Road & Track Presents: The Need For Speed Special Edition,
or just NFSSE because who has time to say words!
As much as I adore and appreciate the original 3DO game from 1994, NFSSE from 1996 for the
PC holds an irreplaceably special spot in my mind.
It was not only the first retail PC game I bought completely on my own at eleven years
old, but it was my first CD-ROM game period.
And I didn’t even have a computer that could play it yet, I was just that excited.
At the time all I had was this Packard Bell Legend 486, with a 66MHz 486 CPU, 4 megs of
RAM, a couple floppy drives, and no sound beyond the internal PC speaker.
But dang it, I knew one day we would have to get a new PC with a CD-ROM drive.
And one of the biggest reasons I wanted one was for games like The Need For Speed SE,
which I lusted after every time I went to the local Software Etc store.
So I just jumped the gun and bought it when this cheaper CD-ROM Classics re-release showed
up in spring of 1997.
I’d stare at the back of the box over and over, imagining what it’d be like to play.
I’d stare at the disc emblazoned with my name in Sharpie ink and wonder how cool it’d
be to plop it into a CD drive.
Finally, for Christmas of 1997, this brand new computer showed up under the tree and
augh, the excitement!
Say hello to the Acer Aspire model 1280, with a 233MHz AMD-K6, 32 megs of RAM, and most
exciting to me: a 24x CD-ROM drive.
And naturally, the first thing I installed that Christmas afternoon?
The Need For Speed Special Edition.
I’d had it for months just sitting there in my closet, waiting to be installed.
And dude, the first time seeing this sound and video test brought tears to my eyes...
*tear-inducing sounds play*
But beyond regurgitating some happy, nostalgic memories, I want to explore NFSSE in a way
I haven’t done before on LGR.
While I covered the original game and its various spin-offs years ago, I don’t feel
that I provided SE the spotlight it deserves.
And let’s be honest, the video quality left a bit to be desired...
So I’m ready to give a proper look at The Need For Speed Special Edition for DOS and
Windows PCs, developed by the Pioneer Productions team within EA Canada in 1996.
There are six things we’re gonna touch on that I find important for evaluating NFS games,
and really racing games in general: vehicles, locations, visuals, sound, driving, and community.
What these entail can change with each game, but overall I think these categories bring
together what I feel makes each title in the series stand out -- for better or worse.
Let’s start with the vehicles, which in the case of NFSSE is a
goldmine of mid-90s greatness.
“Eight purebred exotics,” states the back of the box, with each of them only being available
in one color: the black Lamborghini Diablo VT, the polo green Corvette ZR-1, the dark teal Porsche
911 Carrera, Rosso Corsa Ferrari 512TR, silver Acura NSX, yellow Mazda RX-7, red Toyota Supra
Turbo, and the entire reason I bought this: the blue Dodge Viper RT/10.
I’ve always been a bit of a car nut, but as a kid my whole automotive world revolved
around the Viper.
And The Need For Speed was the only game at the time that had a Viper in there officially,
so it was a must-have.
Plus, being a tie-in to Road & Track magazine meant they included interactive showcases
for the Viper and every other car.
It wasn’t the first game to do this, with 1992’s Car & Driver being another magazine-based
PC game that proudly displayed detailed car stats, but NFSSE was
certainly the more technically impressive example.
They went all out with the multimedia aspect, including voiced descriptions of each car’s
specs and history, as well as their own radical music videos.
*radical music videos play*
*still playing, still radical*
And finally, if you happened to win in Tournament Mode you unlocked the fictional Warrior PTO
E/2, a 240 MPH bonus car that was new to these later releases of The Need For Speed.
It’s jet-powered and purple and absurd and I love it.
But what are the cars without somewhere to drive them, and thankfully NFSSE includes
a pleasant variety.
Starting off the locales are City, Coastal, and Alpine: three open-road tracks divided
up into three segments each.
*engine revving and tires screeching*
Each one provides a point-to-point race and the best two out of three
wins the overall course.
These were always my favorite tracks in the game, mainly because they included traffic
and police vehicles to spice things up.
