mostly in part to hardware limitations, but it’s disappointing considering so many other SuperFX games didn’t have this issue. It does however allow for a really easy to read interface. Your health and boost are both displayed within the border so they don’t take up precious screen estate. There’s even a handy map that shows the locations of both the player and the other racers which is at least mildly helpful when you don’t know the courses well. Admittedly the border looks kind of hokey, but I guess that’s the price you have to pay for 3D gameplay on the Super NES.

With the major issues out of the way let’s get to what the game does right. You have to carefully manage the body of your car because it has a life bar at the bottom of the screen. Each time you crash or bump into something this depletes, and when it’s gone that’s a game over. Thankfully you’ll find special power-ups that replenish health. There’s also a variety that refills your boost meter. By pressing the Y button you can speed up until that bar is depleted. What I liked is the fact that Stunt Race FX is very generous when it comes to these power-ups. I rarely had to worry about running out of both health and boost because the pick ups are so common. On the higher difficulty levels the CPU enemies rarely seem to take advantage of this. That means the boost gives you a distinct advantage.

The course variety is also really nice. You’ll drive through night time city scenes, lush forests, glass tubes in the ocean, and more. I was really happy with what Stunt Race FX had to offer. They may be pretty, but unfortunately they lack many distinct hazards. The most common you’ll encounter is that in some areas you can drive off the edge of the track into water. Unfortunately when this happens you instantly lose the race. That’s about the extent of interesting hazards unfortunately. The stages often recycle the same degree turns and half pipes. They just aren’t distinct enough from one another. For an early 3D game you would think the developers would have pushed crazy hazards, but that’s just not the case here.

There are however a lot of different game modes. You have the standard races found in the speed tracks mode. There are twelve different courses divided into three difficulties. Think of this like Arcade mode. Not sure why they didn’t just call it that in the first place. Next up we have the stunt tracks. Gameplay is quite different here. You’re not racing against other players, but instead the clock is your biggest enemy as you drive around various stages collecting items before the clock runs out. It’s a nice diversion but I found the main game better. Then we have battle tracks. This is multiplayer. Here you’re racing against one other human player. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t CPU racers here, but I suppose the game is already pushing the hardware to the limit. Finally there’s a test run which is kind of like practice mode.

In screenshots Stunt Race FX looks better than most SuperFX games. That’s quite impressive actually. The cars feature a lot of different animations, and they look really nice. The tracks also feature a surprising amount of detail with varying background elements and a decent draw distance. One of the best effects in this game is the fact that you can choose between two different viewpoints. By default the camera is zoomed in behind your car, but by pressing select you can get a pulled back view that I thought was really helpful. The game is pretty good looking in screenshots, but in motion it’s a different story. The framerate is pretty bad. It’s not quite slideshow levels, but it definitely makes things difficult when you’re trying to time a turn. The soundtrack isn’t amazing, but some of the music is really catchy. There’s also good variety in each track.