Need for Speed Games Part 2: Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, Need for Speed: Road Challenge (aka High Stakes)

This week on Super Adventures I'm still playing through the first ten years of the Need for Speed series and today I've reached the third and fourth games, Hot Pursuit and Road Challenge (known in the US as High Stakes). If you want to read about the first two games you can find part one here.

I hope you like screenshots of cars and roads, because that's all I've got for you today. They're pretty good cars though. There's a Chevrolet Corvette, a Ferrari F355, a Lamborghini Diablo, another Corvette... all kinds of cars.

(If I don't mention what system a screenshot came from, then it's from the PC version. Unless the game doesn't have a PC version.)

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1998 - NEED FOR SPEED III: HOT PURSUIT
(PC, PLAYSTATION)

Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit is a game I've played a lot of. I put hours into this game back in the day, getting all the cars and unlocking the bonus track. And I had no idea you could put cones down to mark the ideal driving line until today! I've also found an option to put a voice on telling me when to turn like it's a rally game. I guess it just never occurred to me to click the button that says 'Driving Assists'.

My plan here was to hit one row of cones on the first lap, then clear out the second row on the final lap, but then I discovered that the things respawn so that took the fun out of it for me. 1544 out of infinite cones is so close to being zero that I might as well have not bothered.

It was nostalgic though. Reminded me of the times I used to wipe out whole levels of road signs back in Need for Speed II. Because just racing around the same eight tracks over and over again in circles eventually got old.

This time there are nine tracks (eight plus an unlockable bonus track), all of them circuits again. Plus now they come in pairs, with four of them being extended variations of the other four. I love these illustrations they've made for them though. Plus there's also 3D maps you can spin around!

I can't spot anything on this map, but the other ones have the shortcuts drawn on them, which is helpful. If you're good at 90 degree turns and feel like taking a big risk for a big reward you can use them to sneak ahead of the pack.

There's plenty of information about the cars in the menu as well, but they've dropped the live action showcase video clips! That was Need for Speed's thing! All you get now are slideshows.

Though they have added this tiny low-res viewer that lets you spin a camera around inside a car's interior and have a look around, maybe even look out of the window and catch a glimpse of where they were parked. It's definitely something different; not many games let you simulate the experience of being a bored dog locked in an exotic supercar.

I was using the mouse here to control the little severed hand cursor and drag the view around, but I had my Xbox One controller ready for when the racing started. The game supports modern controllers just fine, analogue triggers and all, and it's a lot better than playing with the keyboard like I used to back in the day.

The menu's gone very blue this time around, and those names flying around are a bit annoying, but I appreciate how it uses words instead of cryptic images and how it's easy to set up what you want the next race to be. I've learned not to take this for granted as a lot of racing games make it surprisingly difficult to select a track, set the weather, choose the laps, and pick what class of cars to race against.

Like the earlier games there's no real career mode to play through, but you can see which tracks you've completed so far as a racer... and as a cop.

Need for Speed III's big gimmick is the Hot Pursuit mode, which lets you race against the cops, or as one. The cops were on vacation during Need for Speed II, but now they're back with a vengeance, driving badly recoloured images of supercars. Those wheels are definitely green, right? I haven't got my monitor calibrated wrong have I?

In the first game if the cops overtook you then that was it, you got caught. This time they have to get you to stop through tactics such as putting their cars in your way, or putting tyre-destroying spike strips in your way. Man I hate those spike strips.

On the other hand, I like the radar that comes on when you activate the siren and lock on to your prey. It's not much fun chasing racers though, as it takes forever to catch up to them! It's not necessarily a huge struggle to shove them against a wall and get them to stop, but while you're doing that the others have made it halfway down the track and it can take just as long to turn around and try to get them coming the other way.

Maybe there's a trick to it, I don't know. I didn't play it for long now and I barely played it back in the day either.

That's why I was surprised to discover that while you're on the bonus track you're playing a future cop with a glowing eye!