Granted, the police chases were nothing too involved, it’s as simple as “if they get
past you, you’re forced to slow down.”
Still, getting ticketed, arrested, and seeing that FMV sequence
was more than exciting enough at the time.
Cop: "You're just cryin' out for some rehabilitation, aren't you?"
*rehabilitation noises commence alongside rock music*
Oh yeah, and that Planet of the Apes reference at the end of Coastal 3, that excited me too
since I’d only just discovered those movies back then.
But while I played those three segments over and over, the bulk of the game’s tracks
are closed race courses: Rusty Springs, Autumn Valley, and Vertigo Ridge make a return from
the non-SE DOS release, and Burnt Sienna and Transtropolis are new to the special edition.
You could also change the time of day settings before playing, although it doesn’t do much
beyond apply a filter on top of the gameplay that doesn’t look very appealing in my opinion,
especially if you race in the cockpit view where it really clashes.
And yeah, I’m not a huge fan of circuit racing, in this or any other racer where you
also have the option to race through traffic.
I don’t know, it’s just that boyhood fantasy of being able to drive an exotic car on the
wrong side of the road and skirt danger that appeals to me.
At least the circuits all look distinct here, with environments and layouts that stand out
more than the modern day tradition of recreating true-to-life raceways
that all kinda blend together in my mind.
They’re also charmingly mid-90s, with a mix of 2D and 3D elements that really tickle
my fancy at the moment.
Heck, you can’t even turn around and drive the other way due to the limitations of the
engine, it’ll just show an overhead view of the front of your car.
And then once again, if you beat the tournament mode you unlock a bonus track: Lost Vegas.
This was absolutely a favorite of mine, especially paired with the Warrior car.
Not only does it look nothing like the other tracks in the game, but its design is absolutely
absurd with dangerously high embankments and jumps that have no place in reality.
But enough about racetracks, how about that soundtrack?
*NFSSE rock soundtrack plays*
While the original 3DO game lacked music while racing, NFSSE more than made up for it by
including both a techno and a rock soundtrack you could choose between in the options menu.
These were composed by Jeff van Dyck and Saki Kaskas, who were in a band called The Heavy
Lounge at the time, which apparently mixed prog rock with jazz, funk, and metal.
And it shows in the soundtrack here, with a unique blend of styles going on with each
song, all of which only improve the racing.
The rock tracks especially stand out to me, which were all existing songs that
Kaskas recorded years earlier for a demo tape he described as “pretty cheesy stuff.”
Well hey bring it on, I love me some cheese...
*gloriously cheesy metal soundtrack plays*
However, I’m truly sad to say that Mr. Kaskas passed away
in late 2016 at just 45 years old.
It bums me out, the guy was prolific and talented and I always enjoyed his work, not just here
but on the next four NFS titles and dozens of other games.
It wasn’t just music either, he also did a bunch of sound design later on too.
Not on SE mind you, even though the sound design is on-point here.
Each car has its own separate sounds for engine, horn, and even the gear-shifting.
That kind of attention to detail was not the norm at the time.
*cave ambience plays, followed by car sounds and waterfall noises*
And on top of that, I always found the overall sound selection to be quite enjoyable, from
the peaceful spray of waterfalls to the crunchy mangling of sheet metal when you crashed.
*sheet metal twisting and car crashing noises*
The driving also pleased me to no end, specifically due to the physics and handling models implemented.
Granted, it wasn’t as grounded in reality as the 3DO original, or even the non-special
edition of NFS for DOS.
But I didn’t know that back then and it still had a leg up on any other racer I’d
experienced to that point.
Whether played from an external camera or inside with a view of the dashboard, each
car felt like its own beast to be tamed.
Although I always found it odd that they removed the company and
model branding from the steering wheels.
Maybe there’s a technical reason for that but it just looked weird.
Still, the fact that these photographed interiors looks so believable and multiple gauges moved
made it feel awesomely realistic.
Well, realistic to an 11-year-old who’d never driven before could imagine, at least.
