Past meets present: Stunt Race FX

Powered by the SNES' Super FX chip, Nintendo produced a polygonal 3D racing game well before the era of the N64.

This column is “Past meets present,” the aim of which is to look back at game franchises and games that are in the news and topical again thanks to a sequel, a remaster, a re-release, and so on. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Stunt Race FX is something of a forgotten gem of the 16-bit era, and the forgetting of it was partially Nintendo’s own doing. It did well enough at retail — it’s one of the 50-plus games on the SNES to sell at least one million copies — and the critical reception was generally positive, as well, but there was never a sequel, and the game didn’t even receive a Virtual Console release on the Wii, Wii U, or 3DS, despite it being a Nintendo-developed and Nintendo-published game. Which might have been related to it being a Super FX chip game and issues emulating those, but that’s unclear, too, other than the lack of other Super FX chip titles on those storefronts.

In some ways it's curious that Nintendo never explored Stunt Race FX further given its reception and sales, but part of that was likely just streamlining on the development side. Stunt Race FX didn’t have many ideas that were exclusive to it, Nintendo already had F-Zero and Mario Kart to work with, and then Rare made Diddy Kong Racing on the N64. And that’s just the more straightforward racers: Nintendo also produced a new Excitebike and a new Wave Race on the Nintendo 64, Namco licensed Ridge Racer to Nintendo for a quality N64 entry, third-party racers were both common and often great, so how many more first-party racers were necessary to make sure demands were being met? Especially when the thing that really separated Stunt Race FX from the rest of what was going on during the 16-bit era was that it used the Super FX chip to create polygons? When everything was suddenly polygonal, well, a new hook might be necessary. And at that point it maybe made more sense just to put those hooks elsewhere.

Which is not to say that Stunt Race FX — known as Wild Trax in Japan — was only interesting because it was polygonal in the era of sprites. It just lost some of the novelty of its design in the move to the 64-bit system, in no small part because the game was designed with the SNES’ limitations in mind. It wasn’t the fastest racer going, but Nintendo EAD — and Argonaut Software, creator of the Super FX chip and co-developer on the first Super FX game, Star Fox, assisted on development here, too — worked around that and made their decisions on how Stunt Race FX would play based on those limitations.

Think of it this way. The Sega Genesis, which was also 16-bit like the SNES, didn't have Mode 7 or the Super FX chip, but still managed ports of Super Hang-on, Virtua Racing, etc. from the arcades. The ports are impressive in the sense they exist at all, but they’re not very much fun to play! One difference — and this could just be personally speaking — in the enjoyment level of those ports vs. Stunt Race FX is that they actively feel like they've been held back. Even not originally knowing that the arcade games are faster, smoother, and so on, those ports feel like they're missing something vital in them, the something that would answer the question of why you’re playing this game on this hardware.

They feel not just slow, but sluggish, both lagging and lacking. Stunt Race FX, though, knew its limitations from the start, since the SNES by way of the Super FX chip was the hardware it was originally on and designed for: this wasn’t an arcade game that had to be made to fit weaker hardware after the fact, but a game that could be built from the ground up knowing exactly what its foundation was capable of supporting the whole time. So, Stunt Race FX feels slow-paced rather than sluggish; to make up for the relative lack of speed in comparison to F-Zero or Super Mario Kart, Stunt Face FX is full of turn after turn, there are damage and boost meters you can refill each lap with some skillful driving, and every lap includes a countdown timer to keep things feeling tense on the tougher courses. The controls are a little loose, but again, in a way that feels purposeful instead of due to a limitation; they aren’t slow to react or respond to your touch, and require your focus for other reasons. All of this helps make it so that when you're going a little slow, it feels more like your own doing than due to the hardware’s or game’s limitations. It's admittedly a thin line that differentiates the two, but it's there, and it does its job.

While Nintendo never revisited Stunt Face FX — and didn’t even bother to re-release it until the Nintendo Switch Online service added Super Nintendo games — it still ended up playing a significant role in the company’s future. When the Big N started developing 3D games using polygons on the Nintendo 64, they had to start from scratch with something like Super Mario 64. The previous Super Mario games were all 2D sidescrollers, and while Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island also utilized the Super FX chip (its more powerful successor chip, actually), it did so not for full 3D gameplay, but for certain 3D effects in a 2D environment. As more of a precursor to the 2.5D-style platformer than a 3D one.

When it was time for Mario Kart 64, however, Nintendo was able to pull from its experience making a 3D, polygonal racing game on the SNES. Obviously, developing for the different hardware wasn’t 1:1, but there’s still less of a jump there than there was for completely re-imagining Mario or Zelda. And you can pretty clearly see and feel the bits of Stunt Race FX that would end up in Mario Kart 64 in the next console generation, too: Stunt Race FX has nothing in common with Super Mario Kart other than both racers having extends and game overs for running out of them, but in many ways it feels like a proto Mario Kart 64 without the four-player multiplayer and items.

It’s probably most accurate to say that Stunt Race FX was a cross between the original F-Zero — damage and boosts play a huge role in the gameplay and how you race, and both are limited and refillable resources, while you can more easily turn left and right by using the shoulder buttons instead of the directional pad — and Mario Kart 64, with its emphasis on slower-paced racing and a similar track design. And while Mario Kart 64 didn’t exist yet, it would in the way we know it in no small part due to Stunt Race FX’s design.

