Need for Speed (NFS) is a series of racing computer and video games by Electronic Arts released on platforms including personal computers, Nintendo, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable consoles. The games consist of racing with various cars on various tracks.
Origin of the series
Need for Speed was originally developed by EA Canada, a game studio based in Vancouver, Canada. Prior to EA Canada's purchase by Electronic Arts in 1991, the company was known as Distinctive Software, and had already created popular racing games such as Stunts and Test Drive II. The company capitalized on its experience in the ___domain when it began developing the Need For Speed series in late 1992.
Electronic Arts Canada and Electronic Arts Seattle continued to develop, and expand the Need For Speed franchise for many years. In 2002, another Vancouver-based gaming company, named Blackbox Software, was contracted to continue the series with the title Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. Blackbox was acquired by Electronic Arts shortly before the game's publication and the company was renamed Electronic Arts Blackbox. Since then EA Blackbox has been NFS's primary developer.
Need for Speed installments
Road & Track Presents: The Need for Speed (1994)
The original Need for Speed was released for 3DO in 1994 with versions for PlayStation, PC (DOS), and Sega Saturn following shortly afterwards (1995 and 1996). The first version featured chases by police cars which remained a popular theme throughout the series - the so-called Hot Pursuit editions (Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 and Need for Speed: Most Wanted) have sold better in the marketplace than intervening versions. The initial version also featured an obnoxious opponent who taunted the player if the computer won the race or the player got arrested (which happened with the third ticket.)
The first installment of the NFS series was beyond doubt the only serious attempt to provide a realistic simulation of car handling and physics without arcade elements. Electronic Arts teamed up with automotive magazine Road & Track to match vehicle behaviour, including the mimicking of the sounds made by the vehicles' gear control levers. The game also contained precise vehicle data with spoken commentary.
Need for Speed SE (1996)
A little known edition of Need for Speed, Special Edition is sometimes considered as the lost episode of Need for Speed, though it wasn't significantly different from the 1995 PC release.
Available only on PC CD-ROM, it contained both a DOS and Windows 95 version. The Windows 95 version supported DirectX 2 and TCP/IP networking, included 2 bonus tracks and various enhancements in the game engine. This is the last game in the series to support DOS as future releases for the PC will only run on Microsoft Windows 95 or above.
Need for Speed II (1997)
NFS II featured some of the rarest and most exotic vehicles ever available, including the Ford Indigo concept vehicle, and features country-themed tracks from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. A new racing mode was also introduced in NFS II dubbed Knockout, where the last racers to finish laps will be elimated until the only leading racer remains, and wins.
Many fans of the first edition of Need for Speed were disappointed to find NFS II was arcade-like instead of preserving the realism of NFS. Though the gameplay was arcade-like, the levels were intricately well designed. In addition, track design was more open-ended; players could now "drive" off the asphalt, and even cut across fields to take advantage of shortcuts.
Need for Speed II SE (1997)
The special edition of NFS II included one extra track, extra cars, and support for Glide, the then-burgeoning 3D graphics standard used in 3Dfx's Voodoo and Voodoo 2 graphics cards.
Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (1998)
NFS III added Hot Pursuit mode, in which the player either attempted to outrun the police or be the cop, arresting speeders. Most cars and tracks were available at the beginning of the game. The objective was to unlock the rewards by winning races. It is the highest-selling of all Need for Speed games and is the most popular one.
NFS III took advantage of the multimedia capabilities of the CD-ROM by featuring audio commentary, picture slideshows and music videos. This game also was the first to allow the downloading of additional car models. A community of car builders for the game sprung up as a result.
Need for Speed: High Stakes / Road Challenge (1999)
High Stakes (US title) and Road Challenge (European title) was released in the summer of 1999. It was widely criticised for being too similar to NFS III, especially due to the fact that all of the tracks from NFS III were contained in NFS HS/RC (amongst others).
Nevertheless, High Stakes introduced several new types of gameplay: High Stakes, Getaway and Career. High Stakes is a racing mode in which the reward was the losing player's car. Getaway requires the player to outrun a pursuing police vehicle for a given time period. Career mode incorporates a monetary reward system that allowed a player to purchase vehicles and performance upgrades while earning cash by racing in a chronological set of tournaments.
Another innovation was the introduction of damage models. Vehicles which have been involved in accidents featured visibly crushed car bodies and suffered from performance penalties. After a race in Career mode, the player was given the option to purchase repairs.
Porsche Unleashed (US title) and Porsche 2000 (European title) was different from the previous versions because it featured only Porsches and featured a wealth of information regarding them. The cars handled more realistically than in any other NFS game, and there is an in-depth catalogue of different Porsche parts that span throughout the years. The player had to win races in the Evolution career mode to unlock cars in chronological order from 1950 to 2000. Porsche Unleashed also featured a Factory Driver mode, where the player had to test Porsches with various stunts and move on with his career. The game was also the first NFS game that didn't have a split screen mode. In later years, it was released for Game Boy Advance.
In terms of game construction, it is most often hailed as Need For Speed's best collaborated effort to bring forth one singular car brand and amplify and deepen the depth of knowledge both on history and motor functions. It features historical videos and many pictures of old photos of Porsche vehicles. The Evolution concept was a hit for many people, creating many new Porsche fans due to the game's high level of academia and depth of Porsche cars. The Factory Driver was also a different kind of unlocking, except to do with performing and excelling in certain slaloms, speed races, deliveries, etc. Many of the missions were considered to be really difficult; anyone who manages to finish Factory Driver can be called a great "computer" driver.