And even though I was driving using an analog flight stick back then, it truly felt like
a simulation rather than the more arcade-y fare I was used to at the time.
That is what made The Need For Speed SE stand out to me: cars felt heavy, yet nimble, precise,
yet on the verge of spinning out if you apply too much power.
Each one had their own characteristics you could feel by driving, like the Diablo’s
all-wheel-drive traction and the 911’s weighty read end sliding around corners.
And of course, there were the crashes, ahh the crashes.
Half the time my friends and I would just play the game to see who could wreck the most
spectacularly, ramming traffic head-on and flipping end over end.
Extra points to whoever could take advantage of the boxy car physics
and land a crash balanced on the front end.
We’d especially like to target specific cars and pretend they were people in real
life we didn’t like, haha.
Like, “oh man, that looks like so-and-so’s car, WRECK ‘EM!”
In the days before GTA, this was our adolescent catharsis.
We also loved trying to knock down the scenery.
Not just road signs, but pretty much everything on the side of the road could be knocked over
if you hit it, like these trees holding up the checkpoint banners.
NFSSE also had a robust replay editor and highlight reel, which was extra handy for
reviewing and saving our best crashes to prove they actually happened how they did.
And all that was just screwing around in Head To Head Mode.
When you wanted more there were Single Race, Time Trial,
and Tournament Modes to choose from.
Time Trial was boring to me since it was just racing against the clock, Single Race was
like Head To Head but with a full pack of opponents, and Tournament Mode was where it
presented groups of cars together to race through every track in the game with the goal
of accumulating the most points.
I think I did this a grand total of once before going back to Head To Head Mode and crashing
into everything again, hehe.
But whatever, it was still fun to play against friends in these extra modes, even if it was
just taking turns to see who could win the most races in a row.
There was also an 8-player multiplayer mode over modem or LAN added to Special Edition,
but nobody I knew had the hardware or the know-how to set that up so we never even tried.
There was also the increased difficulty mode, No Mercy, available by pressing the “End”
key, and unlockable mirrored and rally-style versions of each track.
The rally tracks in particular were quite fun, coating every bit of tarmac in gravel,
and making it extra fun to challenge my friends to powerslide
around turns at higher speeds than ever.
Speaking of friends, that brings me to the final point of analysis: community.
And what I mean by this is the following that built up around it, mostly online, in the
form of websites and modding.
NFSSE never really built up the kind of community that later games in the series did, especially
in terms of mods and shared content.
But there were certainly a fair number of sites dedicated to providing cheats and help
with modifying the game.
I remember reading through these file format specifications with awe, wondering what could
be done to bend the game to my will.
And while I never saw any custom cars made for it, you could at least modify the track
layouts with TRACK-ED, or TRACKED.
This charmingly cumbersome DOS program mostly let you add insane jumps and turns to the
existing tracks, making for some game-breaking
silliness that was fun to play with in short bursts.
But that was about as deep as it got, and by the time there were some decent editing
tools and mods popping up, people were already moving onto the next game in the series.
Although personally my friends and I continued to play it off and on for years.
And that about sums up The Need For Speed SE experience for me.
It’s still pretty darned fun to play to this day due to the handling, art direction,
music, and the fact that it’s so straightforward in its approach to racing.
No grand story or campaign, no upgrades, you can’t even change the color of your cars.
It’s just a way to toss some realistically-modeled exotics around a track, with a few concessions
to the physics to allow for some devious fun screwing things up on top of that.
The Need For Speed was a landmark racing game that spawned a gigantic franchise that’s
somehow still going to this day, and this Special Edition will always be special to
me regardless of it being called special or not.
It may leave a thing or two to be desired in terms of physics and odd technical quirks
getting in the way, but compared to the next entry,
well, I think it did okay for itself.
And what I mean by that will have to wait ‘till next time.
And do let me know what you think of this video because I’d like to cover the next
several games in the series in a similar fashion.
But in the meantime, I’ve got plenty more LGR already made
and more coming every Monday and Friday.
And as always, thank you very much for watching!