Need for Speed

For other uses, see Need for Speed (disambiguation).

Need For Speed (NFS) is a series of racing video games by Electronic Arts, released on platforms including the personal computer, PlayStation, PS2, PS3, GameCube, Wii, Xbox, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation Portable, and various other gaming platforms. The games consist mainly of racing with various cars on various tracks, and to some extent, include police pursuits in races. Since Need for Speed: Underground, the series has integrated car body customization into gameplay.

Origin

The Need for Speed series was originally developed by Distinctive Software, a game studio based in Vancouver, Canada. Prior to Electronic Arts' purchase of the company in 1991, it had already created popular racing games such as Stunts and Test Drive II: The Duel. After the purchase was made, the company was renamed Electronic Arts Canada. The company capitalized on its experience in the domain when it began developing the Need For Speed series in late 1992.

Electronic Arts Canada continued to develop and expand the Need For Speed franchise for many years. In 2002, another Vancouver-based gaming company, named Black Box Games, was contracted to continue the series with the title Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. Black Box Games was acquired by Electronic Arts shortly before the game's publication and the company was renamed Electronic Arts Black Box and became a part of EA Canada. Since then EA Black Box has been NFS's primary developer.

Need for Speed installments

The Need for Speed (1995)

Main article: The Need for Speed (video game)

The original Need for Speed was released for 3DO in 1994 with versions released for the PC (DOS) (1995), PlayStation & SEGA Saturn (1996) following shortly afterwards. Most cars and tracks are available at the beginning of the game, and the objective is to unlock the remaining locked content by winning tournaments. 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, Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Need for Speed: Carbon) 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 is arrested (if the player is ticketed several times).

The first installment of the NFS series was the series' only serious attempt to provide a realistic simulation of car handling and physics without arcade elements except Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, which is the most realistic. 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, several "magazine style" images of each car interior and exterior and even short video-clips highlighting the vehicles set to music.

Another version of the game, called The Need for Speed: Special Edition, is based on the 1995 PC release of the game, and was released only for PC CD-ROM in 1996 It featured support for DirectX 2 and TCP/IP networking, two new tracks, and various enhancements in the game engine.

The Need for Speed and its Special Edition are the only games in the series to support DOS, as subsequent releases for the PC only run on Microsoft Windows 95 or above.

Need for Speed II (1997)

Main article: Need for Speed II

Need for Speed 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 eliminated 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.

The PlayStation port of NFS II is the first PlayStation game to take advantage of not only the NeGcon controller, but both the Dual Analog and the DualShock controllers as well.

The special edition of NFS II, Need for Speed II: Special Edition includes 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: V-Rally (1997)

Main article: V-Rally

When the rights to release Eden Studios' V-Rally (a European game) to North America were acquired by Electronic Arts in late 1997, the game was renamed as Need for Speed: V-Rally in an attempt to boost sales. It received mixed reviews.

Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (1998)

Main article: Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit

Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit added Hot Pursuit mode, in which the player either attempted to outrun the police or be the cop, arresting speeders.

NFS III took advantage of the multimedia capabilities of the CD-ROM by featuring audio commentary, picture slideshows and music videos. This game also is the first in the series to allow the downloading of additional cars from the official website. As a result, modding communities have sprung up to create more vehicles which would otherwise be unavailable to the game.

Need For Speed: V-Rally 2 (1999)

Main article: V-Rally 2

V-Rally 2 (also known as Test Drive V-Rally for the U.S. Sega Dreamcast release and Need for Speed: V-Rally 2 for its U.S. PlayStation release) is a rally racing video game and sequel to V-Rally. It is succeeded by V-Rally 3. It was developed by Eden Studios and Atari Europe, and published by Atari Europe and Electronic Arts.

Need for Speed: High Stakes (1999)

Main article: Need for Speed: High Stakes

High Stakes (North America title) and Road Challenge (European and Brazilian 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. It is also the last game in the Need for Speed series for PC to feature a split-screen two player mode introduced in Need for Speed II.

Another innovation is 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 is given the option to purchase repairs. The mode also allows players, for the first time, to upgrade cars, although the feature simply consists of switching between three upgrade levels for each car.

The PlayStation version of the game, released some months before the PC version, features improved gameplay. Only all-new tracks were implemented without the additional rehashes from NFS III in the PC version. Additionally, the AI in the game was more advanced; the five AIs such as Nemesis, Bully and others featured different driving characteristics (ie. Nemesis would hound the player until a slipup occurs, whilst Bully exhibits a more aggressive style, occasionally ramming into the player's vehicle).

Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed (2000)

Main article: Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed

Porsche Unleashed (North America and Latin America title), Porsche 2000 (European title) or simply Porsche (in Germany) is 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 is also the first in the series since the first NFS game to not feature a split screen mode. However, the game did contain a well constructed LAN multiplayer feature. In later years, it was released for the 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. In addition, the graphics of the game were relatively impressive for the time the game was released.

Motor City Online (2001)

Main article: Motor City Online

Although officially bearing no Need for Speed prefix, 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)

Main article: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 was the debut Need for Speed title from the newly formed EA Black Box (created after the purchase of Black Box Games in Vancouver), and the first Need For Speed for the "sixth-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. Although the game allowed players to play as the police, the pursuit mode was drastically less realistic than preceding versions of NFS; players merely needed to "tap" a speeder a certain number of times to arrest them, as opposed to using actual police tactics such as the PIT maneuver to immobilize a speeding vehicle.

