4D Sports Driving (Second Review)


Title           4D Sports Driving (Second Review)
Game Type       stunt-driving simulation
Company         Electronic Arts
Players         1
Compatibility   All (With Patch)
HD installable  Yes (And Patch Available)
Submission      Brian C. Horner (nairbrian@hotmail.com)

Review
This is a quite popular oldie that is packed with fun. Although the
graphics consist of primitive coloured & shaded polygons and the sounds
are basic, you'll certainly find yourself hooked on it.

One of my favourite Amiga classics was "Stunt Car Racer". In that, you had
to drive the same car (car choices are in "4DSD") on tracks resembling
roller coasters. Here, the tracks can have much more to them and really
cool stunts can be be performed. You notice that I say that the tracks CAN
have more; this is because there's a top-notch track editor included. With
it, you can just make your own track that is nothing but straights and
turns or you can go all-out with multiple loops, ramps raising you high in
the air, obstacles to manoeuvre around -- it's great!

You can practice a race before trying to make it against the one and only
computer-controlled car. I think that this is okay, as I spend much more
time on looking ahead and planning my moves so I can make the best of the
situation. However, once the computer car crashes, some of the excitement
is surely lost since, as long as I don't destroy my vehicle, I'll
obviously be the winner. I think two cars to race against would have been
better; too many would be a bit distracting since I'd be trying to run 'em
off the road and I'd always be looking in another area of the screen to
see my placement in line.

There were a few sound and graphics glitches, but the author of the
installer said that it wasn't perfect. Nothing was very distracting. On
the Windows PC, the game is merely known as the less-appealing "Stunts".
The graphics weren't smoother, even with 500mhz compared to my Amiga's
40mhz, and the sound of the screeching tires as you take a curve too
quickly is different & unrealistic. Not only that, there was no engine
noise to your car as there is on the Amiga! The worst thing was that, at
least in my case, I frequently got an "out of memory" error if I chose to
start a race against a computer-controlled player. Pretty lame, as my
Amiga had 34megs and the Windows box was over 160megs. Yet this how it is
with many old PC games; some can't even be persuaded to work at all.
Fortunately, the Amiga has excellent tools that make virtually every old
game work on the newest machines.

There are a LOT of tracks available that others have made for the game.
You'll easily find more than you can handle on the internet. I was
wondering if they would be compatible with my Amiga. Did the "Stunts" have
special tracks pieces not found on Amiga? Were the tracks saved in a PC
specific format? I was very glad to find out that all tracks would work
just fine! I've gone wild, obtaining hundreds - - and I'm not through.

Along with the tracks, you are able to save the instant replays to be
viewed again later. Go ahead and show off your fanciest stunt work to your
friends.

The PC's release of the game was from Broderbund. It is unfortunate that,
for some reason, its replay files are not compatible with Amiga (and vice
versa).


THINGS I LIKED:

- its easy to get around in the menu, as a press of a letter will
  move you to the first track that starts with that letter
- the very good track editor; NOTE: an undocumented feature is
  that a press of SHIFT and F1 at the same time puts you in the
  terrain editor
- computer player (as a single guy, the lack of a two-player
  option is not a fault to me)
- instant replays can be saved


THINGS I DIDN'T:

- only 64 tracks can be in the menu at one time
- I don't know how to get back from the terrain editor to the
  track editor page...
- right before you start, your car is rolled out of the back of a
  truck and onto the track; sometimes, I have noticed you just appear
  quickly without this sequence
- you can't put it into reverse
- only one computer player at a time; it would be neat to have a
  least two others at the same time to compete with, but if there was
  I am sure that it would have bogged down the slow A1000 in the
  early days
- the computer player usually isn't that bright; I've watched him
  going down a straightaway and then just going off to the side and
  crashing into some object
- the computer's car is always the same as the car you chose to
  drive, albeit a different colour
- unable to view the PC's instant replay files


A true classic that every Amiga user should have. It's become one of
my top games and is highly recommended for fans of the genre.



TESTED ON A1200/68030@40mhz/32megs fast RAM




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