Need for Speed changed my life!

[GT3x24x7]

Let's face it. Everything you do changes you in some large or small way. With the intensity that we play games it's inevitable they can and will influence our lives. Let's hear the story about how the Need for Speed series changed your life, whether in just a small way or somehow totally profound.

_____________

For me, I have to admit, there's been quite a pronounced effect. I got started with NFS relatively late, with Hot Pursuit 2 on the PS2 and I totally loved it. So much so that I built a (rather primitive) website as an outlet for the screen captures I was making via the PS2 and my TV capture card. Being completely static HTML, this site was a real chore to maintain and it took up a huge amount of my time for a while. If you're interested, it's archived here.

But that's not the end of it. It's plain so far that I was heavily hooked on NFS:HP2, so when the next game, Need for Speed Underground arrived, I was again totally enthralled and obsessed with the game. After all this was a type of game that was never-before-seen in 2003. Groundbreaking stuff.

Having gotten over the novelty of building and running a website, I looked about for an online alternative and found NFSPlanet and a sleepy little site called NFSUnlimited. As providence would have it, I settled on NFSUnlimited because it showed more promise, with new features such as a 'showroom' in the works. The rest of the story here at NFSUnlimited is history and it's played a big part of my life ever since.

More than all this, NFS has turned me, heh, from a musclehead into a tuner. I can't lie. I was always a hoon. But prior to NFS I always had big Aussie sixes and V8s like this. Along comes NFSU and my interest is drawn to the hero car of that game, the Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R. Man, what a car. Pretty soon I found myself in a car dealer trading in on an R32 Skyline, and a few years later, I traded up from that to an R34. As of right now there's very little of the original R34 mechanicals left, having all been upgraded, just like NFSU.

Mission complete. Without NFS I'd have probably kept all the cash and made some more sensible decisions, but I can guarantee that I wouldn't have had near as much fun. In the end, that's what it's all about.

[Andre_online]

Well, NFS changed me, in a way that my love for cars just grew even more. And so does my knowledge of them. I guess I owe NFS for that. Sure, I knew what Ferraris and Lamborghinis were, but that's just it - I know how they look like. But now, I know what models they are.

OK, maybe a little bit dull, but that's my story.

[boganbusman]

More than all this, NFS has turned me, heh, from a musclehead into a tuner. I can't lie. I was always a hoon. But prior to NFS I always had big Aussie sixes and V8s like this. Along comes NFSU and my interest is drawn to the hero car of that game, the Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R. Man, what a car. Pretty soon I found myself in a car dealer trading in on an R32 Skyline, and a few years later, I traded up from that to an R34. As of right now there's very little of the original R34 mechanicals left, having all been upgraded, just like NFSU.

Wow, maybe this is what happened to me as well. I used to be into muscle cars real bad; I had a subscription to Street Machine magazine, and my bedroom walls are still completely covered in Street Machine posters (haven't been bothered to take them down).
But these days I go crazy over everything JDM, which has also fuelled my desire to go live in Japan.

So I'm not sure if it was just NFS that swayed me, but that may have been where it started.
NEED FOR SPEED CHANGED MY LIFE! SH|T!

[GT3x24x7]

:highfive:

[korge]

Nice story GT. Inspiring. Too bad I am cashless to spend it on a dream NFS car.

Like GT, I must admit, If it wasnt for Porsche Unleashed, I wouldnt have even given a hoot about cars.

I played all the NFS's but it wasnt until PU that I was hooked. Yeah, the first 4 games were great but they didnt get me interested in cars. I even wrote my first 3 page elementary school report on how great of a legend ferdinand porsche was. (not even kidding) I loved that game to death. I spent countless hours buying cars from the "junk yard" and repairing them and trying to sell them off in the game until I could own 20 $1million dollar Moby race cars. Ah, the good ol days.

After then, I played HP2, which I loved, and got me into Ferrari's with a somewhat decent passion. But then... the heavens opened up and revealed Underground.I was ON FIRE for this game. At the time, all the hype was on the "Fast and Furious" game to come out but when I saw UG in a GamePro preview a year before it was released I was sold. The caption showed a red tuned acura integra in a wet city with bright lights. It was gorgeous. After I bought the game, I played that game and just absorbed myself in Import Tuner and Super street mags. I must say, If it wasnt for PU and UG, I would have 0 interest for any automotive culture. As for the rest of the games to follow, ehh, nothing miraculous there.

