Retro Racing March 2021 - Need for Speed II (1997)

Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing other retro racing month.
Join the OCAU Retro Driving Club in a different retro driving game each month and see who can lay down the fastest lap!
Usually I like to mix up the era a bit for some variety between months. This one is pretty similar to Moto Racer from last month. But recently LGR did up an in depth retrospective on NFSII, so how could I resist but use this to my advantage? I very much like the idea of making a youtube for these each month. But I dont have the motivation to do it... so I'll just use someone else's for now

The Game of the Month:

Need for Speed II - 1997








The Game Description

Like its predecessor, Need for Speed II allows players to race exotic cars in country-themed tracks from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, either against computer-controlled opponents or human opponents via a LAN, modem, serial connection, or in split screen. There are three distinct gameplay modes: Single Race mode in which a player simply chooses a car and a course and completes a single race. In this mode, the player can customize both the number and type of opponents as well as the number of laps to be completed. Tournament Mode in which the player must complete a series of races successfully to unlock a bonus car. The Knockout Mode consists of a series of 2-lap races with 8 opponents; the last-place finisher at the end of each race is eliminated from the competition.

The game features eight real life high-end sports cars and concept cars which the player can drive and race against. The "Special Edition" release of the game added four additional cars. In addition, the game features a "showcase" which provides photos, videos, and technical information about the cars as well as the history of each company and background of each car's development.

The game also features several new elements compared to the previous game in the form of customizable car paint and components of their car including gear ratios, tires, and spoilers.


The Memories

I played the demo of this quite a bit on one of my friends computers. I was more into the original NFS though.

The How To

This one is not super simple to get going. But thanks to the fine work of the dudes from the thread, here are some tips:

The quick painless way to get right into the action on a modern PC is to emulate the PSX version.
elvis did up a sweet youtube guide last month to getting MOTO RACER running nicely in DuckStation with all the graphical improvements. Same applies to NFSII You can borrow the ISO from a public library here.

PC version is a bit more finicky, but well worth the effort because it looks heaps better (and Boneman reports perhaps is faster).
I did have this running temporarily on original hardware... but then it broke...
So, the alternatives are thus:
Windows Users can go to PCGaimingWIKI and follow the instructions to install the game here (thanks Grant)
Linux Users can faff around with compiling a port that works with 3D acceleration on GitHub here. Or, thanks again to Grant, use his Debian compile available in this post.
Note that you will have to either manually re-name all the folders from the ISO from CAPITALS to lower case. Or use the included script. And you might need some 32 bit library stuff as explained here.
Both will require the original ISO to copy the main game files over. Have a look on the interweb for a site called My Abandonware who may or may not have the file you need, alongside a rip that works straight up on Win98 if you happen to have such a machine.

The Car

Following our friend Clint's recommendation lets use the Ford GT 90
Leave the settings as stock please. Or at least, if you post a super good time, let us know the settings so everyone can play on the same field.
The general consensus is that the Arcade physics is the best option. But just let everyone know otherwise.






The Track

Hmmmm.... oh I wonder... ummm.

Australia der
Traffic and Opponents can be left off for obvious reasons. But, you get extra points for quick laps when you leave em both on
Go for 4 laps, we're keeping score for the best single lap and the full 4 lap race.







The Entry Fee

A $5 Donation to a legitimate charity of your choice. This is not mandatory. If you cant afford it don't worry. I just figure we may as well have some “greater good” come out of this!


The Rules
• Post your best lap time in the thread for the nominated car & track. Please copy the existing leader board and insert your time to make for easy updates.
• Its basically the honour system and just for good fun.
• Dont forget a photo of your retro setup so that we can all drool over the fact that you got it running.
• An uploaded video will get you bonus points.
• Stating your donations will secure you a spot on the leader board with a gold star and many likes.




The Prize:

The glory of telling your family and friends that you beat some strangers on the internet in some random old racing game you played as a kid.


The Leader Board

Fastest Single Lap
Boneman 1:21.03
Grant 1:21.96
jimbogimp 1:24.81
Pierre32 1:28.50
Mut 1:34.65
--------------
--------------

Fastest 4 Lap Race
Boneman 5:36.12
Grant 5:40.28
jimbogimp 5:48.46
Pierre32 6:16.21
Mut 6:45.31



Do you have the Tom? The Tom for Cruise?

 

I'll get this tested on DuckStation and stick a video up hopefully tomorrow with links and guides.

I'll also have a crack at getting the PC version running in WINE and report back on that too.

This made me LOL IRL.

 

Nice.

I'm installing the linux to have a dig in that too

 

Nice, this is one of the few games I owned at the time, lots of fond memories of crashing into the AI, finding shortcuts, and watching the car videos.

There's an open-source Linux/Android client, you just need the ISO: https://github.com/zaps166/NFSIISE

 

Ooh, if I actually managed to get Linux installed I would totally give that a go

 

an absolute beast of a game back in the day. Can't remember the last time I played it though.

 

I think I missed this one! Will try the linux version tonight

 

The "rip" NFS2 (non-SE) version didn't fire up in WINE. Running latest version, 6.3, in 32bit mode with Win95 or Win98 level compatibility, all I get is a black screen (whether in fullscreen or virtual desktop mode).

I have a feeling this one is similar to Vanne 's "Warhammer" title in era - that early Win95 first gen 3D accelerated set of games are notoriously difficult to make work on modern systems.

I'll try the Linux port/patch above, but I'm also keen to see if I can come up with a universal solution for these era of games. Pretty much anything that is true Win95 (i.e: not Tomb Raider or other DOS 3dfx titles), and requires Glide (no D3D options) are quite tricky, and Win9X virtualisation is almost impossible (next to no acceleration features for VirtualBox or QEmu official builds, with community builds being almost impossible to get running unless you can read the developer's mind).

I do like a challenge though.

 

This game is fine with software rendering, so a VM with hardware-accelerated CPU (ie. any virtualisation software these days), with a Win95/98 install should be fine.

 

I find Win95/98 in particular very laggy with this method. The standard Cirrus emulated hardware and drivers in popular virtualisation tools doesn't feel right.

I don't have any objective numbers on that. I should try and capture something at some point, but it means setting up real hardware to compare, which is well beyond my care level.

Even so, firing up NFS2 in WINE gave me a black screen even before I got to any GPU options. I would have thought it would go for software rendering by default, and the WINE AppDB has the game rated as "platinum", so it should work. Need to fiddle more and see what's going on.

 

if this keeps up i am going to need to setup a retro PC just for these.

 

Word for word on this one.

 

Go on then, start the build thread.

 

it's not like i don't have the bits, lol

 

I look forward to the impending wall of expletives when you are reminded just how unstable Win9X was.

 

Do we have an agreement on physics mode? The base game has "simulation" and "arcade", where "simulation" is still super-arcadey. The SE game also has "wild", which I haven't played around with much.

Maybe leave it open for people to find out which is faster?

 

Well I got the linux version to compile but it doesn't want to run in x64 apparently, or maybe I just haven't used linux enough lately

 

Hmm, wondering if I should chuck my Voodoo 1 into that little HP Celeron system I've been playing with.

 

I recon leave it open, once people start posting times just not which mode you were in. From my brief test session wild felt the best to me.

 

borrowed this image from the library https://archive.org/details/NeedForSpeedII.7z and tried out duckstation
used the same settings from MotoRacer and works fine