Where Stunt Island really got tricky was in its implementation of camera angles and other assorted cinema tricks, like dolly shots, tracking shots, wide angle and zoom, etc. Cameras, just like props, could be affixed anywhere and told to behave in an infinite number of ways. Want a camera affixed to the hood of a car that looks inwards at the driver, only to spin towards the front after a certain amount of time? Easy, just slap the camera on the car, set your angle, and set up a short event that triggers the camera motion at a specific time. In this way, the player could literally do anything he or she wanted, and with so many props and sets and options, using your imagination represented the only barrier.

It wasn't long before a small community began to form that centered around Stunt Island. Unfortunately, this was before the Internet had matured, so the Stunt Island fans were pretty much stuck with Compuserve, where they'd gather, trade films, and have their own little festivals.

You see, after working with the sets and cameras and filming little chunks here and there, you could take all of your raw footage into Stunt Island's editing bay and piece it together however you wanted. You could use a microphone to add your own voice and even throw in a custom musical score. Heck, you could even do rolling credits from the editing bay.

I remember when Peter Molyneux first announced The Movies and how excited I was at the prospect of having a new version of Stunt Island. On paper, it seemed like The Movies was going to deliver the same experience, showering players with the tools to create true works of art. Instead, we got The Sims on a studio-lot and no one really cared. For those of us that remembered Stunt Island, The Movies was a letdown of galactic proportions.

At a time when Machinima is really catching on, we could use a program like Stunt Island more than ever. Disney was really trying to put some exciting software on shelves in the early 90s, but nothing really seemed to click. It's only in retrospect that most can look back and see how far ahead of the curve they were. Stunt Island is easily one of the best pieces of software no one has ever tried. And it was 15-years ahead of its time.