[t3ice]

Wow, ive got a lot in common with you guys. I was into American muscle myself. I was crazy after the corvette, even made a model of it in plaster before Underground came around and changed me forever..
______________________________________________________

- It all started back in 1997, me being only 6 at the time, was introduced to My First Ever Video Gam : NFS 2 SE by my uncle. I wanted the game but obviously i couldn't buy it then. So my uncle got me a pirated version of NFS HP 1 instead. But i was hit by another set back - my PC couldn't support the game ( Pentium S @ 80 Mhz ). So i got interested in upgrading my Pc, which later lead me do to other stupid things.
- Then at age 8, I received a pirated copy of NFS HS, and this was the most played game of my life. But my uncle moved to the US and i had no more a source. So i spent the next 3 years playing NFS HS, untill i was about 12 when i purchased my first ever genuine copy of any game - NFS HP2. Even though i spent money on this game, i still played NFS HS everyday. I felt it was a waste of money but i was still foolish enough to spend $59.99 on the next ( great ) NFS, Underground.
- After finishing Underground I swiftly searched the interwebz for info on the next NFS, whereby i stumbled on NFSUnlimited.net.. . By this time i realized that money was better spent on upgrading my Pc, and hence i started pirating games..yes tis sad.

So in a way, i owe NFS for enlightening me on the whole video games scene...& NFSUnlimited

[korge]

Great story t3ice. I was playing with legos and command and conquer at 6.

I stumbled in NFSUnlimited when I got banned from ND4SPDWorld for a bit. Good thing too, after a while that place died down and now Im here! NFS Cheats? Dead. NFS Cars? Full of douchebags. NFS Unlimited? Just right.

Shame my story doesnt line up with you guys. You guys went from Muscle to "Tuners" while I just went do dont give a sht about cars to I like cars, so yeah.

[Nitrodemon McLaren]

NFS didn't exactly change my life, however...

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Let me start. It all started when my dad showed me the demo version of NFS III: Hot Pursuit. I played it a lot, only being 5 at the time but it didn't take long before I started playing games like Jetboat Racing and stuff...

Then in 2004, when I was 6, my dad sent me the CD for the PC version of Need for Speed: Underground. And I also found a demo version of Hot Pursuit 2. HP2 was nice but I loved Underground especially considering I had the full game. I raced a lot in the Quick Race menu but I barely ever tried out career. It also got me interested in cars a bit, back then I was also collecting toy car models.

However, it still didn't take long before I stopped playing it and played other games.

----------

Then in 2008, came the resurrection of my tastes for NFS. I downloaded Most Wanted and was hooked, then I got Carbon and ProStreet. Soon after, Underground 2. And I was eagerly awaiting Undercover.

I started an NFS topic in another forum and soon, I found out about NFSUnlimited. Joined right away.

NFS helped me speed up my interest in vehicles like never before.

...And in case you're wondering, yes, I am that old.

[Andre_online]

Off-topic: You were 6 in 2004?! Gosh, you're 'old'. And why did you get UG2 after MW, Carbon and PS? Haha!

[korge]

I was about to say the exact same thing!!


Well glad you like NFS and hope you stay here at NFSUnlimited.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Lessee, the first NFS game I played was High Stakes - my friend owned it, and we'd play it almost constantly, running away from the police, chasing down AI drivers as the police, or making wannabe car chase 'videos' which was really just one chasing the other as a cop. Keep in mind, we were in elementary school, at the time. I don't really remember really having an exceptional interest in cars, then, nor do I remember NFS HS making me any more interested.

I didn't play another NFS game until Underground, again, owned by my friend, but I was actually interested in it, enough, to buy it, myself. I was fascinated with being able to modify your cars' appearance, replacing body parts and whatnot, and it wasn't long before I was drawing (unbeknown to me, at the time) rather riced-out, Underground-esque cars with massive, gaudy body kits and horribly spoilers. I still didn't have a particularly keen interest in cars, in general, but Underground did make me want a 240SX as my first car. If I remember correctly, I'd come to NFSUnltd. several times before registering, or even looking in the forum, looking for cheats and that I didn't actually register here until around when Underground 2 came out.

