Stunt Race FX is a racing game produced by Nintendo released in October of 1994. It was the second game for the Super Nintendo to use the 3-D FX chip, which obviously was a big selling point. Unlike Super Mario Kart, the game features no weapons and an arcade racing feel. By that I mean when you are racing there is a timer and you will pass through checkpoints to get more time just like in arcade racing games such as Cruisin USA. There are 5 cars in which you can control in this game. I'll go over each of them as they all do function quite differently from one another. As you play this game you will have to be careful as your car can take damage from long falls, crashing into other cars, hitting walls, and other hazards that can be found on the tracks. For now though I'll look at the vehicles and get back to the tracks later.
I'll go through these vehicles in order from my favorite to least favorite. I enjoy all of the vehicles in the game honestly, but as with any other racing game I do have my favorite.
:
F-Type is a formula 1 car that as you can see has slow acceleration, a weak frame so he takes a lot of damage, and a game high max speed of 140mph. His turning is also heavily dependent on the player. Taking turns to fast will slam you into a wall or other hazard so you'll either need to drift or play around with the brake to find the right speed to quickly get through the corners. I forgot to mention earlier that you can take damage in a couple forms. You can slowly take damage from brushing along things or landing a little awkward from a jump. When you take heavy damage your car will literally blow up and pull itself back together. When that happens you do lose a good chunk of time and well.... You can guess what kind of damage F-Type takes more often... So yeah. My favorite car goes to the hardest to drive... F-Type!
Coupe is from what people tell me, most people's least favorite car. Personally I enjoy him a lot. He is literally the middle ground of all the cars. Medium body strength, acceleration, and a top speed that sits right in the middle of everything. He handles well... medium as well... Really it's a nice and relaxing car to play... Just a pain to hold off a hard charging F-Type in later levels.
2WD is the unlockable car... bike.... thing... I mean it's a two wheeler with a windshield... I dunno... Anyway. 2WD matches F-Type in speed, has the same strength as Coupe, and the same acceleration of 4WD. He's literally a mix of all the other cars and has the handling of a car trying to stop on black ice going 140mph. Needless to say 2WD is all over the place most of the time, but he is very very fun to play as simply because of that. As I mentioned, 2WD is the unlockable character and can be unlocked by beating SPEED TRAX on Master. (More on that later).
4WD is a monster truck that has the toughest frame, the fastest acceleration, and the truck's top speed is the slowest of the racers at 100mph. His handling is so so as players will want to be making sharp turns with this truck. Despite that being the case, it will hardly ever spin out which is a huge challenge for F-Type and 2WD players. 4WD is considered the beginner vehicle of the game as well as the best vehicle to use in Stunt Mode. That is largely thanks to his very tough frame. It is also the only vehicle that can be used in Test Run.
There is one other vehicle that does not see any racing action. Rather it has it's own bonus stage.
Yes that is an 18 wheeler that is loading Coupe. In this bonus stage you'll drive the massive truck that is so big it has it's own special camera through markers in an effort to add time and get extra lives. As you might expect, driving Trailer is not the easiest as it's back end does not really want to go with the front end. Truck drivers will get a hang of him very quick, but for people like me that wouldn't know how to turn an 18 wheeler, it is a very difficult truck to handle.
So that is the little cast of characters in this game. I mentioned a couple game modes that I'll quickly hit now. In Stunt Trax you take your vehicle onto a stunt track. As you go through the course you will want to hit as many star balloons as possible to get the highest score possible. There is an unlockable course that is a demolition derby in which you are a part of a demolition derby... Poor F-Type on that level...
Speed Trax is the main game mode. There are novice level tracks and expert level tracks for players to try and conquer. Similar to Super Mario Kart you will be given a set of lives. Failing to finish a race due to running out of time or having your car destroyed or coming in last place will cost you a life. Run out of lives and it's game over. There are a few fun little things to keep an eye out for in addition to racing such as posters of Mario, Kirby, and Star Fox. You can also find an Arwing from the Star Fox series in the game. On a certain level it will fly just in front of you and drop off repair and boost boxes. In another level the Starfox Team will fly in front of you in an airshow formation. Kinda cool!
Battle Trax is for 1 on 1 racing between computers, humans, or a human and a computer. The tracks in Battle Trax are not regular tracks from Speed Trax. Instead there are 4 different tracks.
Test Run is designed for beginners to the game to get a hang of how to play while playing as the game's beginner vehicle, 4WD.
Free Trax is basically Time Trials. You can choose any level that you have completed and practice on it. This is also where you will first meet 2WD until you unlock him for use in the other modes.
Overall the tracks I found to be easy or tough. The grouping of the tracks into Novice and Expert tracks is certainly a good call as the expert tracks do tend to be quite difficult and the Novice tracks are easier, something that can't be said for all racing games, especially today.
There are a lot of people give this game flak for it's graphics. Much like Starfox, the game makes use of polygons, squares, etc quite a bit. While the Arwing (see above picture) my look like a bunch of flying triangles, the vehicles in this game actually manage to look like they are supposed to.
Sure sometimes it becomes difficult to see things and watching box shaped animals run across the track may look ugly, but the tracks themselves seem to maintain themselves very well despite some having some pretty big twists and turns. I mean trying to get a completely underwater scene in this game using the FX chip was probably not the easiest thing to do, but to me they did a decent job with it.
While certainly not on the level of other racing games for the SNES, I did not find the graphics in Stunt Race FX to be a big issue. The soundtrack is nothing special. There are a few catchy tunes that may get stuck in your head for a few minutes, but they are far from as memorable as Super Mario Kart's or even F-Zero's for that matter. This is probably my favorite song out of them all.
Overall I still find Stunt Race FX to be a very well put together game that showed off what the FX chip could do. While the lasting appeal of this game may not be as strong as Super Mario Kart, I would rank this game in the top 3 of racers on the Super Nintendo. The other two being F-Zero and Super Mario Kart. This game kind of reminds me of a cross between the crazy racing of the Mario Kart games and a standard racing game. Again, there are no items to use to defeat your rivals, so your driving skill alone will be what wins you the race or loses you it. There won't be any last second red shells to secure or cost a win which is kind of a nice change of pace. On a scale of 1-10 I'd give Stunt Race FX a solid 8.5 out of 10. The upsides of the game I have gone on about and the negatives are few and far between. The reason I can't give this game any higher than an 8.5 is it's graphics, a camera that will sometimes be as wacky as the racing (usually when wrecking), the inability to play the Speed Trax courses in multiplayer, and a soundtrack that is pretty mediocre in my opinion. The big ups are the different game modes, the way the vehicles are designed and handle, the tracks themselves, the overall presentation of the game, and the way the game makes use of it's blocky graphic.
Final verdict: 8.5 out of 10. Really a great game that doesn't have the vest visuals, but is really just a blast to play!
No comments:
Post a Comment