It's a shame you don't get things like this in Need for Speed games anymore. No cyborg cops, no spaceships flying overhead, and no X-Man giving you shit for driving into oncoming traffic or passing on the shoulder. Oh hang on, they did start putting live action clips in the games again didn't they! For a while.

This is a nice shot if you want an idea of how detailed the models are in the game. Or just want to look at a low polygon Ferrari F355 Spider. If I was going to nitpick I'd point out that the headlights don't match the lines on the texture, but I'm too busy being impressed they even included the pop-up headlights.

PlayStation version

The cars are probably just as detailed in the PlayStation game, but it's hard to tell with the low resolution. I found the two versions to be very similar again, just like with the earlier Need for Speeds, though there is one major difference I noticed and that's that in the PC version I won races, and in the PS one I lost them. At least until I switched the PS version from 'simulation' to 'arcade'.

Simulation mode isn't in the PC version that I'm aware of and what it seems to do is turn the steering off once you hit a certain speed to leave you driving straight into a wall. I've never driven a Lamborghini Diablo myself, but I've played a few other racing games lately that lean even further into true simulation and they didn't have this horrific understeer. I'd put my driving skill in racing games as 'average', but I know ways to get a car around a corner and the PlayStation game wasn't cooperating with me.

Gran Turismo (PSX)

I had more luck getting the car to turn in Gran Turismo for instance. GT did have the advantage of coming out a month later, just in time to have DualShock analogue stick support... except Need for Speed III actually has analogue support too, so that's not the issue.

Speaking of Gran Turismo, man that game has a lot of cars for its time. The original Need for Speed didn't have much competition back in 1994, but things had changed a lot in four years. Gran Turismo has more realistic driving than PlayStation Hot Pursuit, the graphics are at least as good, and when it comes to licenced cars it's got 140 of them. That's 10 times as many! It's just a shame the tracks are so realistically dull and you have to do those bloody licences before it'll let you do most of the races. I hate those licences so much.


In fact Gran Turismo's a bit of a git really! I think I'd rather play Need for Speed III.

Rage Racer (PSX)

The PlayStation version of Need for Speed III would've also been compared to the third Ridge Racer title, Rage Racer, which came out about a year earlier. No analogue control or licenced cars in this one, but it does have interesting tracks. Well, okay it has a couple of variations on one interesting track, which is similar to the way that Need for Speed III doubles its track count.

Hot Pursuit is kind of like the mid-point between the two games I reckon, in design and feel. I'm fairly sure the driving model's not as realistic as Gran Turismo, even in the PlayStation version's 'simulator' mode, but you're not power-sliding everywhere and bouncing off everything in 'arcade' mode either.

Test Drive 4 (PSX)

Which I guess means NFS3's true rival is Test Drive 4, which relaunched the franchise that likely inspired Need for Speed in the first place, after its seven year break. Test Drive 4 has the licenced cars, the races taking place around the world, and it certainly doesn't need any more speed, though its tracks all seem to be point to point instead of circuits and the lack of shadows makes them look weird.

Test Drive 4 also has an unconvincing driving model, but what it doesn't have is Hot Pursuit's handy mini-map that shows you what corner's coming up next. It's doesn't have Hot Pursuit's 'Hot Pursuit' mode either, but then nothing did really as far as I can tell. Until Test Drive 6 anyway. I'm not really a fan of the game to be honest, it's not all that fun to play.

One thing Test Drive 4 has in its favour is that unlike Gran Turismo and Rage Racer, it wasn't confined to the PlayStation. But I haven't tried the PC version yet and I have no idea about its downloadable Batmobile status.

Look at this amazing model I found for Need for Speed III though. It's even got a little cardboard cut out of Michael Keaton sitting in the driving seat!

Need for Speed III was the first time I really got into game mods and also the point I kind of lost interest in them as well. There are only nine cars in the game (plus three unlockable bonus cars), so it was nice to be able to find and download more from the internet, but it didn't take me long to realise that the players making them didn't have access to exotic supercars and test tracks, and the stats were often a little bit off. Some of those homemade cars were so fast I was bouncing off all the walls like it was Need for Speed II! Plus I've discovered why Batman needs to fire a grappling hook at lampposts to turn corners in this thing.

