Need for Speed

• 1. A Name That Stuck

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  Need for Speed is a racing franchise that had sold more than 150 million copies by October 2013. That places it among the most successful game series of all time. It began in 1994 with a single game, The Need for Speed. Its latest installment, Need for Speed Unbound, arrived on the 2nd of December 2022. In between, Electronic Arts published games that shared a name but often little else. Some were arcade street races with police on the player's tail. Others were close to driving simulators, and a few added kart racing ideas or dropped the police entirely. How did one title cover so much ground? Which studios built it, and why did the series go quiet after Unbound?

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• 2. Studio Handoffs

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  Distinctive Software, a Vancouver studio, had already made Stunts and Test Drive II: The Duel when Electronic Arts bought it in 1991. The purchase turned it into EA Canada. By late 1992 that team had begun building Need for Speed, and it kept expanding the franchise until 2002. That year EA acquired another Vancouver developer, Black Box Games, and contracted it to continue with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. Meanwhile Slightly Mad Studios made the simulation racers Shift in 2009 and Shift 2: Unleashed in 2011.

  Criterion Games, a British studio, made the 2010 Hot Pursuit, and critics received it well. The Black Box games since 2007's ProStreet had met a mixed reception. That contrast made Criterion the lead developer. At E3 2012, its vice president Alex Ward announced that random developers would no longer make Need for Speed games. He stopped short of promising that Criterion would build every future title. He did say the studio would have "strong involvement" and would decide which games were released.

  In August 2013, after Criterion was downsized, the Swedish studio Ghost Games became the main developer. About 80 percent of its workforce was former Criterion staff. Between 2013 and 2019 it made Rivals, the 2015 reboot, Payback in 2017 and Heat in 2019. Rivals was positively received, while the reboot and its follow-ups drew more mixed reviews. Heat would be the last game Ghost Games released before the studio was dissolved in 2020.

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• 3. Realism Experiments

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  Seasoned drivers from the magazine Road & Track tuned the handling of the original game, working directly with Electronic Arts staff. They matched car behavior to the real thing, including believable oversteer and understeer. That handling is described as impressive even decades later. Even the sounds of the gear levers were modeled. Each car came with spoken commentary, several magazine-style images and a short video clip set to music. Most cars and tracks were open from the start, and winning tournaments unlocked the rest. The game appeared first on the 3DO, then on MS-DOS in 1995 and on PlayStation and Saturn in 1996.

  A PC-only Special Edition in 1996 added DirectX 2 support, TCP/IP networking and two new tracks. It also gave up the popular flip and go recovery after a crash for a plain scene reset. That swap was an early hint of the arcade style that would dominate the series afterward.

  Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed in 2000 featured only Porsches. Players unlocked them in chronological order, from 1950 to 2000, and a Factory Driver mode had them test the cars to progress. The PC version had what was said to be the most realistic handling in any game of the series. The PlayStation version used very simplified arcade handling instead.

  Shift, in 2009, returned to simulation with more than 60 cars and 19 tracks, a cockpit view and adaptive difficulty. It raced on real circuits such as the Nürburgring and Laguna Seca, plus fictional street circuits in cities like London and Chicago. Reviews were better than for the three games before it. Shift 2 grew to over 140 vehicles and 40 real-world locations, including Bathurst, Spa-Francorchamps and Suzuka. Even so, it offered fewer cars than rivals such as Forza Motorsport 3 and Gran Turismo 5.

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• 4. Street Culture Takeover

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  Need for Speed: Underground, from EA Black Box in 2003, moved the series away from sports cars on scenic point-to-point tracks. It chose an import and tuner subculture instead, with racing in an urban setting. Every circuit except the drift courses sat on a single map, Olympic City. The game added Drag and Drift modes, its first story told through pre-rendered videos, and tuning from widebody kits and spoilers to engines and nitrous. It had no police, which drew criticism because police had been central to earlier games.

  Underground 2 followed in 2004 and brought the open world that set the tone for many later games. It added SUVs, an outrun mode where players challenge random opponents, and the actresses and models Brooke Burke and Kelly Brook as in-game guides. Appearance was rated from zero to ten points, and a high enough score made a car eligible for DVD and magazine covers. Those covers were the only way to reach higher levels. A demo shipped as a bonus in copies of Burnout 3: Takedown.

  Carbon, in 2006, let players form a crew that helped in races and added Canyon Duel events. Overtake the leader and stay ahead for 10 seconds, and the player wins automatically. Drag racing was removed, and an Autosculpt tool let players fabricate their own parts. Police took a back seat.

  ProStreet, in 2007, dropped free roam for closed tracks and organized race days, with realistic damage and drag, speed, grip and drift events. Sales fell short of EA's projections, and EA Games president Frank Gibeau said the series would return to its "roots". The next game, Undercover, still scored lower on aggregate than ProStreet.

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• 5. Cops and Racers

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  Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, in 1998, introduced a mode where players either outran the police or played the cop arresting speeders. It was also the first game in the series to let players download extra cars from the official website. Modding communities sprang up to build vehicles. Its PC version was the first in the series to support Direct3D hardware.

