Have you played... Stunt GP?

Stunt GP was the first game I ever reviewed. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know or understand that it was made by the same people who made Worms, a game I'd loved. I made jokes about local doctors jumping through flaming hoops and thought that would do.

(I still think that's funny).

A 2001 remote control car racing game from Team 17, Stunt GP left about as much impression on me as an ant on a snowdrift. Truth be told, I was the ant in that metaphor.

I find myself envying Kieron's auto-mythology, of stumbling straight into Thief for his first review (albeit with a little bit of historical revisionism), but even if Stunt GP had been The Right Stuff to build my written identity upon, I just didn't feel the burn to have a cause. I just wanted to have fun.

Stunt GP was thus appropriate for me, whatever I was. Stunt GP was fine, probably. In hindsight, it could be called a proto-Trackmania, though the contemporaneous context put it closer to being yet another slice of Micro Machines pie.

I pushed the button and the little car went forwards, or did whatever you call it when a car does a somersault. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it, I wrote some words and then I was done with Stunt GP, forever. But I like to think that there's someone out there for whom it is their cause - a Stunt GP poster in their bathroom, a Stunt GP tattoo across their shoulderblades. Every game deserves to be someone's legend.