Possibly Carbon as well but I’m not too familiar with many of the games that released after Most Wanted. This period includes what many consider some of the best games in the series – Underground, Underground 2 and Most Wanted (2005). Underground marks the start of Need for Speed’s what I’ll call edgy period. The text doesn’t appear during races so it’s not a huge deal. I looked for a fix but couldn’t find a solution that worked. My only issue with ThirteenAG’s fix for Underground in particular is what I’m guessing is debug text visible on the sides of the screen when navigating around menus. I did play the game with an Xbox Series X controller and am happy to report that I encountered no issues with the controls. It improves controller support, adds controller button icons and allows the player to adjust the controller stick deadzone, among other things. I installed ThirteenAG’s widescreen fix which actually does more than just support higher resolutions.

I did consult the game’s PCGamingWiki page to see what I would need to do to get it running on a modern system.

For this review, I played the PC version. There were also versions released for Game Boy Advance and Arcade which were worked on by different developers.

I think it’s the style and atmosphere that stuck with me more than the gameplay and since people still bring it up in discussions about the series, I figured I would give it another shot and see what all the fuss is about.ĭeveloped by EA Black Box and published by EA Games, Need for Speed: Underground was released for PC, Xbox, GameCube, and PlayStation 2 in November, 2003. But for some reason I never forgot my experience with it. So I played it once on his GameCube and then moved on because it didn’t feature police pursuits. I was fourteen when it released and my friend who is a little younger than me, was the kind of kid who would occasionally go through what I’m calling phases and when he got Underground, he was suddenly an expert on cars. Need for Speed: Underground is one of the more interesting games in the Need for Speed series to me because it has yet to leave my memory despite the fact I played the game once for less than an hour.

Need for speed underground 1 online