Enter 1995.
EA Canada develops a game called Need for Speed.
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. Surprise surprise.. EA doesn’t make you buy the additional content. This is where my love of racing games started. I owe this all to Joe. Yes, my friend of (currently) fifteen years is, and has been obsessed with cars since he was.. well.. since I’ve known him. The guy can tell a car just by the sound of it’s engine. He’s that good. He brought this game over to my house one day in 1995 and said that I must, must try it. This was prior to us getting our licenses (I’ll get to that in a while), but we knew that this was where it was at. Awesome speed and it was a great time.
1996 (1997)
Need for Speed 2 comes out. Joe gets it. I abstain from getting it. I was lucky enough to get.. *drum roll*, the Need for Speed II: Special Edition which included one extra track, extra cars. The big deal here was it had support for Glide, the then-burgeoning 3D graphics standard used in 3dfx’s Voodoo and Voodoo 2 graphics cards.
That’s right. 3dFx Voodoo and Voodoo 2 graphics cards folks. Your smart cell phone (iPhones, G1s all have more graphic horse power than those cards did back then. That’s how far we’ve come in such a short time.
The special edition was a much better deal.
Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit came around in 1998.
This was the first the new fangled multimedia as the CD-ROM by featuring audio commentary, picture slide-shows and music videos. This NFS 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. This remains to be the best feature they ever added to the game. The PC version is also the first game in Need for Speed series to support Direct 3D hardware 3D acceleration. (Yes, I know I said above that NFS:2:SE did, but you have to reread that! 3dFx Voodoo and Voodoo 2 graphics cards. 3dFx and Direct 3D 3D acceleration are two different balls of wax. They render in completely different architecture and one is more streamlined than the other, therefore runs better for gaming purposes. (Which one still exists to this day and is the better format? Hint: It ain’t 3DFx!)
Enter Need for Speed: High Stakes in 1999.
The first.. “forgettable” NFS game. Give you an idea, I had to look this up on Wikipedia:
High Stakes introduced several new types of gameplay: High Stakes, Getaway, Time Trap, and Career. High Stakes is a racing mode (within Career) in which the reward was the losing player’s car. Getaway requires the player to outrun many pursuing police vehicles for a given time period. Time Trap is where the racer has to finish a certain amount of laps within the time limit, with police cars trying to slow them down. Career mode incorporates a monetary reward system that allows a player to purchase vehicles and performance upgrades while earning cash by racing in a chronological set of tournaments. 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.
I cannot remember this game, at all.
Enter 2000. Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed revs on to the scene.
This marks the first game that I can proudly say that I love.
The vehicle handling is considered the most realistic in any 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.
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.
This is where the Need for Speed series hit it’s high point, this and the next game. I used to play this game for hours. It’s also the game that introduced me to the Porsche 911 Turbo, Type 964. Spurring my love for small, beautiful cars.
I mean what’s not to like here? Just imagine it in yellow! Oh yeah.
2002. The final game where things really hit their high point.
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. It is also the last game in the Need for Speed series for PC to feature the split-screen two player mode introduced in Need for Speed II.
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 was also the first Need for Speed to forgo an original instrumental rock/techno soundtrack in favor of songs sung by licensed song artists under the EA Trax label.
After this, I sort of gave up on the Need for Speed series. They just haven’t hit their high point again.
So, in total this is the entire NFS series:
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1. NFS 1 (SE).
2. NFS 2 (SE).
3. NFS: Hot Pursuit.
4. NFS: High Stakes.
5. NFS: Porsche Unleashed.
6. NFS: Hot Pursuit 2.
?. Motor City Online (R.I.P.) – This was an MMO that lasted about .. four weeks, maybe four months, either way it wasn’t that good and it wasn’t surprising when it died.
7. NFS: Underground.
8. NFS: Underground 2.
9. NFS: Most Wanted.
10. NFS: Carbon.
11. NFS: Pro Street.
12. NFS: Undercover.
13. NFS: Shift (PC, PS3, Xbox 360, PSP).
14. NFS: Nitro (Wii & DS).
15. NFS: World Online.
This video will take you upto 2007 so you can relive a lot of my youth with this series:
Ok, so it’s in Russian, but, you get the idea how right I was when I said that after Hot Pursuit 2 things went south to the bad side of the tracks.
If anyone has any idea if NFS: Undercover is any good, please let me know. It’s supposed to be sort of like NFS: HP 1 & 2, but until I get some judgments on it.. I’m not going to plunk down money on it (unless you readers chip in on it and demand to see it on stream if it has a windowed mode! 
).
So, as I promised, I’d do an exposé on NFS.
As far as licenses, I’ve gotten my permit before, I never really saw the point of getting a license (I’ve never had a job that was good enough to support having the bills for a car + gas expenditures. You can bathe in a car but you get some weird looks, so I opted for the house route. Not to mention everything I need is within walking distance.) Though, Joe got his as soon as he could.. and he’s still in love with racing games as am I. Though, we’ve progressed on to things like Gran Turismo or my personal favorite at the moment Forza Motorsport 3.
I’m sure you’re about to ask, out of all the cars I’ve ever raced in these games, which is my favorite?
If I ever had a choice to get a sports car.. I’d want a 1976 Alfa Romeo (in yellow of course), or a Lamborghini Diablo GTR Variant, (the only thing that’s different with the GTR and the standard Diablo is the GTR’s most important features are a modified chassis frame with integrated roll bar, improved suspensions, central fixing nut for the rims, race braking system, additional radiators for transmission oil cooling, very high performance rear wing (directly bolted to the chassis), simplified interiors and weight reduction. The engine is basically the same V12, 6 litre, of the Diablo GT which thanks to the adoption of a specially tuned exhaust system, without catalyser, delivers 590 hp (440 kW; 598 PS) (575 in the GT model)..) 40 Lamborghini Diablo GTR’s were made. 40.
So.. yeah, there you go, there’s my basic racing game youth history.
What’s next? We’ll see. We still have to go upto the modern consoles don’t we? 
Mini.
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