Modding games isn't really in the PlayStation's wheelhouse, but the PS version does have something the PC game doesn't, and that's a set of secret bonus tracks accessed through cheat codes! That don't let you race against AI cars! (They're very lonely).

PlayStation version

They're mostly basic looking tunnels in space or under the sea etc., but this Scalextric circuit is almost detailed enough to work as a proper track... in a Micro Machines game. Shame that the only other people here have been painted on.

I've got a huge fondness for Need for Speed III, but it's getting on a bit in years now and the driving mechanics feel dated compared to games that came out five years later, never mind twenty years later. Plus it's still lacking a career mode, so all you can do is set up your own races and tournaments until you're bored of it. But it's a definite step up from Need for Speed II. It's a little slicker, a little more sane and grounded, and the music's still fairly decent. They haven't gone full techno yet. Not that I have any problem with techno, but it has a way of getting old when it's all you're listening to during hours of racing.

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1999 - NEED FOR SPEED: ROAD CHALLENGE
(PC, PLAYSTATION)

There's something ironic about the way Need for Speed 4 starts with exotics flying past a tuner covered in logos that's stalled at the starting line, and not just because of where the series would go in five years time. Because this is the first game in the series to feature car upgrades! Though at this point you just pay a bit of cash to bring the whole car up to level 2, then level 3 etc. instead of choosing your own parts. Incidentally, it's also the first Need for Speed with cash!

Though the game's not called Need for Speed 4, as they dropped the number here and called it High Stakes instead, named after the races where you have to put your own car at stake. Though in Japan it it's called Over Drivin' IV, and in in Europe it's called Need for Speed: Road Challenge, because... it's a challenge that takes place on roads. Could've been worse I suppose, they could've called it Need for Speed: Race Driver.

The game came out in 1999 by the way, so it turned twenty earlier this year. That means I've already passed the halfway point of my 10 year Need for Speed marathon. They'd gotten a bit... annual at this point though, so there's plenty left to play.

I've always thought as Road Challenge as being kind of a stand alone expansion to Need for Speed III, as it looks pretty similar, plays almost the same, and all nine of the game's courses are still here to be raced on (on the PC version anyway).

But the more I think about, the more this seems like a big step up for the series. It's the first game with actual car interiors, the first with a career mode where you can buy cars, the first with damage (that affects your performance), the first with car upgrades (that also give the driver a racing helmet), and the first where you have to unlock most of the tracks instead of having almost all of them available to play with from the start.

You can play it just like Need for Speed III if you want, maybe put in a cheat to unlock everything. But the heart of the game is career play, where you complete multiple tournaments and earn cash to get better cars and upgrades. It adds a bit of structure that the Need for Speed games have been missing, plus a reason to replay tracks, and unlike in Gran Turismo you don't have to earn a licence or navigate an awkward series of menus to do it!

I've got three tournaments to pick from right now, then once they're all done I get another set to pick from. It's pretty straightforward, and a lot more satisfying than just setting up different races on my own until I'm bored of it. In fact it's such a good idea that the Test Drive series nicked it for Test Drive 6 half a year or so later.

I wonder why those black bars have appeared? Is this a glitch because I'm running it on Windows 10? Oh hang on, I've just got it set to 'widescreen' in the options. Apparently the HUD's too lazy to move. Nice 3D dashboard though.

Also, haven't I been here before? This picturesque European scenery, the winding road through a village, the ruined castle... this is just like the North Country track in Need for Speed II! Also, it's a bit like another Road Challenge track I just played five minutes ago. And the motorway level I played before that. The game's had a bit of a picturesque pastel Northern Europe theme to it so far.

I'm not going to complain about a game looking pretty though. Plus I like watching my car bend back into shape on the menu screen when I get it repaired after the race. Man, I hope these repairs don't eat all my prize money, I've got hopes of maybe buying a new car one day.

PlayStation version

There, I knew I'd find another hot air balloon eventually! They're a Need for Speed tradition, I'm telling you. Well okay this is only the second time I've found one in a Need for Speed game so far, but I'm sure I'll come across at least one more before I'm done. Hopefully.

