Stunts (a.k.a. 4D Sports Driving, 1990): The Racing Game People Remember for Its Track Editor
Status unclearYear: 1990 · Developer: Distinctive Software · Publisher: Brøderbund · Platform: DOS · Theme: Driving/Racing, Design Tool
Plenty of racing games from 1990 have been quietly forgotten. Stunts is not one of them, and the reason has less to do with the driving itself than with what players could build around it. It’s a 3D stunt-racing game with a genuinely deep track editor bolted on, and decades later, fan sites and fan-made track archives are still the clearest evidence of how much that editor mattered.
The driving model is intentionally not a simulation. GameBytes, reviewing the game at the time, placed it in a specific lineage alongside Stunt Driver and Hard Drivin’ II: games built around stunt driving and exaggerated physics rather than accuracy, where the deciding factor between good and forgettable entries in that lineage was controllability. Stunts won that comparison on control alone, offering handling precise enough that pulling off a genuinely difficult stunt felt earned rather than lucky. Car variety backs that up, from slow, ice-capable 4WDs to blistering turbo Formula 1 cars, each with real tradeoffs; it’s entirely possible to out-drag an F1 car with a 4WD on an icy stretch, which tells you how deliberately the handling differences were tuned.
Two race modes structure the actual play: practice against the clock, and competitive racing against a single opponent drawn from a small cast, including one deliberately named “Skid Vicious.” The joke in that name is mostly earned, because the AI across the board is weak. Opponents crash reliably on anything technical, drive slowly in general, and can be baited into mistakes without much effort. That’s a real limitation, and it’s fair to call it out as one rather than paper over it. What keeps it from sinking the game is that a self-imposed handicap, like driving a slower car against faster opponents, restores a real sense of challenge without needing the AI itself to improve.
None of that AI weakness is where Stunts actually earns its reputation, though. The track editor is the real draw, and it’s an unusually complete one for 1990: three road surface types, a full set of standard road pieces like corners, chicanes, crossroads, ramps, elevated sections, and banked turns, and then a genuinely extensive stunt-piece library covering tunnels, loops, corkscrews, pipes, half-pipes, slalom sections with barricades, and corkscrew ramps. A separate terrain editor shapes the landscape underneath all of it, complete with scenery pieces down to buildings, trees, ships, and, for reasons nobody has ever fully explained, a tennis court. Add a ten-minute replay buffer with multiple camera angles, including a fully user-controlled one, and you get a toolkit built for sharing what you make, not just playing it once and moving on.
That combination, solid handling plus an editor generous enough to support a real community, is exactly why Stunts outlived most of its contemporaries. It never tried to be the most realistic driving game of 1990. It tried to be the one you could keep building things in, and thousands of fan-made tracks later, that bet paid off.
How to run it today
Stunts runs cleanly in DOSBox with no special configuration needed beyond mounting the game directory. The track editor and terrain tools behave exactly as they did on original hardware, and the game’s own internal handling of speed keeps the driving feel consistent under emulation.
Compatibility: DOS (via DOSBox) · Controls: Keyboard, joystick optional · Setup difficulty: Low
Legal status
Brøderbund’s original corporate identity dissolved through a string of acquisitions in the late 1990s, and no confirmed current rights holder actively markets or sells Stunts today. Its status remains genuinely unclear rather than resolved, despite the game’s continued popularity among fan communities running it independently.
If you liked this, try
Hard Drivin’ is worth pairing with this one for a different early-90s take on stunt-focused driving, and Super Hang-On offers a faster, arcade-pure alternative if the editor isn’t the draw for you. Stunt Car Racer, from the same broader genre GameBytes placed Stunts in, is the closest match if the track-editor angle is what hooked you.
Frequently asked questions
Is Stunts a realistic racing simulator?
No, and it never claimed to be. Stunts belongs to a distinct genre alongside Stunt Driver and Hard Drivin' II, one built around exaggerated stunt driving and perfect controllability rather than physical accuracy, and that focus on control is what set it apart from its genre-mates.
Why is Stunts also called 4D Sports Driving?
Mindscape released the game in Europe under that name. A detailed comparison by fan Alan Robinson concluded that the version 1.1 release distributed as Stunts is technically the superior build of the two, though they're the same core game.
What can you actually build in the track editor?
Three surface types from paved to icy, standard pieces like corners, chicanes, and elevated roads, and an extensive stunt-piece set including tunnels, loops, corkscrews, pipes, half-pipes, and slalom sections with barricades. A separate terrain editor lets you shape the landscape those tracks sit on, right down to placing buildings, trees, ships, and even a tennis court as scenery.
Is the computer AI in Stunts any good?
Not particularly. Opponents, including the intentionally named 'Skid Vicious,' drive with real incompetence: they're slow, crash reliably on tricky sections, and can be nudged into crashing even more easily. They can still provide a workable challenge if you handicap yourself into a slower car, but nobody plays Stunts for a tough AI fight.
Is there an undocumented feature worth knowing about?
Yes: pressing Shift+F1 inside the track editor unlocks access to terrain pieces that aren't exposed through the normal menu, a trick that longtime fans of the game have passed down for years.