When I first heard about UG2, I was psyched. I first read an article in a gaming magazine and was obsessed with the whole 'free-roam around the city' concept, and when the demo came out, that's exactly what I did - driving around the small portion of the city that was drivable in the one of three heavily modified 350Zs, playing with the hydraulics and other such nonsense and going around looking for all the different shops. I happened to be working as a temp at my dad's work over the summer before UG2 came out, and I would spend almost all of my lunch break online looking at new stuff and discussing it on the forum I visited most often, at the time. It must have been after UG2 came out that I registered, here, now that I think about it, looking up cheat codes for the game brought me here, though I don't remember what exactly it was that enticed me to register. Not that I regret doing so, however - far from it. Not much to say about MW, aside from bringing back police chases, which was pretty cool, considering that was really what NFS was, for me, when I first started playing it.

All-in-all, I'd say NFS had a pretty big influence on my interest in cars, but not much else, and I don't doubt that I would have eventually found an interest in cars in general or driving, anyway. So, not much of an influence, I guess. Wall-o-text for nothing.

[t3ice]

wow haz i just noticed that i registered exactly 1 year, 1 hour and 16 minutes after you.. ntm you are about a year and 20 something days older that me..

But your post count dosent make as much sense...

[boganbusman]

omg this is becoming a wall of tl;dr some good stories though. Seems we all had a similar experience in one way or another.

[Evil Kid Weaselmush]

Well, NFS changed me, in a way that my love for cars just grew even more. And so does my knowledge of them. I guess I owe NFS for that. Sure, I knew what Ferraris and Lamborghinis were, but that's just it - I know how they look like. But now, I know what models they are.

OK, maybe a little bit dull, but that's my story.

Exactly the same for me. NFS:UG1 is what really got me into tuners and customization.

[RedCarDriver]

It's funny, but when I walked into UG and UG2 I was so basically clueless about cars that I hugged dearly onto my (STUPID) Neon and Civic without stopping to think about other (BETTER) cars. Once Carbon rolled around, though, I moved to the Skyline and... well, as cliche'd as it is, I liked it. At that point, as well, I began looking for drifting videos on YouTube, I started learning more about car specifications, and then I revisited Carbon and UG2 and UG and began immediately commenting on the innacuracies in each game (Skyline GT-R BNR34 =/= 350Z Z33 =/= CBA-R35 GT-R, as far as sound goes, by the way.)

So I went from being basically clueless in 2003 to obsessed and know-it-all-ish by summer 2008, which is sort of a big leap Did I ever look back? Never. I've liked cars since I was little, and knowing more about them was cool (the entire previous sentence is the understatement of the year).

The only thing that bugs me is now NFS is starting to get boring. No, I'm not talking about UC and Carbon sucking, I'm talking about wanting to go further. Because of this I am now helping with Shift, a project headed by Korge. [/shameless plug]

[Koenigsegg_Rox]

All I can say about NFS is that futuristic and never-released cars pwn all...

My first few NFS games were of course illegal because when I actually got into NFS all the old (and the best) ones weren't on sale anymore. However, when we had our first PC we had TNFS:SE which to be honest wasn't that brilliant. I was off playing Monster Truck and Motocross Madness all the time while TNFS collected dust. It was when my uncle burnt me off copies of NFSIISE and NFSIIIHP that I started to get into it. I actually still haven't completed either of them, I just do random races all the time. I only played Porsche Unleashed as a demo for PlayStation 1 which we had really only just bought at the time. But instead of playing that I played Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped which was much more brilliant to me. I've never really liked Porsches anyway, yes they may be more practical but as Jeremy Clarkson once said, they don't know how to restyle their cars. The 911s style is just plain boring, and the Boxster, Cayman and Panamera look exactly the same. But anyway. I also never played High Stakes, which along with PU is the only NFS game that I haven't owned apart from the special editions and the worthless PSP editions.

The next game in the series was Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2, which I got for Christmas in 2002, and that introduced me to my first two, one of them still alive today, car crushes. The Ferrari 550 Barchetta Pininfarina, and the Lamborghini Murcielago. Brilliant game all around, I loved it to bits.

