HISTORIC ANNOUNCEMENT

[BonzaiJoe]

Okay, so, I think there is no point hiding it anymore.

The times have passed, the sun has eclipsed the sky, the smell of the smoke from Ayrton's Indy has long left the hills and the palm trees and the tennis courts of this metaphorical Stunts track. The legends are doing loop jumps in Stunts Valhalla, where the cars cannot crash. All the ghosts have drifted away to the Stunts Underworld, where they are going in infinite circles in the LM-002 on a circular track with no scenery.
Alain Il Professore has a 9 to 5 office job and CTG is discovering how nice it is to tell the truth. Diesel Joe has stopped drinking. Akoss Poo finally tried eating chili beans from a pina and found out he didn't really like it that much. Argammon's ego has shrunk down to normal size, and Zakstunts is no longer run by Zak.

In the light of these circumstances, after 16 years of secrecy, I think it's time to announce it:
I have an announcement to make.

It was back in the immaculate morning of Stunts, in the fresh spring of Zakstunts, in the glory days of Roy Wiegerinck. Brave new pipsqueaks were discovering new tricks like scientists in their laboratories, and publishing their results in the top tier peer-reviewed journal known as the Zakstunts scoreboard. The inhuman perfectionism of Ayrton was far off in the future. Renato Biker was still biking around somewhere in Brazil, oblivious to Stunts. Even Alan Rotoi was an unheard-of phenomenon that we didn't know was about to hit us. It was in an age before Meganium Aces High, before Cork's Crew and before Orion.

We are now in April 2002. It was a very special month for me because it was the month that I won my very first Zakstunts track. One month earlier, in March, I had secured my very first victory in Stunts by winning the ancient ISA track "Glasgow". But everybody knew that Zakstunts was the grand slam of the game. So when I drove my Audi to glory, edging out Roy to second place, it was the pinnacle of my career thus far.

But there was something else about that month. Something that would be remembered for years, and long after the results of the track were forgotten. Something that caused the forums to erupt in speculations and back-and-forth debate. In the middle of the month, a mysterious replay suddenly landed in Zak's inbox. It was the weirdest thing we'd seen thus far. An unknown driver taking a very strange way around the track, going off into the scenery, and driving through a loop ten times in a row. It was a festival of bad, crazy and very strange Stunts driving. Because of its weirdness, the replay was made public before the track deadline.

Maybe you can already guess where I'm going with this. Maybe you have no idea because all this stuff happened 12 years before you came to this place. Maybe you don't even understand this because you're a spambot and there are no humans anymore on this forum.

In any case, the replay had come from a mysterious sender who had named himself "Short Cutfinder", as a reference to the emerging debate about "short cuts" and how so-called shortcut finders were less deserving winners than people who just drove really well.

And so I'm compelled to announce, before I die:

It was me.

I was Short Cutfinder. Short Cutfinder came from the Aarhus ghost factory.
I composed an email to Zak from a fake email address, written in bad English that was supposed to look like it was from a Hungarian person.

And so Roy Wiegerinck asked me in the MSN Chat after the race: "How does it feel to be in first and last place on the scoreboard?". I don't know how he knew it was me. But only a few months later, as the debate about the mysterious ghost pipsqueak was still active, Roy disappeared, and with him the only other keeper of this secret which I then took with me for 16 years until this day.

Meanwhile, back in 2002, a convenient thing happened: another pipsqueak was framed.
High on the success of Short Cutfinder in causing uproar in the community, I created another crazy replay and this time submitted it to Alain's ancient Francestunts competition. Just to shake things up a bit, I put the email through Babelfish (this was before Google Translate) and turned it into Italian. And a few days later, Alain went on the forum and said "Oh, I know Short Cutfinder. He's Italian".
Now, at that time, there was only one Italian pipsqueak around. "D@rio".
ZCT11 and ZCT12 had both been won by Roy using dual-way-switching, while some other pipsqueaks had spent hours making tricks and perfecting curves, only to find themselves in 7th place because they missed the way-switch. D@rio was one of these pipsqueaks. With a daring and awesome jump on ZCT11, he had earned himself the consolation prize of "Replay of the month" while finishing far down on the scoreboard, outmanoeuvered by tricksy shortcut finders. Finally it made sense. Short Cutfinder was D@rio. Angered by the ZCT11 debacle and the subsequent ZCT12 victory also being claimed by way-switchers, he had created a nonsense replay to highlight the poor racing quality of the shortcut finders, and then left the community and slammed the door.

