LGR - Bringing Motor City Online Back To Life

Omg, i was gonna ask you when you would do a review on FreeSO. I was so happy about it making sims online possible again

A need for speed underground mmo sounds amazing. Yeah the new nfs games are all online and that now but underground was the staple of Racing games back in the day. I like to think it's what spawned the Tuner racing games. Or atleast Popularised them.

Your desktop icons are scarily close to what I had back in 2007/2008

Leigh Beattie

This is so cool! I wanted to play this so badly back then. It looked like a new Street Rod game. I did play a lot of a NFS4 total conversion mod called Detroit Muscle to scratch that itch.

Oh, so that's what happened to Need for Speed: Motor City. I thought it was cancelled back then

The Supra was added at the very end when the game was sunsetting. They had released all the old school cars and wanted to do something fun.

This was my favorite racing game ever. I wish someone would reverse engineer the servers the way the Earth and Beyond servers have been reverse engineered.

I remember reading a preview for this game back in the July 2000 issue of PC Gamer. It JUST pre-dated the import tuner craze, and I have a feeling that its focus on cars from the late 50s to the 70s didn't help much at that time. As Mr. Regular would say, this game is a celebration of "Winga-Dinga" car culture. ;)

Bryan McIntosh

Online game played offline?! Ludicrous! Cats and dogs wedding, trees watching Maury! It would be madness!

Tukaro

Clint, looks like it’s time for you to break out GTA and scratch the ‘pedestrian murder’ itch. ;)

Joon Choi

Man I didn't have a computer in '01 but I would have loved the heck out of this!

Dang, that sounds like a pretty fantastic time, hehe. Wish some of that kind of stuff was in something like Forza Horizon 4.

LGR

It really is! I have no idea of the technicalities of how this is done, but I love that it exists :D

LGR

Same, I just didn't have any kind of access to a connection fast/consistent enough to game online. Best bet was the local library and they didn't allow gaming. Sure wish I did though, this would have amused me to no end as an NFS die-hard.

LGR

That's awesome, thanks for sharing those!

LGR

This is pretty cool! I was a beta tester for this game, and EA actually sent me a burnt CD with the install since I wasn't able to download it for some weird reason. Never got to play the full game though. I can't remember seeing it in stores where I'm located. I did save a lot of screenshots from the beta: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/YRFWUOq" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://imgur.com/a/YRFWUOq</a>

10:30 I liked how the cars hurriedly backed out after you crashed into the bowsers.

Gary Leigh

Yes the supra and eclipse came out at the very end of the game's life. There was a lot of negativity about them from the players (kind of like when you see an import at a classic car show and all the old guys start talking trash). Also those rust buckets were kinda like rares in any mmog. They would pop up in auctions and as prizes for winning races. There were also chopped top versions, fenderless versions and convertible versions that all went for lots of in game money at the in game auction. This game was my life for about a year, and I'm so glad to see it remembered.

Andrew Buffenmyer

I had no idea this existed, but Need For Speed World now makes a lot more sense. I wish they'd kept the career progression aspects in NSFW, as these sound really fun. At least NSFW had the nice open world - very nostalgic combining the maps of a few previous games.

I love to see diehard fans of a game create a mod like this to prevent a game from dying! I firmly believe that mods increase the lifespan of any game! And who knew that it was possible to keep a MMO which requires online servers to play, alive and playable so far into the future without the need of those online servers! It's mind boggling but awesome that we can play it single player today!

Terry Lee

Holy shit that looks AWESOME! I wish I was into multiplayer online when this came out, I would've loved it! I was a huge NFS fan back then but neither my dad nor my mom had any decent internet connections around 2000-2001.

Alyxx the Rat

Even games like Ultima Online are still going last I heard! At least in some form.

LGR

So cars like the Supra were actually part of the normal game? Like you could buy them for yourself or something along those lines? That is odd indeed

LGR

It's certainly running in 3D accelerated mode using Direct3D 8, but yeah I am assuming it's the patch causing issues. And thanks for the input regarding how it was to play! I don't recall reading about any towns to cruise around, though that would've been fantastic for 2001 if it did.

LGR

I spent SO MUCH time on this game. It's the only MMOG I ever played and had a blast with it. It was kind of weird at the end when they started putting import cars into it as the game had kind of an American Graffiti vibe. I absolutely loved this game and can't wait to try this patch with my copy that I still have for some reason.

Andrew Buffenmyer

I had this (and still have it in a box somewhere) and played it at launch and from what I remember it played silky smooth - so I'm guessing it's an issue with the hacked version as it doesn't looked 3D accelerated based off my memories. But those memories are like 18 years old now, so take it for what it's worth. Also the biggest thing I remember from this game is being disappointed. I don't know if it was EA that did this, or if it was Gran Turismo 2 that just raised expectations, but I recall being really disappointed by the lack of vehicles and how limited it was. The idea, either pushed by EA or not, in my mind was that you'd have a living world that would constantly grow with new cars, you could tune them however you wanted, eventually you could do all sorts of customizations (like spoilers, new interiors, etc) and you'd have a home "town" where people would cruise around showing their cars off - like big towns in EverQuest of the day. I do not believe this game had that, or if it did I have absolutely no memory of it. Also while I had a cable modem many did not so you got into games with a lot of lagging and disconnects and where you'd have ghost cars and stuff. I was really looking forward to the game but ended up not playing it much as it just wasn't a lot of fun. At least that's my memory of it, and it's a pretty faded memory.

Chris Munch

It is always the same with EA, you invest time in a MMO by them and they shut it down. On the contrary you can still hop on Guildwars 1(!) and play it if you like, gotta love Arena Net for that.

BastetFurry