Stunt Race FX has its own personality, at least, and it’s almost entirely thanks to making the cars anthropomorphic before Pixar ever got the idea to do the same. They take damage, but it’s not like in other racing games of the era where your vehicle started to look a little dented or started to smoke: the cars in Stunt Race FX do that, too, but since they’re alive, it feels a little different when you’ve bashed them to pieces by driving around! And that “to pieces” bit is sometimes literal, too.

Crash right into a wall at high speed? Your car will shatter into pieces, and while the eyes that are left behind try to shake the wooziness out of them, those pieces will return to rebuild the car: momentum will carry you a little further along, but you can’t accelerate again until after the car has rebuilt itself. And if you go over a jump and land hard, you’ll also come apart a bit and take on some damage, though, the car won’t separate: it’s more a signifier that you’re not going to be able to get away with doing that if your damage meter is already nearly full, just like you can’t graze a wall the whole time without taking on damage, either.

If your car is trashed for real, you’ll lose a life. You only have the two extra, and there’s just one opportunity to earn another in each of the three cups, composed of four tracks each. After the second track, an optional bonus one pops up that’s different than the rest: your car drives into the back of an 18-wheeler, and you attempt to do an entire lap before time runs out. It’s harder than it sounds, as the 18-wheeler doesn’t move as well on high-speed turns as the race car. Weird, right? For each lap, you get a life, but again, good luck getting the one.

You don’t just attempt to earn an extra life in the bonus round, though, so even if you’re garbage at that particular task, it’s still worth playing. You can also earn some extended time by driving through/over markers on the course. Each lap in Stunt Race FX has a time limit, like arcade racers tend to: if you run out of time before you hit a checkpoint or the next lap, you lose. If you finish a race with time leftover, it’s banked for your next course, to a maximum of 100 seconds. While time doesn’t feel like that big of a consideration on the earlier cups (unless you’re using the slowest of four vehicles), in the Master one, it definitely will. Especially in the first track, since you haven’t built up any kind of cushion yet. In the Master cup in general, it feels more like you’re racing the clock than the other cars, though, that can of course change as you memorize the courses. It’s just more obviously a consideration at that level than in the previous ones.

In all, Stunt Race FX has three different cups — Novice, Expert, and Master — each with their own four tracks and bonus track. You have four vehicles to choose from, though, just three at first. The 4WD is a monster truck that accelerates quickly and has a strong body, but a top speed of just 100 miles per hour. The Coupe is your balanced option, with a medium body, medium acceleration, and top speed of 120 mph. Then there’s the F-Type, the Formula One-looking racer that can hit 140 mph but also explodes into pieces when you hit a wall hard enough, and doesn’t have the ability to take nearly as many bumps as the other options. The 2WD can be unlocked: it’s a two-wheel car that can also go 140 mph, but its balance is all out of whack given the whole two-wheel thing. You can unlock it for the Free Trax mode — more on that in a second — by finishing Speed Trax on the Novice setting, but it’s available in all four of the game’s modes if you complete Speed Trax on Master.

Speed Trax is just the basic racer, with the Novice, Expert, and Master tracks. It’s a one-player experience — we’re talking about a 3D polygonal racer on the 16-bit SNES that still had to make sure it was slow-paced to work, it’s not designed to have split-screen races for more than a head-to-head race, lest it blow up like one of its cars ramming into a wall. Free Trax lets you practice any of the 12 Speed Trax courses, and doubles as a time trial. Stunt Trax is markedly different, as it puts you into a track with collectable stars, which you must grab before running out of time by going very fast but also with a plan. And Battle Trax isn’t actually a battle mode, but is a two-player head-to-head racing mode, that can also be used to play a head-to-head race against a computer opponent. (You still need a second controller for picking the second car, however: it’s a little weird to setup, but doable.)

Stunt Race FX might not look like all that much today, but it was stunning in its own time. Star Fox was lauded for introducing polygons to a 2D space using the FX chip, but stylistically it still felt like something was missing there, at least for me. Stunt Race FX looks superior, and while it still has some weirdness to it you can attribute to the fact it basically exists through magic in the first place — you can’t see inside of a tunnel until you’re inside of it, for instance, with the screen going from pitch black to “here’s what the tunnel you’re now in looks like” in an instance — overall, it still pulled off an impressive trick. There are even courses with some weather effects!

A rainstorm kicks up — and gets worse — in the second track of the Master cup, and those gray skies eventually clear up into sunny blue ones over time. Again, it might not seem like the most impressive visualization of rain you’ve ever seen, but that they were able to pull off weather effects at all without the entire game grinding to a halt is a feat on its own.

Stunt Race FX was a technical achievement and a fun game in its own right, but it's also understandable why Nintendo went one and done with it, given what they learned from the experience could be utilized in a far more popular series: Stunt Race FX sold over one million copies, but Super Mario Kart had Mario in it, and sold nearly nine million. Applying the lessons of Stunt Race FX’s development and the end result of it to a 3D Mario Kart makes a lot of sense, especially with how many other racers existed on the market and on the N64. Still, it would have been something to see Nintendo try to figure out a justification for another Stunt Race FX in a world where everything was polygonal — what else could have been done, what could have changed, to make it more than just a game in an existing series? We’ll probably never know, especially considering it’s now been over two decades since the last F-Zero game on a console. At least the original is on Nintendo Switch Online, for those curious or interested in revisiting: that’s a better fate than Stunt Race FX has had since it first released nearly three decades back, even if it’s not as ideal as actually owning a copy.

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