The Need for Speed: Special Edition

aka: Road & Track presents: The Need For Speed: Special Edition
Moby ID: 654
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Description official descriptions

Need for Speed: Special Edition adds two new race tracks (Burnt Sienna and Transtropolis), changeable time of day settings, 8-player network/modem support, in-game music, and Windows 95 support to Need for Speed.

The game lets you drive 8 speed devils including Lamborghini Diablo VT, Ferrari 512TR, and Porsche 911 Carrera. The race tracks are highly detailed with the help of texture mapped vector graphics The soundtrack is digitally recorded, and of professional quality.

Need for Speed SE has indepth coverage of the cars and race tracks. Video clips of the cars are also included.

Spellings

  • The Need For Speed SE - Alternative spelling
  • 极品飞车:特别版 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 83% (based on 8 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 54 ratings with 4 reviews)

A good racing game for the time.

The Good
In its day, it was a great racing game. The graphics were pretty damn fine, the cars looked pretty realistic, although the other traffic cars were nowhere near as well drawn. The handling of the cars was probably not that accurate, but there were subtle differences between them.

The tracks were pretty good, and best of all were the fact that 3 of the 8 tracks were not circuits. Like with its predecessor, Car & Driver, 3 of the tracks were long road sections, split into 3 stages. This was great, because it made it seem like you were actually going somewhere, rather than round and round some unrealistic circuit.

The game was networkable, and featured a racing league you could drive in - a feature still missing from many racing games today. Together with a few friends you could take up the challenge of becoming the top driver, which was actually very difficult. The top computer drivers are very good, and it requires a near superhuman effort to beat them.

The Bad
While undoubtedly a good game, the whole package just didn't quite work for me. There was no damage model in the game at all - you just can't hurt yourself no matter how hard you try. And your car just bounces of these invisible walls set alongside the tracks, which really annoys me. Also, the car control was a little disappointing - the brakes were useless, and you really neede them in some places (hence the hitting the invisible walls.)

The Bottom Line
A good driving game but not a classic. To me a classic is game which is still enjoyable years after it has been superceeded, which this game is not. Still, it has enough good points to be worthy of a place in history.

Windows · by Steve Hall (329) · 2000

Pretty good for a DOS game.

The Good
Extra content is much appreciated and gives you more to do.

The Bad
Handling isn't the best.

The Bottom Line
Its a good 4/5 and great for its time

Windows · by PlayerOfGames (1) · 2024

Good product, but a rip-off at its time

The Good
The Special Edition of The Need for Speed was released about a year after the original game and brought some improvements and new content. There's neat stuff like two additional tracks, changeable time of day setting and a longer and better-sounding soundtrack, which do add some to the game experience.

The mentioned tracks are Burnt Sienna, a circuit leading through an old gold-rush village, its mines and beneath an impressive waterfall. The other one is called Transtropolis, and has probably the coolest scenery of all the tracks. You race around a futuristic city - the finish line is inside a foundry, there are the docks, the airport, a car parking and an industrial quarter - everything spiced up with sharp turns and big jumps.

The biggest improvements, however, are certainly the following: On one hand, there is now a real network multiplayer mode. Now you can race against up to 5 other players, compared to only one in the original game, where only race duels could be fought. On the other hand, the game's disc also contains a second version of the executables - designed for Windows 95. This sure adds a lot of compatibility to this game, so there is a bigger chance of getting it to run on newer computers, and it allowed for some other features like Force Feedback, DirectPlay and DirectSound support to be added.

The Bad
The downside, however, was this thing's price. Being released almost 2 years after the original game, selling it for the same price is a shame. It was definitely not meant for owners of the original version, assuming Windows 95 and network support were not the most important things to them (remember, Need for Speed 2 was soon to be released anyway), but I would say that it was still too expensive for new players. They got a great game nonetheless, mind you.

The Bottom Line
So in the end, today that you can probably ignore its original price, this looks like a decent, improved version of the classic racing game. But honestly, I've seen free game patches doing more than this.

DOS · by Daniel Saner (3503) · 2005

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

Need for Speed was voted #34 overall in PC Gamer Magazine's Readers All-Time Top 50 Games Poll (April 2000 issue).

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by IJan.

Additional contributors: Trixter, PCGamer77, Zovni, 235235, CaesarZX.

Game added January 2, 2000. Last modified January 19, 2024.