Underground for me wasn't all that thrilling. I bought it on PS2, completed it in two days, and that was the end of it. Underground 2 on the other hand was the game that kept me going for years. And it introduced me to just how cool tuners can be. But not for long.

Yes, Most Wanted was, and still is, the game of the series for me. EVERYTHING that I loved about Hot Pursuit 2 - fantasy exotics, epic cop chases and simple yet addictive gameplay - all rolled into one game with some more sprinkled on top.

Bought Carbon: Collector's Edition and completed it in 5 hours with the Camaro, Charger and Corvette, and quickly chucked it back in the DVD cabinet where it has always been ever since...

ProStreet, don't get me wrong, was riddled with bugs and poor gameplay. But for some weird reason I still love it.

To sum up NFS has never changed my life in terms of my definition of great cars. I love supercars, still do, and will always. Nor has it really been a truly groundbreaking series, cause I'm a serious car nut I've always loved tinkering with my racing cars in the Gran Turismo series, that to me is more groundbreaking than NFS was. But NFS is still a memorable series.

[Carcrazy]

UG was like seeing God to me... I always had a passion for cars and the street racing scene, just no portal into it... NFS was that portal, for a very long time. I knew how normal cars worked by games like GT3, but UG was mind-blowing to me... by the end of the first race, I was hooked for life. I still play it, quite a lot for a game of it's age. Naturally, I bought U2 the day it came out, and was between NFSUnlimited, Google, and needforspeed.com for the months before... Still, U2 doesn't match the awesomeness of Underground, not at all.

[donaldgladden]

wow haz i just noticed that i registered exactly 1 year, 1 hour and 16 minutes after you.. ntm you are about a year and 20 something days older that me..

But your post count dosent make as much sense...

lets stop making references to Haz's post count outside of can of spam kthx?

[Carcrazy]

Don't be jealous of his e-penis.

...and why bump for that? =/

[taz947]

'Cause he's jealous of Haz' e-penis.

[Morty]

*getting back on topic*

I wouldn't say Need For Speed changed my life to be honest, it just made the direction of it a bit more clear. I started playing the game "Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge" in 1992, when I was 8, and even tho I did play some other games every now and then, I stuck with it until 96 or 97, when I visited a class mate, who had this incredible game called "The Need For Speed". I was hooked instantly, and I spent almost as much of my free time visiting my friend as I did at home. And even when he wanted to do something else, I just couldn't get myself away from the game. Eventually, we got a new computer at home, with a CD-ROM (which our old one didn't have), and I started playing NFS 3 - Hot Pursuit. By then, I was already hooked on Need For Speed, and even tho NFS Porsche was too hard for me when I first tried it, I later realized that it was an amazing game, and from that moment, there was no turning back. Need For Speed would stay as a favorite, and it still is. Also, joining this site, and spending countless hours here, has also made it very hard, if not impossible, to just leave the Need For Speed series, and do something else.

Unfortunately, I haven't really gotten that same feeling for the latest games, so my feelings for Need For Speed are now mostly based on old memories, but I still live in the hope that the series will turn back to where it once was, and in the mean time, I will try to get back into the showroom business.

[Sir Tristan]

Wouldn't say NFS changed my life. It was shaped by NFS.
I first got NFS3 when I was 5... and I fell in love with it. Then Porsche and HP2, and U1, U2, MW, C...

I always love to re-play NFSs. I not only just played, but most of the art done by me was influenced by NFSHP - since I was 6 I had a sketchbook or whatever and just drew races and cop chases with a pen
lol.
@Carcrazy - I TOTALLY share the love to UG with you and TOTALLY think that U2 is not as good.

[Stereo]

NFS gave me much <3 for this site.

UG was the best modern one, HS was the best classic.

I dunno what else to say. I go to this site automatically. Once I get home I click on NFSUnlimited out of the blue, or when I wonder what game to play: launch firefox and click on NFSU... I guess that's life changing. =O

[vellu]

Certainly has changed my online habits... I always check atleast this forum when I have access to any internet access.

[Andre_online]

No sh*t. Same thing for me to.