alt Hacker NewsNeed for Speed Underground 2 online in the browser
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Been playing it the last few days along with a few races with friends, it's pretty wild that this is even possible. The only downside is that this website isn't legal and now that it's popular it's probably getting a takedown soon.
But NFSU2 is abandonware that isn't available anymore so I hope they just leave it alone.
Also FYI for people on Linux, you need to enable unsafe WebGPU features for this to work. I use this command to make it work on Chromium:
chromium --enable-unsafe-webgpu --ozone-platform=x11 --use-angle=vulkan --enable-features=Vulkan,VulkanFromANGLE
Huge fan of bringing back older games and updating.
But I think it's highly dubious to accept let alone solicit donations for copyrighted content.
Something about the like soft almost dream like lighting of this era of games just feels so much more comforting and inviting than todays hyper realistic graphics.
This is great, I have been thinking about revisiting this old game. Unfortunately, it is not available for sale anywhere (probably for music licensing issues, see other games such as Alan Wake), and older versions don't run as well as they could.
I do find it legally dubious to also host the assets, but at least they make it easy to jump in.
Free roam with online players is such a great concept! However, playing in the browser is not ideal. Are the extra features (name claims, multiplayer free roam, etc) available in a native version? It is unclear to me whether https://github.com/TalhaMudo/NFSU2Recomp includes these extra goodies.
A relatively good resource to discover game recompilations is https://recomp.gg/, but there is no obvious way to contribute, and no search functionalityy.
Very nice loading times. Almost instant from cold start. Some clever tech used.
This is such a fun blast from the past! I remember playing the entire NFS Underground on both the PC and the XBox - it had the most fun gameplay even compared to all the newer, shinier stuff that came later. LLAP.
The best part for me was Riders on the Storm by The Doors. Without NFS I probably would never have come across the song. I still listen to it now and then and it brings back that same feeling every time.
Riders on the storm ...
I got this for my 9th birthday when it was just out, but wasn't able to install it on my dad's PC so the only way to play it was at friends' houses.
So nice to see this work in a browser on my ancient smart phone without any issue.
I loved the original NFS games where you could drive exotic cars in open roads, and didn’t love when they started being about modded regular cars… still had a lot of fun with this Underground 2.
Funny how AI has enabled us to long for the days without AI. We didn't know what we had in the 90s/2000s, it was the golden age in PC gaming.
It played perfectly for me, very nostalgic. Amazed how it just worked.
I played a lot of this with a friend a few days ago, it's awesome. I hope more old games get revived this way, specially the unique ones where we don't have a modern equivalents that are better.
I am a huge fan of Need For Speed. This game gave me nostalgia. The best 60 minutes I have spent!
chitown26.com - turned my portfolio into a full arcade with custom games
I guess this was made with automatic shift in mind? There are no controls for manual shifting on-screen. Did not find an easy way to enable this. Stutters often due to asset loading. Not a very pleasant experience... and likely very illegal to distribute/host (though I 'own' this game).
It's cool, I saw a lot of people posting videos and screenshots of thousands of players online. I briefly remember playing NFSUG2 but it was never my cup of tea. Somehow the open world felt a bit empty, hopefully this makes it feel more alive.
On the website they seem to be doing NFSUG1 as well and it's my favorite version of NFS and I hope I can check it out when it's ready.
https://voxelblox-notes.pages.dev/play/
This stuff is fun lately, I've been working on an engine for a while and ported a little game over to the browser here. It's a voxel kart racer as a browser project. Think classic kart racing, but with a voxel aesthetic. It's a fun little experiment, so I figured I'd share it here!
I remember playing this on a PC when it came out. Graphics still looks good today and is surprisingly playable on a 8 inch tablet.
The chaos of all of the other players joining in career mode is really funny.
It is surprising that it works decently on an old Android phone (A525G)
Playing in freeplay, I feel like I am Jason Dessen from Dark Matter. So many green Nissan 350Zs. It is impossible to drive a 100ft without hitting someone like me.
For me performance is poor, it's unplayable. To run the game, I had to turn on Chrome's enable-unsafe-webgpu setting.
Oh, I really didn't expected it to play smoothly on my six years old phone (Samsung S20+),Kudos!
I didn't play much NFS back then, the two racing games that I played mostly in the past were Screamer 2 & Test Drive 6.
Can I selfhost this game locally? I have the suspicion it won't stay online for long.
Do CS1.6 and CS Source next
Physics hold great!
What a throwback, thanks for making it!
Give us Porsche Unleashed ... that was proper great NFS.
How does one achieves this?
Seems like it's been recompiled for wasm, but how was the server built and free roam multiplayer implemented?
I played the absolute shit out of this on my GameCube. Even had a racing wheel for it. And the soundtrack was the bomb!
I still am not sure whether wasm/webgl is suitable for 3d games with some complexity. You'll eventually have some GC pauses during game play. This one included, despite the rest of the game being smooth.
Wow, that brough back some memories, thank you for sharing this :) are there more available?
Wow this plays great even in browser on my phone
One of my all time favorites! God bless.
Very cool, that was my game, still have this on two CDs,
Online needs reimplementation, with matchmaking instead of lobby list, and matching cars, otherwise it is not fun.
i really worry about what the big game developers are going to do to fight against these types of projects. wondering if we are fucking up the future of game preservation because people want to generate web versions of games they like
...if your browser is Chromium, don't bother trying with Firefox.
Graphics (WebGPU)
Firefox for Android has no WebGPU yet. Play in Chrome.GPU-OFF-FIREFOX-ANDROID
It's 2026, and we still haven't solved the aliasing problems.
thats so cool bro and how is the performance like? Also can you use a controller?
I played this when it was new, taking turns at the keyboard of my friend’s gaming PC. Kind of wild to revisit on my phone today and have it work perfectly.
I wish the circumstances around abandonware games weren’t so tenuous, there’s so much great stuff out there and reverse engineering with AI unlocks all sorts of cool possibilities. The multiplayer features here have me thinking about other old games that could be brought online and how fun it could be. SimCity 2000 where all the neighboring cities are real and operated by other players…