This was the first Need For Speed version since the start of the series that did not feature a true "in the driving seat" camera view, complete with steering wheel, dashboard etc. In some ways this can be considered to be the landmark in EA's move from realistic racing to arcade street racing.

For the multiplayer mode of the PC version, GameSpy's internet matchmaking system was used in place of Local Area Network (LAN) play. Hot Pursuit 2 is also the first Need for Speed to forego an original instrumental rock/techno soundtrack in favor of songs sung by licensed song artists under the EA Trax label.

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. (EA Seattle developed the inferior versions, they were not ports of the PS2 version which was developed by Black Box Games.)

Need for Speed: Underground (2003)

Main article: Need for Speed: Underground

A complete re-imagining of the series' formula, Need for Speed: Underground shifts focus to the import tuner culture, offering a career mode that features 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. Races take place fully at night, and police pursuits were also forgone—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.

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 (2004)

Main article: Need for Speed: Underground 2

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 Midnight Club II) 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 customization features in the game was significantly expanded to modifications that have no actual effect on vehicle performance. The sound systems, for example, could be put in the trunk of cars, but served no purpose other than sheer flash (like the numerous carbon-fiber parts throughout the game that do not alter the performance characteristics of the vehicles). The game also features more extensive product placement for companies with no connection to auto racing, such as integrating the logo for Cingular Wireless, an American wireless communications company, into the game's messaging system and displaying it on-screen for much of the gameplay.

The performance and handling of the car is not only affected from "performance shops", but things like spoilers and hoods, also affect the downforce of the car

Need for Speed: Underground Rivals (2005, PlayStation Portable)

Based off the Underground series, Need for Speed: Underground Rivals is a PlayStation Portable (PSP) game released on February, March and September 2005 for Japan, the United States and Europe, respectively. In terms of design, the game is largely similar to the Underground series, allowing users to select and drive purchased cars from a garage, as well as customizing the vehicles (with body kits, vinyls, etc.). The game's soundtrack features both new songs and existing songs from past Need for Speed games.

In addition to cars from the import scene, Rivals features several American muscle cars, including those not featured in previous Need for Speed: Underground games, such as the 1969 Dodge Charger, the 1967 Ford Mustang, and the 1997 Chevrolet Corvette C5.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005)

Main article: Need for Speed: Most Wanted

Need for Speed: Most Wanted was released on November 15, 2005, and is one of the first games released for the Xbox 360. Police chases make a comeback and represent a significant 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. The story mode is presented in a significantly different style from Underground, with CGI effects mixed with live action. The mode also features a blacklist, consisting of 15 racers that the player must beat one-by-one to unlock parts, cars and tracks.

A special "Black Edition" of Most Wanted was also released, which features additional races and challenges, and two bonus cars, a specially-tuned BMW E46 (M3) GTR and a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro, and also includes a Black Edition-only behind-the-scenes DVD. Both versions of Most Wanted are available for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Windows-based PCs. Only the standard edition of Most Wanted is available for GameCube and Xbox 360 ("Black Edition" was not produced for these platforms).

The PlayStation Portable port of Need for Speed: Most Wanted is Need for Speed: Most Wanted: 5-1-0.

Need for Speed: Carbon (2006)

Main article: Need for Speed: Carbon

Need for Speed: Carbon sees the return of nighttime-only racing, and a selection of cars similar to that of Most Wanted, including compact cars and sports cars associated with import culture, American muscle cars, and supercars. Carbon also introduces a new feature wherein the player is allowed to form a "crew," to which members with different abilities may be chosen that aid the player in races.

The game was released on November 1, 2006 for Windows-based personal computers, followed by video game consoles and handheld game consoles. Carbon's handheld port is known as Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City. Drag racing was removed from the series, but a new type of race called "Canyon Duel" was added, where the player and a game boss take turns racing down a canyon, trying to stay as close to the leader as possible.

Another new feature is "Autosculpt", which allows players to custom-fabricate their own ground effects, rims, hoods, and other parts.

Need for Speed: ProStreet (2007)

Main article: Need for Speed: ProStreet

Need for Speed: ProStreet is the latest title in the Need for Speed series. Key features of the game include very advanced graphics, realistic damage, a return to realistic racing (instead of the arcade-like racing of previous titles), modelling, burnouts and more.

The realistic damage modeling is a significant factor of gameplay. In an interview with the game's producer, he put high emphasis on the idea of gambling with the player's skill: "Do you want to push the limit and risk wrecking your car, or just play it easier..."

Also, the director made a strong emphasis on the AI skill in the game saying that "computer players will be much more difficult - capitalizing on any mistake you make." He also added that they can also make mistakes, giving the player a chance to wreck their vehicle as well. The tracks are closed, making the races fully legal, eliminating the police aspect of the games. A final point is that of car tuning: any modifications, including body kits, can significantly affect the performance of the car.

The game was released on November 13, 2007 in North America and on November 23rd 2007 in the UK.

Future

EA Games president Frank Gibeau has confirmed that the next Need for Speed installment is in development. He also stated that due to the fact that the sales of ProStreet didn't live up to EA's hopes for the game, the franchise will go back to its roots with a number of features, including open-world racing and a new highway battle mode.

It's expected that the game will feature a brand new game mechanic and a "Most Wanted-ish" sandbox style of gameplay. An official announcement is expected to be made in the beginning of July at the latest.

Platforms, screenshots, videos and news are yet to be announced.

External links

• Official NFS website
• Need for Speed at Curlie