Motor City Online (2001)
Although officially bearing no Need for Speed prefix (while the working title of the game was known as Need for Speed: Motor City), Motor City Online, was an MMOG variation of Need for Speed released by EA Games on October 2001, featuring mostly American coupés and muscle cars from the 1930s to the 1970s. The game allowed players to pit each other in several modes of racing through the Internet, and were allowed customization of the player's driver, garage and vehicles. Motor City Online went offline in 2003.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (2002)
The debut Need for Speed title of Blackbox Software and the first Need For Speed for the "next-generation" of consoles, Hot Pursuit 2 draws primarily from the gameplay and style of NFS III; its emphasis was on evading the police and over-the-top tracks featuring lengthy shortcuts. While well-received by the press, it lacked the realism and sheer depth of Porsche Unleashed. Strangely, different versions of the game were produced for each system; the best version, according to the gaming press, was the PlayStation 2 version, with the Xbox, GameCube and PC versions generally considered inferior. (A different developer did those versions, and they were not ports of the PS2 version.)
Some of the cars included in the game are the Ferrari F50, the McLaren F1 and its F1 LM variant, the Porsche Carrera GT concept car, the Lamborghini Murciélago, and the Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR. The game also allows players to chase down speeders as the police. Hot Pursuit 2 is also the first Need for Speed to forego an original instrumental rock/techno soundtrack in favour of songs sung by licensed song artists under the EA Trax label. The game is also the first in the series to lack a in-car cockpit view.
For the multiplayer mode of the PC version, GameSpy's internet matchmaking system was used in place of Local Area Network(LAN)play.
Need for Speed: Underground (2003)
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A complete reimagining of the series' formula, Need for Speed: Underground offered a career mode featuring a storyline, and a garage mode that allowed players to fully customize their cars with a large variety of brand-name performance and visual upgrades. All races now take place in a city at night, and there are no police pursuits—characteristics that were reused in the sequel Need for Speed:Underground 2. Instead of hundred-thousand dollar exotics, Underground featured vehicles associated with import tuner culture. This, plus the increasingly arcade-like controls, became points of controversy for NFS fans. Despite this, Underground was commercially very successful.
It is rumoured that the car manufacturers were very strict in how their vehicles were to be portrayed in this game, especially considering the "illegal street racing" reputation of the tuner culture. EA took some effort in making the races appear as sanctioned racing events, and included a public service announcement in the game's introduction. In addition, vehicles do not have damage models at all.
While the PC version of the game featured Internet multiplayer, it strangely lacked LAN multiplayer capabilities. This limitation could be overcome with the use of third party utilities.
Need For Speed: Underground 2, the sequel to the commercial hit Need for Speed: Underground, was released on November 15, 2004. A demo of the game was placed as a "late" easter egg in finished copies of the EA Games and Criterion Games collaboration Burnout 3: Takedown, and completed versions of NFSU2 also have a demo of Burnout 3 in the game.
In Underground 2, the story continues, but there are new racing modes such as the Underground Racing League and Street X, new and more tuning options, as well as a new method of selecting races—just driving around the city (similar to Grand Theft Auto) and selecting race "beacons". Also included is an "outrun" mode where a player can challenge random opponents on the road and the race leader will attempt to distance themselves away from the opponent to defeat the opponent (similar to Tokyo Xtreme Racer). Underground 2 also introduces several SUVs, which could be customized as extensively as other Underground 2 vehicles and used to race against other SUV racers.
The game wasn't as successful as Underground, mainly due to some features that were in the game, but not expanded on, such as sound systems, which could be put in the trunk of cars, but served no purpose other than sheer flash (not unlike the body kits, spoilers, and carbon-fiber that is throughout the game, but does not alter the handling characteristics of the vehicles either). It also suffered from a debatable soundtrack.
Need for Speed Underground Rivals (2005, PlayStation Portable)
Need for Speed Underground Rivals is a PSP game released on February, March and September 2005 for Japan, the United States and Europe, respectively. In addition to Japanese cars, NFSU Rivals features several American muscle cars, including those not featured in previous Need for Speed Underground games, such as the the 1969 Dodge Charger, the 1967 Ford Mustang, and the 1997 Chevrolet Corvette C5. It is the top selling game for the PSP.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005)
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Need for Speed: Most Wanted is the latest major incarnation of Need for Speed, released on 15 November, 2005, and is one of the first games released for the Xbox 360. Most Wanted takes the series back to its roots, with police chases making up the body of the gameplay, and includes the Grand Theft Auto-like free-roaming of Underground 2, but with less extensive vehicle customization features than in the Underground series. Also, there is the "Black Edition", a special edition which features additional races and two bonus cars, a specially-tuned BMW E46 (M3) GTR and a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro.
Controversy
Concerns about the game's possible encouragement of speeding and evading legal authority surfaced when a copy of Need for Speed was found in one of two street racing Mercedes cars in Toronto in January 26, 2006; the street racer was involved in an accident which resulted in a taxi-driver's death. [1]
It should be noted, however, that celebrity-endorsed advisories have been included in opening cutscenes of Need for Speed titles since Need for Speed: Underground, stressing that players should only race within the games, as well as advising gamers to drive responsibly in real-life. This indicates that there was some recent effort in part of the games' developer to ensure that the players were informed on the dangers of imitating reckless driving.
External links
- Official NFS website
- Most Wanted PC demo
- Need For Speed Most Wanted blog
- The Need for Speed series at MobyGames
- The NFS series at ODP
- "Need for Speed: Most Wanted Tweak Guide" at TweakGuides.com
- Wine Application Database on Need for Speed II
- SimRacingPortugal - Portuguese SimRacers Community