But no, he hadn't. It was me. And I wasn't trying to make a point, I was just trying to be funny.

But D@rio really had left, so he never responded to the claims. So Short Cutfinder withdrew into the realm of legend, and I decided to let him live there. Until today.

That's all.
Short Cutfinder was the only ghost I ever made, except for Chicago Striker, a parody of the foul CTG-spawned ghost named Gelato Baker.
Or was he?
Is there another big announcement coming in another 16 years, in 2034, when the superintelligent AI has taken over the Earth?

No, there isn't.

Or is there?


No, there really isn't.



(?)

[JTK]

Or is...?

[Shoegazing Leo]

[afullo]

All the ghosts have drifted away to the Stunts Underworld, where they are going in infinite circles in the LM-002 on a circular track with no scenery.

This metaphor of hell is quite disturbing. 

[Duplode]

All the ghosts have drifted away to the Stunts Underworld, where they are going in infinite circles in the LM-002 on a circular track with no scenery.

This metaphor of hell is quite disturbing. 

Was Short Cutfinder the original ghost, the primeval messenger from Hades?

[BonzaiJoe]

According to Stunts history, Short Cutfinder was either the 2nd or the 4th ghost.

We all know that before anyone did anything, the Kalpen brothers did everything. So it came to pass that two mysterious pipsqueaks by the names of Horst Paul and Marool Cool appeared on the scoreboard of the Kalpen contest at some point in 1998. Depending on perspective, they were either ghosts or simply alternative nicknames used by the Kalpen brothers. In any case, they were largely unknown to the Zakstunts community in 2002. Shortly before Zakstunts appeared in March 2001, however, a real ghost by the name of "Sneller Dan Ben" entered the Kalpen contest. This ghost was a reference to the Dutch top pipsqueak known as Ben Snel. I don't know who created Sneller Dan Ben, but he was arguably the first ghost, and Short Cutfinder then the second.

[Shoegazing Leo]

If you run a circular track backwards 666 times, you'll free The Stunts Devil.

[dreadnaut]

I was Short Cutfinder. Short Cutfinder came from the Aarhus ghost factory.
I composed an email to Zak from a fake email address, written in bad English that was supposed to look like it was from a Hungarian person.

I had noticed Mr. Cutfinder, but I didn't know about this. But now I have to got and watch that replay, it's part of history

I'm impressed by how long you kept the secret, though. Was it hard to live knowing that someone else had been wrongly accused of such a terrible crime?

However, you should now pay your debt to Zakstunts by sending a replay for ZCT200!

[BonzaiJoe]

A track with that many zeros in its name certainly sounds tempting.

What's the best way to run Stunts in Windows 10?

[Duplode]

A track with that many zeros in its name certainly sounds tempting.

What's the best way to run Stunts in Windows 10?

DOSBox, cranked up to ~20000 cycles with Ctrl+F12. (One little detail: if the wrong aspect ratio bothers you, pick one of the configuration files in the Wiki -- all of them fix it by setting [/tt]aspect=true[/tt].)

By the way, with my new Win 10 laptop I'm having trouble with pressing three keys simultaneously, which makes downshifiting into corners annoying. IIRC other folks here have reported similar issues in the past. The problem seems to be with the keyboard, and not with Windows, though, which might be good news if you have a keyboard better than mine.

[alanrotoi]

There should be a "StuntsLeaks" section in the stunts wiki

[Shoegazing Leo]

I'm still with Seven... Like James....

[arturbmallmann]

16 years!? i can`t stay 2 minutes without telling people something I did!! hahaha

[Shoegazing Leo]

16 years!? i can`t stay 2 minutes without telling people something I did!! hahaha

It's because you aren't danish.

[dreadnaut]

A track with that many zeros in its name certainly sounds tempting.

What's the best way to run Stunts in Windows 10?

One week left!