Need for Speed: Underground

by Electronic Arts

Product Features

• Choose from 20 of the most sought-after cars from Mitsubishi, Subaru, and Toyota
• Race on realistic versions of the world's wildest city streets
• Earn cash to pay for custom body kits for a custom street racing machine
• Upgrade your auto parts to give you the edge in races where 1/10th of a second means the different between winning & losing!

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000B0MN3
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches ; 2.2 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: December 17, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,664 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Platform: Game Boy Advance

From the Manufacturer

Enter the world of urban street racing and high performance tuner cars with the latest title in the hit Need for Speed series: Need for Speed Underground. Take on today's most popular tuner cars from Mitsubishi Motors, Subaru, Toyota and many more, building the ultimate street machine by earning cash to pay for custom body kits and a host of licensed car performance mods. But just creating a custom street racing machine will not get you to the top. It takes a certain amount of attitude and razor sharp driving skills to compete in the tough world of urban racing.

Product Description

Need for Speed Underground brings you the most exciting street racing around!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best gameboy racer ive ever played!!!, December 9, 2003

By 

Steven Dixon (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Need for Speed Underground (Video Game)

This game is simply the best looking and playable racing game currently available on the GBA.

The graphics are simply outstanding, in its fully rendered 3D, it really is one the nicest looking games on the gameboy (just look at some screen shots on the web!!!).

This game is not only beautiful visually, it is also highly playable. It took me a couple of races to really appreciate just how much playability oozes from the game.

And it doesnt stop there, a full career mode has been squeezed
onto the cart. You can compete against computer opponents and climb up the standings in four different tournaments, drag, sprint, cuircit and my personal favorite, drift. As you win races you unlock new cars (that you can buy with price money). There are also hundreds of car parts that you can unlock, purchase and install onto your car. This allows you to build up a fully customizable car, which of course you get the pleasure of racing in the tournaments.

It really is a very good game that has enough packed into it to provide hours upon hours of fun.

I highly recommend this game for racing car fans and also to people who just love playing excelent gmes in general. Would make an ideal christmas present!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good, February 27, 2004

By 

TwistaG "Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore" (Moncks Corner,SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Need for Speed Underground (Video Game)