I've read that the PlayStation version you're looking at here has better physics and sound than the PC version, and it seems plausible, though I didn't notice it myself. The two versions are more or less the same game, this one's just spoiled a bit by the low resolution, frame rate issues, and the way it's missing the Need for Speed III circuits. It's pretty though.

R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 (PSX)

Here's a shot of Ridge Racer Type 4 to show where PlayStation games were like graphically at the this point in their evolution. Road Challenge and Type 4 both have a softer look than their predecessors, with muted shades and a bit of a colour tint. They've got shadows on their tracks as well, though only Road Challenge has visible car interiors. Actually I mostly put this screenshot here as an excuse to give Type 4 a shout out. I've been playing a lot of PS1 racing games lately and it might actually be my favourite of them. Sorry Road Challenge.

I've been trying to figure out why I'm more keen on Need for Speed III than Road Challenge, seeing as the fourth game is an improvement in every department and includes all the same circuits, and I've come to the conclusion that maybe I'm not? Road Challenge feels colder with its dark blue menus and its techno soundtrack, even the tracks seem more desaturated, but it's prettier than the average racing game from its time. And it's more refined than earlier Need for Speeds. It's a good game, probably my favourite so far! Plus I can't complain about the music when it has the song from that amazing Michel Gondry Smirnoff advert in it! (YouTube link)

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1999 - BEETLE ADVENTURE RACING
(N64)

The first time I played this game, right away I thought 'this should've been a Need for Speed game', because it plays just like them. Other than the fact that you can't drive anything but Volkswagen Beetles.

In fact it's so much like a Need for Speed game that I did the research and sure enough the clues point towards this starting life as Need for Speed 64, before they decided to go a different direction with it. The game may have lost the name, but this is still the closest the N64 ever came to getting its own Need for Speed, and that's why it deserves to be on my list... well, more than V-Rally does anyway.

I mean it starts with hot air balloons floating around the track! That's a dead giveaway.

Well, actually to be honest hot air balloons are kind of a thing in racing games in general and you can find them all over the place.

Like in Motor Toon Grand Prix 2, Fatal Racing and DiRT Showdown, just to pick three games from the top of my head. But to me they've always been Need for Speed's thing.

Anyway, the handling in this seems a bit less realistic than your typical Need for Speed game, plus someone's left mysterious crates all over the side of the road.

The blue crates with 'N' written on were fairly obvious to figure out as they give me a brief nitro boost (sorry Need for Speed, the VW Beetle game got NOS before you).

I had to check the manual to find out what the boxes with number 2 gave me though, because that could refer to all kinds of things, not all of them good. Turns out that I'm collecting bonus points from these numbered bonus boxes and if I find 50 of them I earn myself a bonus continue. Man, video games were only just getting past their addiction to continues by the end of the 90s and this game's gone and put them back in!

The manual also came in handy when I got stuck trying to reverse out of this phone box (turns out I had to press 'A' plus 'Z' together).

I wish I could say I was trying to take the shortcut over on the right, but to be honest I wouldn't have even known it was there if I hadn't crashed next to it. The tracks are full of sneaky secret side paths and they're placed in a way so you don't notice them until it's just too late to dive in there. If you want to smash all the points crates you have to memorise where all the shortcuts are, and sometimes the path splits three ways so you may have to go a different way each lap. I guess that's what makes this adventure racing.

Though all that smashing a phone box got me was a free ticket to last place. Still, at least I got to hear a "I'm sorry this number can't be dialled" voice clip, which is a nice touch. You don't get things like that in the Need for Speed games.

HSV Adventure Racing

I mentioned earlier that you can only drive Beetles, but that's not entirely true. If you play the Australian version of the game you get to drive HSV Commodores instead! Plus the voice at the start of the game says "G'day!" in an Australian accent and I'm not even joking.

The game does actually let you pick your car in either version, they're just all exactly the same (with different stats).

