Need for Speed: Underground (NFSU or NFSUG) is the seventh racing game in the Need for Speed video game series developed by EA Black Box and published by Electronic Arts in 2003. It was the first Need for Speed game to be released in Japan since Need for Speed: High Stakes.
Underground is a complete reboot for the series featuring a heavy emphasis on tuner culture and a storyline-driven career mode. All races take place in a generic city at night. Rather than exotic cars, Underground featured vehicles associated with the import scene. Underground was commercially successful, and inspired a sequel.The player starts straight into the action, at a circuit race driving a uniquely styled Honda Integra Type R with wide body kit, easily winning over his opponents, only to be woken up by Samantha from his daydreaming.
Samantha is the player's friend in the new country; she shows the player how the console with the races works, who's who, and makes fun of the player's car, and introduces him to the racing scene in Olympic City, a huge coastline city. Eddie (and his orange-metallic Nissan Skyline R34), is the leader of the Eastsiders and current top racer of the streets of Olympic, and Melissa, also one of the pro racers, is his girlfriend. Samantha helps him get a first car and the player starts to proceed in the racing world.
Circuit is a standard race that involves racing with up to four opponents' cars around a loop track for one lap or more, and is the main mode of the game. For about the last 4 races of underground mode, the number of players decreases to only 1 rival, and the number of laps reach up to seven.
Knockout Mode is similar to previous Need for Speed titles, involves "knocking out" the last racer who passes the starting line in each lap until the final leader of the race remains, and wins the race. In the case of Underground, Knockout sessions have a maximum of three laps for four racers.
Sprint mode is a variation on the Circuit mode, where the contestants race in a point-to-point track instead of loop tracks. These races are typically shorter than "circuits" (with a maximum of 8 km in length), so players are required to be more cautious of any mistakes during racing.
Drifting is the most challenging and technical aspect of the game. Drifting is when during a race you intentionally slide around a corner at high speeds. Drift mode consists of one player in a short loop track, where the objective is to collect as many points as possible by drifting along the track. The player competes with three other contestants, who appear to accumulate scores along with the player during the drift session. The player would be required to beat these scores in order to obtain top positions.
Bonuses are awarded for players who drift in the outer borders of the track, drift vertically, or perform chained-drifting (continuous drifting by constantly steering the vehicle during drifts to maintain speed); if the player succeeds in ending a drift without collisions onto the sides of the track, the collected points are added into the score, otherwise, the collected points are cancelled.
Drift mode is the only type of racing where time taken to complete the track does not matter, since players are given the freedom to complete the allocated number laps at their own pace. This may explain the absence of nitrous oxide in this mode, since it serves no apparent purpose in this situation.
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
Processor: Pentium 3 @ 700 MHz
RAM: 256 MB
Hard Disk: 1GBfree
Video Memory: 32 MB
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon