Retro: Need For Speed

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the legendary racing game series.

In September 1994, the first part of the legendary racing series Need For Speed ​​was released on the 3DO game console.

Despite the fact that there are still a few months left until the 20th anniversary of the franchise, Electronic Arts has already begun to celebrate this significant event.

TJournal recalls what the Need For Speed ​​series has been like over the past two decades and assesses its immediate prospects.

Lamborghini and mountain serpentine

Since history is known to be a spiral, the very first Need For Speed ​​games are much like the most recent ones, with racers in outrageously expensive cars battling for leadership on scenic tracks, occasionally clashing with the police.

The full name of the first game in the franchise is Road & Track Presents: The Need for Speed. Presented to the public as a fairly realistic racing simulator, it was created in collaboration with the automobile magazine Road & Track. However, by the sequel, released in 1997, this postscript had fallen off forever.

The first Need For Speed ​​featured only 10 cars, including the legendary Porsche 911 Carrera, Lamborghini Diablo and one secret model with a propeller and an airplane engine.

There was also a rather superficial mode of escape from the forces of law and order. In it, the player had to prevent the police from overtaking him: after three “tickets” received, a defeat was counted.

The third part received the subtitle “Hot Pursuit”, the police theme became the main one for the series, and the game itself finally threw aside realism and turned into a full-fledged arcade game. Tuning made its debut in Hot Pursuit: cars now have variable characteristics that significantly affect handling.

The police in the game learned new tricks like road blocks and spikes, and they themselves switched to racing cars so as to be in no way inferior to fans of fast driving.

Following the success of Hot Pursuit, Electronic Arts began experimenting. In 1999, Need for Speed: High Stakes was released. The main course in it was one-on-one racing, where the winner got the opponent's car (hence the name).

Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, released a year later, turned out to be one of the most original games in the series. It featured an extremely detailed physical model and an exclusive agreement with Porsche.

The game featured only cars of this brand from the 50s until the early 2000s: their use in projects from other publishers was prohibited. Old fans of the series remembered Porsche Unleashed for a long time: after it, Need For Speed ​​gave up realism for many years.

In 2002, along with the game Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, the studio EA Black Box debuted, which subsequently managed to be both riches and rags - by the end of the 2000s, former fans sincerely hated it.

Hot Pursuit 2 was the first Need For Speed ​​in which you could play as a police officer. It marked the end of an era: for the next few years the series was dedicated exclusively to street racing.

Going underground

In 2001, the film “Fast and the Furious” was released on cinema screens around the world, which instantly became a cult classic. All of his main fetishes, including drag racing (a quarter-mile straight race in which it is important to change gears in a timely manner), drift racing, neon lighting and nitrous oxide were carefully transferred to Need For Speed: Underground.

The game, which is now definitely considered a cult one, was greeted coolly by old fans of the series, but with its help the franchise acquired even more new ones.

Even after 11 years, the title track of Underground, called Get Low, remains popular: its Russian-style chant “Erondondon” is still a popular meme.

In addition to tuning, advanced modding also appeared in Underground: you could change your car beyond recognition using a wide range of spoilers, bumpers, hoods, wheels and paint options. At the same time, the game's car fleet sharply tilted towards Japan: the most desirable car in it was the Nissan Skyline GT-R R-34.

Need for Speed: Undeground 2, released a year later, built on the success of the original by abandoning individual tracks in favor of an entire city where the sun never rises. Underground 2 was the first game in the series to feature a guest star: model Brooke Burke graced its cutscenes.

The next installment of Need For Speed ​​brought back something that was sorely missing from street racing games - the police. Despite the fact that Need for Speed: Most Wanted was in many ways similar to the Underground series, the emphasis in it has changed noticeably. Eternal night was replaced by eternal autumn, and the player’s main goal was to take first place on the list of the most wanted street racers.

After the release of Most Wanted, the series began to openly become feverish. The subsequent Carbon (team racing) and Pro Street (professional racing) were received ambiguously by the public, and with the release of the frankly unsuccessful Need for Speed: Undercover, it became clear that EA Black Box was no longer sufficient for the annual cycle to create new games in the series.

Last generation

A year after the release of Undercover, the series returned to realism. Need For Speed: Shift was entrusted to be developed by Slightly Mad Studios, which at that time had proven itself with simulators like GT Legends.

The project was developed with advanced players in mind and was successful enough to get a sequel in 2011. At a certain stage, it was assumed that Electronic Arts would divide the series into two parts: arcade and realistic, but Shift 2 was released without the words Need For Speed ​​in the title and became the completion of this branch.

In 2009, an MMO version of Need For Speed ​​was also released with the subtitle World, in the development of which the previously retired EA Black Box took part. The game earns money using a free-to-play model, and it is supported at the time of writing.

In 2010, Electronic Arts decided to return to its roots and hired the services of Criterion Games, known for the Burnout series, to create a remake of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. The main feature of the game was the Autolog system, which spurred the user on by constantly comparing his results with those of his friends.

However, like subsequent Criterion projects, including the 2012 remake of Need For Speed: Most Wanted, the project was received better by the press than by players. The popularity of the series fell every year.

In 2011, the Black Box studio unexpectedly returned with a project called Need For Speed: The Run, which was radically different from all other games in the series. There are no circuits in it, because it tells about one large-scale race across America, accompanied by cinematic plot inserts. The Run was not liked by players or the press because it only lasted about 4-5 hours and, at $60, wasn't a great buy.

Again from scratch

In 2013, Electronic Arts announced the creation of a new studio called Ghost Games, which will further develop the series. Its Need For Speed: Rivals, created for the new generation consoles PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, was also received coolly, so in the anniversary year of 2014, for the first time in the last 13 years, not a single part of Need For Speed ​​will be released: Ghost Games is once again rethinking franchise to return to the market in 2015.

In the spring of 2014, the first film adaptation of this series of games was released, which was called “Need For Speed: Need for Speed” in Russian box office. DreamWorks took advantage of the break in Universal's Fast and Furious series to try to launch its own racing franchise, but the attempt was not very successful.

The film, which had a budget of $66 million, grossed $202 million worldwide, but received scathing criticism for its stupid script, which made it difficult to enjoy the well-choreographed racing sequences.

What's next

While modern players are dreaming about the release of Need For Speed: Underground 3, the legendary series still cannot find its new self and is losing popularity. This is partly the fault of Electronic Arts itself and its love for assembly line production, and partly the decline of the genre as a whole.

In recent years, only console exclusives like Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo, British projects from Codemasters, or long-term construction simulators like Project CARS have had great success in this field. There are practically no low-budget racing games, and the middle class has simply disappeared.

Whether Need For Speed ​​will ever be able to regain its former power and begin to be successfully released annually again, no one knows. But the fact remains that Electronic Arts doesn't even have a game to celebrate the series' 20th anniversary.

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