Classic Games Emulated: The Need for Speed IV:High Stakes for Windows

 

Early Perfection Achieved!


Where does one start with this game? Need for Speed IV: High Stakes was to the PC that Gran Turismo was to the PlayStation. It was the game that revolutionized racing games on the PC (again). NFS:I was a revolution, whereas NFS:II and III felt more like an evolution of the franchise. They were awesome, but they continued incremental updates and improvements, mainly in the graphics department. But this game cemented the franchise (again) as THE racing series for the PC.

NFS:IV included support for the new 3DFX Voodoo 2 accelerator, which allowed an accelerated resolution up to 800 by 600, 16-bit color depth. There was also support for the newer DirectX accelerators as well, like the ATI All-in-Wonder series of cards and the Nvidia RIVA TNT. This game would have been a impressive sight back in its day. Their were improvements and enhancements with the graphics engine, with refinements being made. This made the game even more detailed compared to it's predecessor. The game-play featured in this game was the best yet. The arcade-racing style is still their, but it's been more refined as well. The Hot Pursuit system has been improved. Of all the racing modes offered, I've probably spent the most time on Hot Pursuit arresting those speeding maniacs in their European sports cars! The other, more traditional racing modes are still their, with network multiplayer. For the first in the series, the game featured damage physics, showing car damage. The career system was introduced in this game as well. 



This game was on the PlayStation as well. Because of the limitations of the that hardware though, it wouldn't have been possible for that system to compete with a PC equipped with the Voodoo 2 accelerator. With that said, that port of the game is still very fun, and is well worth playing. Sacrifices were made to get NFS:IV running on the PS1. Car models were simpler, and the game textures were less detailed as well. Even then, I could occasionally tell their was slowdown during the Hot Pursuit races. With that said, this port of the game is still very good and is a worthy challenger to Gran Turismo. On the PC, this game would do, as their was no Gran Turismo on the computers.

This game also demonstrated another gaming trend. With the rise the internet and the WWW (World-Wide-Web) around this time, game modders quickly realized how they could modify the cars in the game. Their creations were shared for all to download. Many modders realized how to replace the in-game cars with their own. Using 3D modeling programs, they made new cars that could be downloaded from the internet and added into the game. You could replace those cliche European sports cars with the grocery-getters if you wanted. I would take a 1989 Caprice Classic or Crown Vic over a Porsche any-day. Any sports car doesn't have a chance against the 1995 Chevy Impala SS. The game mods greatly enhanced the longevity of the game as well, adding replay value. Their was mod support for the previous game as well, but the modding scene really came to age during this release. The mods weren't just restricted the car modifications. Some modders were able to fix bugs that allowed the game to run on more graphical chipsets as well. Stability issues were fixed as well. Track modifications were released. The mod scene would have a profound impact on this game, and many others to come. Modders are still releasing new car mods for this game even today in 2018. Modding even permitted the game to run on much more current releases on Windows, like version 7. From this point on, I've started to judge the game by its mod community. Triple-AAA game with no mod support or community is out. Triple-AAA game with very active modding community is a must. Mods are a major contributing factor to the success of the GTA series of games as well. For me personally, NFS:IV was my introduction to the power of modding.




I've had performance issues when running this game on PCEM running Windows 98 equipped with the 3DFX Voodoo 2 accelerator. As a result, I've opted to run the game under VMware Player 12 instead. I had a virtual machine with Windows 7 installed. I equipped it with 3D Acceleration support, provided via the GPU in my computer, which in my case, is a Nvidia GTX 950 with GDDR5 Memory and 2GB of memory. An old game like this should have no problem running. After installing the game, patches were downloaded that would allow me to run the game on newer hardware. This is a game from 1999 that expects Windows 95/98 after all. After installing the game patches and fixing the compatibility issues, the game started to running without issue with full, 3D acceleration. From their, I cloned my game folder to have two installations. One is the stock installation without mods, and the other install is the one with the game mods installed. Both provided the screenshots shown below. The performance of the game was very good, as if I was running it on a ultra high-end PC from the tail-end of the 90's. No slowdown at all, and it looked gorgeous too. The game-play was very solid as well. It's still geared towards arcade racing, but like the previous game, their been further enhancements to the driving mechanics to greatly improves the driving. On the whole, this has been the greatest Need for Speed game to date.

I will cover the later incarnations of the Need for Speed games later. Those games are archived currently on my storage hard-drive. I'm not going to revisit until I need to do more updates in the future. Once I do, then their will be a flood of more Need for Speed articles with those awesome screenshots. I'm going to visit another gaming franchise in the future. It could be Test Drive, GTA, the Microsoft Flight Simulator, etc. I haven't decided which one yet, but whatever it is, it will be interesting.


Articles Of Interest:

PCEM - https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/

The Need for Speed IV: Hot Pursuit - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_Speed:_High_Stakes

NFSCars - http://www.nfscars.net/

NFS Police H.Q. - http://nfspolicehq.com/

3dfx Interactive - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive

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