Introduction
S.T.U.N. Runner was a 1989 arcade racing game developed by Atari Games. The goal is to race through futuristic race tracks that consists of a lot of tubes while dodging obstacles out to slow you down and time you out. The main selling point of the arcade game was the sit-down cabinet which gives an extra level of immersion. This Atari Lynx port was released in 1991 by Atari Corporation and retains a lot of the game's mechanics and experience, outside of losing analog control and a few mechanical bits. This submission is about the Lynx port of the game.
Many months ago, I made a preliminary TAS of the game just going through all of the levels from the start. Towards the end I found an important enemy manipulation technique that helped maintain speed. However, the first instance of implementing that was close to the start of the game so that meant redoing most of the game from scratch. As that was demotivating, I occasionally went back to fix up a level to then proceed to drop it for weeks. Once 2025 rolled around, thanks to the 2024 TASVideos Awards showed that a grand total of just four Atari publications were made. Since that didn't quite sit with me in terms of a big chunk of gaming being underrepresented, I finally sat down and finished up implementing the improvements and resyncing the RNG to make a version of the S.T.U.N. Runner TAS that I was happy with.
Run notes
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
- Handy core
- Aims for in-game time, though likely also happens to be the fastest regardless
- Heavy luck manipulation
Game mechanics
Maintaining speed
The best way to maintain speed when not boosting is to be in the center of the road as much as possible. This avoids the curved sides of the road as this always reduces the speed of the car. I'm pretty sure this isn't how it works in the arcade version. Also worth noting that there are some situations where getting on the side is done to avoid something that would slow down the car further, mostly with the parts of the track with missing road bits.
Boost pads
Boost pads greatly increase the speed of the car as well as grant invincibility for a period of time. This speed isn't affected by the sides of the road which allows for a bit of freedom on the track as well as grabbing some stars without slowing down.
Shockwaves and stars
Shockwaves destroy all enemies and most hazards in front of the car and some bit ahead of the car. The game starts the player with none and must be earned. There are some tracks that have a shockwave or two but not enough to stock up. The main way to stock up on shockwaves is to reach the star quota on a track. This makes collecting stars important as it allows for getting though some situations without losing any speed. This can't be done on all tracks as some quotas can't be met without getting on the sides of tubes and slowing down.
Enemies that cause issues
A lot of the enemies can be shot down with the car's gun without any issue. However, there are a few problematic enemies to worry about.
- The armor car is immune to the gun and running into them both slows down the car and causes a popup to show up. They sometimes appear in situations where the only way to avoid them is to either barely slip past them while avoiding the sides of tubes or to use a shockwave.
- Birds poop on the road, leaving black spots that slow down the car. This requires getting off center of the road which can be an issue when combined with other obstacles.
- The flying ship can shoot homing missiles. They appear often and their shots are sometimes actually impossible to dodge. While it's possible to prevent them from shooting there's situations where no manipulation can be done to avoid getting hit by the homing missile. This makes shockwaves invaluable for getting them off screen as soon as possible as aiming the car's gun up to shoot only works if the flying ship is close, which is the distance where the homing shots would've already missed.
RNG manipulation
The way to manipulate the flying ships into not shooting is to change up inputs, such as moving the car left and right or shooting at various times. This helps a lot as it means potentially saving shockwaves for much less ideal situations that can't be avoided.
Utilizing but not using the warps
There are two warps in the game. These can be found at the start of the levels they are in.
- Level 12, which jumps to level 18
- Level 9, which jumps to level 14
As this TAS plays all levels, using the warps is forbidden. However, these warps do have a boost pad that's unmarked on the map shown between levels. Using the boost pad provided by the warp gives an additional boost of speed to finish the game a bit faster.
Special thanks
I would like to thank ShesChardcore for making the Atari TAS of the Year a category at all from her sheer output of weird Atari games. This did pique my interest in checking Atari games to see what caught my eye. While there's also the Marlboro game on the Lynx that I could've done, I can't personally make a TAS that advertises cigarettes.