Man it's satisfying to come flying out of a shortcut and swerve back onto the main road just ahead of the car in first place. Shame that didn't happen here.

It could've been much worse though, as one shortcut I took led to a ski jump. I went down at full speed, leapt into the air, and slammed right into a cliff with a banner saying "Jump Farther" hanging above it. Fun fact: when you slam into walls hard enough your car explodes! Either that or the wall shatters and it turns out to be a secret passage. There's a lot of those secret passages around.

After I got past the Need for Speed Zone and the Snowy Mountain Zone, the next track took me to the Jurassic Park Zone.

I'm not even exaggerating. That's an actual giant-sized t-rex trying to break through a fence and eat our tiny cars. I guess they must have shut the electrified fences off here as well. The stage even has the volcano from the new film, which you have to escape at the end of the stage.

The game does a thing where each track branches off partway through the last lap and you go another way to reach the finish line, and in this case that alternate route takes you jumping across streams of molten lava. Which came as a bit of a surprise.

And once you're done with that track that's the entire game finished! Well, it's the Novice Championship finished anyway. I had to win those three tracks on easy mode to even get the option to player a harder difficulty, and the other three tracks are still denied to me in single race until I beat normal and hard mode. Though there's also a four player battle mode... which I'm not going to play.

Beetle Adventure Racing is basically the reincarnation of Need for Speed II, except with slower cars and an irritating drum loop in place of actual music. I wouldn't say I like it as much as the Need for Speed games, but it plays well enough, plus I love how varied and interesting the levels are, though the game could really do with some varied and interesting cars to go with them. I also liked how it felt like my main challenge was getting all the shortcuts along the way. Not because it's more fun than normal racing, I just appreciated the change.

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1999 - NEED FOR SPEED: V-RALLY 2
(PC, PLAYSTATION, DREAMCAST)

PlayStation version

V-Rally 2's still not a Need for Speed game I'm afraid. Though if I covered Beetle Adventure Racing I suppose I have to say something about it.

Uh, it's got four player mode. So there's one thing. Also the (X) button is labelled 'VALID' instead of 'CONFIRM', which is wacky and unconventional.

PlayStation version

Yep, this looks like a PlayStation racing game alright. It's got surprisingly arcadey handling for a rally game though, the kind where you can get away with letting go of the accelerator for a moment to flick the car around corners instead of slowing down. But man the cars love to flip over, and the side of the tracks have many bumps to accommodate them. Once I ended up on my roof after just brushing up against another racer!

It's a bit awkward really, seeing as a single mistake can cost you way more seconds than you can afford. On the first few races I could still finish 20 seconds ahead, but it wasn't long before my opponents were disappearing over the horizon and my dreams of catching up were crushed just a little bit more with every somersault my car pulled. It doesn't help that there's no mini-map and my co-pilot's instructions were always being drowned out by the industrial soundtrack.

Test Drive: V-Rally (Dreamcast)

Yessss, run foolish spectators! This'll teach you to stand next to a rally track. I mean who'd even do that? These cars are death on gravel, coming at you at 60 mph sideways.

Actually these guys seem to run away in the same way every lap whatever I do, so I steered into them deliberately this time to get a screenshot. It's still possible to flip the car over by straying off the road on the Dreamcast version, but you get reset so quickly in this one that it's much less of an issue. Plus I wanted to get another car in the shot but the AI seems to go easier on you in this and I got bored of slowing down for them. I'm sure I'd be begging for them to slow down for me on the later tracks though.

V-Rally 2's decent enough for a late 90s racing game I reckon. It's not Colin McRae and it doesn't seem to want to be, but it's alright. I'd still rather play a real Need for Speed though. I haven't got much else to say about it really.

That it now, I've covered all of the Need for Speed games from the second millennium AD, even the ones that aren't Need for Speed games! But there's still a few left to get through before I've finished the series' first decade, so check back tomorrow for the years 2000 to 2001.

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Next week on Super Adventures, I'll be playing something that has absolutely nothing to do with racing games! I've done extensive research and I'm confident that there isn't a single car in it.

But before then you've got two more articles about Need for Speed coming.