Long before “Machinima” became a popular buzzword in the world of PC gaming, there existed a little game called Stunt Island, released in 1992 by Disney Interactive. It was one of those games that flopped at retail, wasn't properly marketed and represented something so different that the average gamer just shrugged it off without interest. Fortunately, I was one of the few who picked up a copy, knowing very little about what the game was about, and soon found myself addicted to what, even to this day, is one of the most innovative games ever released.

The Original Sandbox

Stunt Island was composed of several different parts, including a flight-simulator, a set designer, an editing room, a stunt coordinator and, finally, a movie theater where you could watch your finished creation. It was the flight-sim aspect that lured most people into purchasing Stunt Island, if for no other reason than it represented a nice departure from typical flight-sims, i.e., civilian simulators as well as military combat, namely Microsoft's Flight Simulator and Spectrum Holobyte's Falcon. Stunt Island was attempting to appeal to the casual gamer and as such, the physics for its time were passable but in no way authentic.

While you could simply select a plane and start flying with no particular destination in mind, the heart of the flight-sim was in completing tasks given to you by a film director. You'd receive a briefing of the stunt required and then you'd strap in and attempt to perform the stunt as flawlessly as possible. Stunts could range from landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier to engaging in an aerial dogfight to a little barnstorming action. There were 32 stunts in all, each one noticeably difficult, especially considering that the film director was extremely demanding and near-impossible to please. After all was said and done and the stunt was successfully completed, the player would be treated to the final film version that depicted your stunt with all kinds of camera angles and tracking shots.

The stunt mode was fun and hard as hell, but it wasn't where I found the genius hiding in this title. No, the real innovation lurked in all of the other options and it didn't take long to realize that Stunt Island was significantly more than just another wacky flight-sim; It was a movie making program, the first...and last, of its kind.

Peter Molyneux's The Movies? Pffffft

Using an admittedly cumbersome interface, players could load up the set designer and place props anywhere they chose within the borders of a very large city. There were hundreds of objects to place, everything from trees to cars to people to fire-hydrants. Cycling through all of the options was a sincere test of patience, and perhaps the single biggest flaw of Stunt Island that no doubt limited its potential, but for those psychopaths like me, the pain was worth the effort. Beyond placing props, you could also allocate timed events and triggers, so if you wanted a car to explode at a specific time, you could do so.