Need for Speed, The

You launch the game and for the first minute you just stare at the intro — the camera creeps along the bodywork of a Porsche 911, the paint gleams, and you wonder if the disc is broken and it's only playing the advert. It isn't. This is The Need for Speed.

It came out in 1995 from Electronic Arts, a racing sim built on one simple idea — take real, licensed road cars and put them on routes that resemble normal roads, not race circuits. No formula cars, no fantasy vehicles. Lamborghini, Ferrari, Porsche — plus a police chase if you dared head out onto a public road.

For its time it was a visually shocking experience. The scenery textures scrolled by smoothly, the cockpit was detailed, and there was video footage of the cars' interiors and exteriors — clean promo material EA got from the manufacturers. The handling sat somewhere between arcade and sim, closer to arcade, but with enough sense of weight that you couldn't just mindlessly lean into the corners. Driving in the rain, in a tunnel, with the engine roaring from a Sound Blaster — in 1995 that was an almost indecent amount of pleasure.

What aged less gracefully? The content. There's only a handful of tracks and cars, and the career is more a series of challenges than a real campaign. To a modern player it'll feel like a demo. But back then it didn't matter — you put dozens of hours into each track, because nothing else like it simply existed. The game set the standard the whole 90s PC racing genre then ran with.

Today The Need for Speed makes sense mainly for the historical context and that specific atmosphere — the slow, dignified presentation of the cars, which back then felt like a luxury catalogue. If you enjoy retro racing and want to see where it all began, it's half an hour well spent. If you're after a whole evening of fun, reach for the second or third game in the series. This one is more a monument than an amusement park. You can play it online free right in your browser, no install.