  High Stakes, in 1999, added a damage system that changed how cars looked and performed after a collision. Cash prizes from economy-based tournaments paid for repairs, new cars and upgrades. Hot Pursuit 2, in 2002, simplified the chase: a player merely had to tap a speeder to make an arrest. It was the first game without a cockpit camera and the first to use licensed songs under the EA Trax label.

  Most Wanted, in 2005, built its story around the Blacklist, a crew of 15 racers beaten one by one. Players had to meet requirements such as races completed and bounty earned before challenging the next rival. Reviews were extremely positive, and with 16 million copies sold it is the best-selling game in the franchise. In Undercover, in 2008, the player was a cop in the fictional Tri-City Bay, with live-action cutscenes featuring the actress Maggie Q.

  Criterion's 2010 Hot Pursuit unfolded in a fictional rural area called Seacrest County, with over 60 cars and weapons for both sides. Its biggest feature was Autolog, which tracked progress, recommended events and offered speedwalls for comments and photos. The game won several E3 awards and was remastered in November 2020 with cross-platform multiplayer and 4K support. Shift 2 and The Run later reused Autolog. Rivals added the AllDrive system, and Heat in 2019 gave greater rep for pursuits at night than by day.

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• 6. Garage and Map

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  The Lamborghini Murciélago, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, Chevrolet Corvette and Ford GT headline the exotic class in the series. Muscle cars include the Ford Mustang, Dodge Challenger and Chevrolet Camaro, while tuners include the Nissan Skyline and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. A fourth class, special vehicles, covers civilian and police cars such as the Ford Crown Victoria in Hot Pursuit. Carbon went further, offering garbage trucks, fire engines and taxis.

  Tuning changed as the games did. It grew from mechanical settings such as ABS, traction control and downforce, or upgrades to the engine and gearbox, to how a car looked. Every game except Hot Pursuit offers some form of it. Before each race players can choose automatic or manual transmission, and every game has a multiplayer mode through split screen, LAN or the Internet.

  The earliest games raced on tracks in Australia, Europe and Africa. From Underground onward the settings became fictional cities, with names such as Bayview, Fairhaven City and Redview County. Damage and physics vary by title. In some games cars suffer mechanical and visual damage, while in others they cannot be harmed. Traffic changed too. The first game offered it in "head to head" mode, and since Underground it has been a fixed obstacle.

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• 7. Strays and Screens

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  V-Rally arrived in 1997 from Infogrames Multimedia and had no connection to Need for Speed. Electronic Arts bought the rights to publish its PlayStation version in the United States, where rally racing had little support. It did the same for V-Rally 2 in 1999 in North America. In 2001, Motor City Online began life as Need for Speed: Motor City, but all its single-player elements were dropped. Released on the 29th of October 2001, it went offline in less than two years so EA could focus on The Sims Online.

  Need for Speed: Top Speed, released on the 1st of October 2002, promoted the IMAX film Top Speed and the new Porsche Cayenne Turbo. Its three courses came from Porsche Unleashed, renamed to refer to Canadian locations because of Travel Alberta Canada's sponsorship. Need for Speed: World, a free-to-play online racer, copied the cities of Rockport and Palmont from Most Wanted and Carbon. Its servers closed in July 2015.

  Some games never shipped. A Ferrari game was cancelled before Porsche Unleashed even came out. Need for Speed 64 was cancelled between late 1998 and early 1999, after a Volkswagen deal turned the project into Beetle Adventure Racing. Need for Speed 10: TerrorFive, pitched around 2008, imagined street racers who hack into police cars. Millionaire, from Criterion, was described by Alex Ward as "Freeburn meets Top Gear challenges". It had a playable version after six months but gave way to Hot Pursuit.

  Phones got their own entries. No Limits, from Firemonkeys Studios in 2015, was the first original Need for Speed made only for mobile devices. Need for Speed Mobile, from TiMi Studios, is the only game in the series built on Unreal Engine 4. It launched in China on the 11th of July 2024.

  The brand also reached the cinema. DreamWorks Pictures and EA made a film in which Aaron Paul plays Tobey Marshall, a mechanic and street racer framed by a wealthy business associate. Touchstone Pictures released it on the 14th of March 2014. Reviews were negative, yet it earned over $200 million worldwide. A sequel was reported in April 2015, and the franchise also licensed Hot Wheels toys.

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• 8. The Long Pause

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  In February 2020, Criterion regained oversight of the franchise. Its first game since then, Unbound, was built with help from Codemasters. Characters and vehicle effects use a cel-shaded art style, while the cars keep their photo-realistic look. The story takes place in Lakeshore City, a fictional city inspired by Chicago. The rapper ASAP Rocky appears as a character who drives a modified Mercedes 190E.

  Older games were fading by then. Carbon, Undercover, Shift, Shift 2 and The Run were delisted from online stores, and their servers shut down on the 31st of August 2021. The 2010 Hot Pursuit and the 2012 Most Wanted stayed available.

  In September 2023, Criterion moved from EA Sports to EA Entertainment. Most of the studio began supporting the Battlefield series, though EA's Vince Zampella said some staff were still assigned to the next Need for Speed. In February 2025, EA said that game was on hold, as the whole of Criterion shifted to Battlefield 6. In August 2025 the studio was rebranded as a Battlefield studio. EA still plans to bring Need for Speed back at a later time.

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