Street racing is very different from and, in many ways, more exciting than traditional automobile racing. Competitions take place out on the regular streets and freeways of the city, as opposed to the relatively safe confines of a closed professional course. Instead of cups and medals, prize winnings are paid out in cash, which many participants use to trick out their cars with fancy paint jobs and slick body kits--even when performance upgrades, such as turbo kits and exhaust systems, make the most sense. In street racing, your car's appearance is just as important as winning the race. Need for Speed Underground brings this fast and furious world of street racing on to the Game Boy Advance with mostly positive results. Apart from the graphics, everything from the console versions of the game has made it on to the GBA cartridge. Watch out for the cross traffic at intersections. Need for Speed Underground has all of the necessary options and modes that a handheld racing game ought to have. Competitions include circuit (multiple laps), sprint (half laps), drag, and drift events. Each event has roughly 10 different tracks devoted to it, and you have the option of bringing a friend in for two-player matches using the link cable. While it's nice to be able to race against another live human being and show off your rides to each another, the heart of the game is its single-player underground mode. In the underground mode, you join up with a clique of street racers and participate night after night in various events with the sole purpose of rising up the ranks and funneling cash into your vehicle. The number of available cars, parts, and upgrades is phenomenal. While there are only 20 different basic car bodies to choose from, you can create thousands of unique-looking vehicles with the many hundreds of body parts and paint schemes at your disposal. There aren't many GBA games out there that let you swap out the bumpers, hood, tires, side skirt, and tinting on your car, in addition to the usual set of engine, turbo, brake, and suspension upgrades. Popular manufacturers, such as Ford, Subaru, Nissan, Mazda, and Volkswagen, are represented, as are more than two-dozen parts vendors, including Dazz Motorsport, Enkei, MOMO, and Neuspeed.
When you get out to the street, NFS: Underground sheds its simulator-style trappings and turns into the sort of easygoing driving game that anyone from beginners to experts can jump right into. The A and B buttons control acceleration and braking, and if you select a manual transmission, the L and R buttons allow you to downshift and upshift. A few races into the underground mode, you can purchase a nitro boost upgrade, which you can activate by tapping up on the directional pad. Each course has a good variety of straights, soft curves, sharp turns, and dips. The physics engine has a realistic degree of skid, which is great if you're the kind of player who likes to slide around corners, but it doesn't overdo it to the point that you'll have to worry about spinouts or rollovers. Likewise, you're not really penalized all that much for smacking into walls or colliding with cross traffic. If you smash into a bus at 100mph, you'll lose speed and skid for a bit, but it doesn't take long to regain control and get back in to the race. Each car comes with its own set of speed, acceleration, and handling characteristics, which you'll feel during the race as steering response and skid tendency. Surprisingly, the game's 3D graphics are both its best feature and its worst problem. The developers really pushed the GBA to the limit using this sort of texture-mapped polygon engine. It's wonderful that you can actually make out details, like window frames, fences, and highway signs, along the road, but the resolutions are so blocky that it's sometimes difficult to figure out which way the pavement is going to turn. It helps to play through the courses and learn where the turns are, although that's the kind of thing that you want to do to learn the layout of a course, not just so you'll remember to take a hard right after the brown splotch up ahead. Thankfully, this pixelation issue doesn't have a bearing on how any of the vehicles look. While you may not be able to distinguish a guardrail from an on-ramp, at times, every car looks shiny and crisp when viewed from all distances and at various angles. This means you'll have plenty of opportunities during the race to admire the custom window tinting and vinyl decorations you applied to your car the night before. Trick out your car with performance parts, body parts, paint jobs, and vinyl decorations. Despite its problematic graphics, Need for Speed Underground is still a joy to play. The courses have a good mixture of powerslide and speed run sections, and CPU drivers tend to keep the races close without resorting to typical cheats, like passing through commuter vehicles or teleporting in right behind you. If you're a wannabe car buff, it's easy to spend hours just upgrading and tinkering with your car in order to develop a custom ride that suits your personality. The last thing that bears mentioning--and this is only a significant note for some of you--is the fact that the music EA chose to put in the game won't appeal to everyone. During the menus and during each race, you'll hear a random pick from any of four different song loops, including "Get Low" by Lil Jon, "Sucked In" by Jerk, "Doomsday" by Overseer, and "The Only" by Static-X. Luckily, if you don't like the selection of music, you can shut it off in the options menu. In fact, the in-game engine and tire sound effects are superb and can suffice all on their own. Warts and all, Need for Speed Underground is a good racing game--not because it's pretty, but because it's actually engaging and fun to play.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You Won't Finad a Better Racing Game..., November 4, 2004

By 

Marcin Shaddix (Delaware) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Need for Speed Underground (Video Game)

I have gotten NFS Underground almost a year ago, and it is still awesome. The main idea of the game is to simply, well... Race! You can choose from four race options: circuit, drag, drift, and sprint. Each have different rules, such as who can reach the highest miximum speed, who can bang against the border least often, and so on. Circuit is the simple race. No special rules.

Pros.
1. Lots of different cars to choose from
2. Hundreds of different ways you can customize your car. Every time you win a race, you gain money. You lose money if you lose a race. The better the part you want to install is, the more expensive it is. Different motors, bumpers, stickers, and yes, you can change the color of the car. I heard many people say you cannot. They are wrong.
3. The music is awesome. And the songs are not just something to keep you entertained while you play. Those songs are for real. Believe it or not, but I sametimes turn off the SFX and put the music on maximum and play with nothing but the music
4. The races are not that easy. It takes a long time to finally beat a challenge. This will keep you entertained for a long, long time
5. The controls are really easy to learn

Cons.
1. The graphics, I'm sad to say, are not the best. These are probably the main reason I brought the rating down from a five to a four.
2. All the good parts, as well as other car colors other than silver, are locked until you get farther in the game
3. Sometimes being challanged by others can get really annoying. That is, whenever you click on the option to race, you get to pick the player you want to race against. Once in a while you get challanged, and you cannot do anything but go ahead and race. You can't refuse!

Overall, a great game. GET IT!

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