Road and Track Presents: The Need for Speed

Playstation port of The Need for Speed released along with the Saturn version in 1996. Being released long after the original 3DO version and the updated PC version you would think that anything wrong or criticised in those versions would have been fixed here. In fact non of that happened and here we have a poor port which looks considerably worse than the other versions but it is also incredibly difficult to play as well. It seems like the game was not play tested and balanced before rit was released and its only through the use of save states that I have made it through the game at all.

I play through the Tournament mode which consist of 6 tracks, unlocking a 7th on completion of those 6. This mode is bloody difficult, near impossible in fact. Just one mistake and you may as well restart or rage quit. The AI cars blatantly cheat by going faster then the car is capable of, blasting round corners without breaking and no negative effect of scraping on the road sides. Sometimes is not always clear where the road side is as sometimes just hitting some gravel is enough to cause a collision and other times it will let you go over the grass. This mode is no fun at all. Autumn took me a few days to crack it as just losing some speed on one corner is enough to cost you the race as you will never catch up to the car in 1st. Unfortunately you absolutely need to place 1st on every track to complete the tournament.

After completing the tournament (6 initial tracks), Rally mode is unlocked. In single race or head to head mode you can now go round 6 of the tracks with rally car handing causing you to slide around a lot more. Also the warrior car is unlocked for single race/head to head mode. This is a super car I will show later in the video. Of course it doesn't tell you that you have unlocked it. You have to press a button combo when selecting a car (L1+R1) in order to use it. Oasis Springs is also unlocked which gives rally handling in a dessert which is just a re-skin of Rusty Springs.

As I was having so much fun with the game ..... I went through tournament mode again, showing different cars where I can and on completing this, Lunar Springs is unlocked (L1+R1+Triangle) which re-skins Rusty Springs level as low gravity race on the moon. Yeah the game feels so rewarding, it still doesn't tell you about the special codes after you unlock them.

After tournament mode is completed, its time to have some fun finally. I show off both the unlocked lunar and oasis tracks in a head to head race and then I show off a Head to head in the warrior car on the city track. Now the game is populated with traffic making it more fun and the ai cars can crash as well. You can even get into a police chase of sorts. If I was to just casually play this game it would be in this mode and seems to be where the most fun is to be had. Once I'm done I show the games credits video. The last half hour of this video is just going through the Showroom information for all the cars. It takes a while.

Did this game do anything right? Introducing car physics long before games like Gran Turismo hit the scene was interesting, but the way the cars controlled just made the game a constant battle when the ai cars never have to worry about handling,speed or grip. The game kinda feels/looks more Arcady than the other versions no doubt do to the influence of the ridge racer games already on the ps1 which now I think about it, could also be fiendishly difficult at times. The cockpit view also works well and helps with immersion and with the cops and the traffic it feels like this game could have been part of the test drive series.

00:00:00 - Intro and demo video.
00:03:05 - Start of Tournament - Play through of 6 tracks. Unlocked Rally Mode, Vegas Track, Warrior car and Oasis Springs
01:06:52 - Start of 2nd Tournament - Play through of all 7 Tracks. Starts off with unlocked Vegas track. Unlocks Lunar Springs (I cut out another run on Vegas track as it wasn't needed)
02:21:25 - Head to Head mode on Lunar Springs
02:26:00 - Head to Head Mode on Oasis Springs
02:30:15 - Head to Head on City Road using Warrior car (Easily the most interesting and fun part of the video)
02:40:05 - Credits Video
02:43:10 - Showroom ALL Cars (General)
02:48:21 - Showroom ALL Cars (History)
02:58:05 - Showroom ALL Cars (Videos)
03:04:00 - Showroom All Cars (Mechanical)
03:08:47 - Showroom All Cars (Performance)