Nostalgia Sunday: Need For Speed II - Special Edition

 Need For Speed II - Special Edition

I got this game way back before the year 2000. It was for sale in a discounter and I got this along with FIFA 98, on which I might do another Nostalgia Sunday. It was a real fun game and my neighbours had it too, so we could play against each other. These were the days, where Need for Speed games were still good.

The Story:

You had three modes to choose from: Single Race, Tournament, or Knockout Race. Single Race is pretty self explanotory. You can race any track and try to get familiar with it. In Tournament mode, you race against several computer driven cars and try to become first. After finishing every track in the tournament and being first, you unlock new tracks, cars and the Knockout mode. In the Knockout mode you race against other cars. Every round, the last car gets eliminated, till there's only one left, who will be the winner. That's your "story". Who would have thought a racing game had a story anyway? Who am I kidding, I'll get to those in the "Sequels and Prequels" part.

The Game:

At first, you can choose between two modes: Arcade and Simulation. They pretty much speak for themselves, as Arcade is more for fun racing and Simulation for a more realistic feel. You then can choose between your cars, which reign from a McLaren F1 to a Ford Indigo concept car. The tracks differ from each other too. They take you into a jungle, into snowy mountains and also in the australian Outback. There's also a multiplayer mode for Splitscreen racing, or through a LAN network. There was a special track only for LAN races, but I never got to see it unfortunatly. After a while we had the game I also found out about cheats from my neighbours. Not those were really fun. You'd enter a code in the main menu and your car would change to another one. There were cars like a VW Beetle, that weren't even available through the normal game. You could even change your car to a giant T-Rex, or a toilet. It was fun experimenting with this, as you could even get a car, that was so fast, you couldn't even control it.

Prequels and Sequels:

Now if you don't know about the Need For Speed series, you have been propably living under a rock for 20 years. From being a more arcady game, it changed to being a simulation several times and back. I didn't play all the games, but some which I really enjoyed. Need For Speed Underground for the PS2, was the first NFS game I got after NFS2. The new style it had, tuning and street races, was a fresh breath in the racing genre. The whole game was fun and NFSU2 even improved on its predecessor. Then was basically again a time, where I didn't play any NFS game till today. After NFSU2, none of the NFS games seemed to appeal to me and many people thought like that too, I think. It was the same game every year, with a stupid story and not much playtime. The newest NFS game, Need For Speed The Run, is the best example. You can play through it in two hours and the long awaited "on foot" segments where just quick time events. Hopefully EA can go back to its roots and make a good NFS game again. I'd buy it.

As the first picture shows, I still have the game. I can't run it though, because it won't work on Windows 7. I have the PSX game for an emulator, but it just doesn't feel right for some way.