Need for Speed II (1997)

Need for Speed II is a 1997 racing video game, developed by Electronic Arts Canada and published by Electronic Arts. It is a part of the Need for Speed series and sequel to The Need for Speed (1994), significantly deviating from the emphasis of realism in The Need for Speed to arcade-like gameplay, though it introduces the car tuning. As does its predecessor, Need for Speed II features several exotic cars, and includes tracks set in various parts of the world. The game also opted to remove police pursuits introduced in The Need for Speed.

Need for Speed II: Special Edition

Released on November 6, 1997 in the United States and February 2, 1998 in Japan and Europe, the special edition of NFS II includes one extratrack, 4 extra cars, 3 bonus cars, a new driving style called "wild", and 3dfx Glide hardware-acceleration support. These new features add up to a substantially improved game.

Because the Voodoo Graphics and the Voodoo Rush were the only 3dfx cards available at the time of the game's release, and becauseElectronic Arts did not future-proof the game's installer, later 3dfx graphics card models such as the Voodoo 2 are not detected during the NFS II SE installation process (a pop-up will confirm 3dfx detection). Subsequently, the installer doesn't copy from the disk the secondary version of the program with 3D acceleration. This problem is easily solved by manually copying and running the alternate executable file. Glide wrappersare available for non-3DFX graphics cards so that modern computers can run the game with hardware-acceleration. Several Glide wrappers with support for the game are dgvoodoo and Zeckensack's Glide wrapper.

Besides smoothing out the in-game textures, the 3dfx version of the game also features additional visual effects not found in the software version, such as car reflections, weather, improved fog, shading, improved skybox rendering and transparent in-game menu overlay featuring a rotating view around the player's car. These visual enhancements are standard in both the software and hardware accelerated versions of Hot Pursuit, High Stakes, Porsche Unleashed and Hot Pursuit 2.