Stunts

Stunts, published in 1990 and also known as 4D Sports Driving, was a racing game far ahead of its time thanks to one killer feature: a built-in track editor. While the driving itself let you pick from a roster of real and fantasy sports cars and race against a computer opponent or the clock, the real magic was in building your own circuits from a library of pieces, including the loops, corkscrews, jumps and elevated ramps that gave the game its name.

Running in a chunky but genuine 3D polygon world, Stunts encouraged experimentation and outright madness. Players designed courses packed with impossible jumps over water, tunnels, banked hairpins and spectacular crashes, and a mistimed leap would send your car tumbling in a satisfying wreck, complete with a little tow truck coming to collect the pieces. Cars each handled differently, rewarding you for learning their grip and top speed, and the replay feature let you watch your runs back from multiple camera angles.

That combination of accessible arcade driving and near-limitless creativity gave Stunts extraordinary longevity, and a dedicated community kept designing and racing custom tracks long after its release. The visuals are primitive by any modern measure, all flat-shaded polygons and simple horizons, but the physics-driven thrill of hurtling through a loop you built yourself still delivers. As an early sandbox racer it was genuinely influential, and it remains one of the most endearing driving games of the DOS era.