Brøderbund was the publisher of "Stunts", but not the developer. The developer was Distinctive Software Inc. who had previously developed the hit games Test Drive and Test Drive II: The Duel for Accolade. For whatever reason, Accolade developed Test Drive III in-house, and DSI developed Stunts on their own.

After Stunts, DSI got bought by Electronic Arts. They were briefly "Pioneer Productions" (or at least, people from DSI were part of that group within EA) and made the original Need For Speed, but eventually became just a part of EA Canada.

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alberto-m 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Brøderbund was the publisher of "Stunts", but not the developer. The developer was Distinctive Software Inc.

This is literally the first thing I write in the article :-) I also link to a video about DSI's story which in my opinion deserves more views.

Test Drive III being developed by a different company explains why that game is visionary but fundamentally broken, while DSI's creations are still fun to play.

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op00to 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I loved TD3 as much as I loved stunts. I never thought it was fundamentally broken, but as a 10ish year old kid, you take what you can get.

	▲	alberto-m 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe you had exactly the right CPU for it? On my old computer TD3 run ~3x faster than it should have because the devs forgot to implement the game clock calibration, an unforgivable sin for a 1990 game. On top of that the steering sensitivity was completely off. Ross Scott made an excellent review of the game, illustrating its problems as well as its memorable design ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68zZZn8wy4E

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jama211 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Reading the article before commenting is too hard apparently! Fantastic article btw

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janfoeh 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Interesting! I spent a lot of time on both Test Drive II on the ST and the original Need For Speed on the 3DO — I never knew Pioneer made both.

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gausswho 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What a legacy. Launched only golden geese, of which two were run over by the parent company.