A stunningly simple arcade racer that will keep you coming back for more.
User Rating: 8.8 | Road & Track Presents: The Need for Speed PC
Ok, I’ll admit it- Need For Speed spawned the wannabe race-car driver in me. At the time, I had a crummy, slow Pentium and couldn’t play a whole lot of games. At 30 bucks the game wasn’t exactly a bargain, but what it did with my slow hardware was wonders. I actually enjoyed it so much I bit the bullet and bought a ThrustMaster Driving Wheel and pedals for the game (which I still own for some reason). NFS had it all: Ease of use with cars that had physics but not overblown, super-realistic ones. The AI was deceptively easy after a while but they didn’t employ any cheats while racing. No phantom speed bursts, no weird traffic issues. It was simple, great and ate up a good deal of my nights when I was a kid. The music was pretty darn good with a nameless grunge sounding band providing backing music for the game. I still like to rock out to it today although I wish it had some more options. This game later had a re-release known as NFS: Special Edition which had a few more track and some cars. I thought it was worth it at the time and enjoyed that version as well. Since its inception I have bought and played every single NFS game released on the PC or Xbox. Crazy, huh? Start here where it all began. You’ll need the DOS4GW program available on the Net to get the ball rolling (unfortunately you’ll have to cobble some geek commands together), but other than that I think it is worth a look-see.
