Stunt Race FX

Things are about to get super. Alphabetically. Before that happens, here’s Stunt Race FX. Believe it or not, this game was published by Nintendo. Hard to imagine, from our vantage point atop twenty-one Zelda games and seventy-seven plus Mario games, that Nintendo would ever be associated with an IP that wasn’t a sure-fire ejaculate summoner. To avoid panic, I imagine that Mario and Samus are driving these anthropomorphic vehicles. That’s better. It’s not Nintendo if there’s nothing from the 80s in there.

Thanks, Nintendo. I wasn't sure.

This game was released in 1994. You can tell because all the tracks are called “Trax.” Presumably, the title is meant to be read “Stunt Race Effects.” This is the beginning of the end. Soon, a plague of so called “hip naming” would make its way across the pacific to North America, where it would claim the lives of several typists. The increased occurrence of the “cool letter” X and its compatriots, broke the spirits of those in the typing industry and caused many a sore middle finger. Typists everywhere quit, raising their middle finger to the boss and asking him to kiss it better. This is believed to be the origin of the middle finger’s association with anger.  It’s a sad world. Probably why Kurt Cobain killed himself the same year. Also in 1994, the Blue Jays won something. For the last time ever.

So, the first surprise was that there were no Nintendo characters featured in this game. The second is that this game is pretty mediocre. In fact, it can be downright awful. It’s a big old geometrically shaped cake with no stuffing. The gameplay consists of attempting to guess how Nintendo desires you to go around any particular corner. If you hold the accelerator down, you crash into the wall. If you let it go, you cease to turn and crash into the wall once more. Perhaps there’s a better way to do this. Perhaps not.

What’s really odd is that, even though there’s a character selection screen, the game pretty much makes the choice for you. Two of the cars are listed as “weak” and or “slow” and the other is both fast and strong. That’s not a choice, that’s a trap. What the hell’s the point of character selection if there’s a clear best choice? Is it to make children cry? Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s an effort to liven up our sibling rivalry with a bit of button-mashing, and then some cord-strangling. If you’re fast enough in the character selection screen, you can win the race. What fun! Then again, there doesn’t seem to be multiplayer. So the question remains: what kind of Nintendo game is this? Miyamoto, what happened man?


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