Need for Speed: Most Wanted

1001 Video Games

Need for Speed: Most Wanted appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

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The EA Belgium office planned a little stunt on 24th November 2005, the launch day. They intended to give away free copies in the morning's traffic bottlenecks, but that didn't go through eventually.

Instead, on 25th November, they announced, together with the Dutch office, to have reserved an amount of PS2 copies for everyone who had had a speeding ticket the day before, on 24th November. You just had to fax proof to them to receive the game. In Belgium, you were only eligible if you did not exceed 6% of the allowed speed.

Mods

There is an unofficial patch on various fansites that enables all cars and races which are normally available only in the Black Edition.

Multiplayer server shutdown

On 1st November 2007, EA closed their servers for multiplayer games, for the Xbox version.

References to the game

Need for Speed: Most Wanted was parodied in an episode of "Die Redaktion" (The Editorial Team), a monthly comedy video produced by the German gaming magazine GameStar. It was published on the DVD of issue 03/2006.

Support

When an issue with stuttering sound in the Windows version was reported on the EA forums, the official statement was that EA had no time and resources to work on a patch for it. This was less than 5 months after the release.

Awards

• GamePro (Germany)
  • February 23, 2006 - Best Console Sports Game in 2005 (Readers' Vote)
• GameSpy
  • 2005 – PC Racing Game of the Year
  • 2005 – PC Racing Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
• GameStar (Germany)
  • February 23, 2006 - Best PC Sports Game in 2005 (Readers' Vote)
• PC Powerplay (Germany)
  • Issue 04/2006 - #1 Sports/Racing Game in 2005 (Readers' Vote)
  • Issue 02/2006 - Best Pursuits in 2005

Information also contributed by Mr. Sefe