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…
popcar2yesterday at 1:55 PM
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:
I can't stop laughing. There's hundreds of cars all spawning at the same time, running routes around the map, all doing burnouts and honking at each other. It's absolute chaos, and 2006 year old me is having so much fun.
Any retail version of this game is mostly unplayable on modern PCs. Really appreciate the nostalgia bomb. I wasted so many hours of my life on this game on the original xbox.
rustyhancockyesterday at 12:37 PM
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.
SOLAR_FIELDStoday at 3:16 PM
Has NFS: Most Wanted (2005) been ported yet? This is one of my all time faves that never really got a revitalization. There was a remake that did not really stay faithful to the original and is widely considered by fans of the series to be worse than the original.
fasterikyesterday at 6:37 PM
The Doors/Snoop Dogg "Riders on the Storm" really takes me back. There are some games from that mid-2000s era that really imprinted themselves on my brain, and apparently this is one of them.
samayashartoday at 6:02 AM
The cool part about old games like NFS & GTA Vice City is the vibes they carry. Infrequent updates and awareness of the lack of technology at the time, made our minds set that we've to play them for a long time. Initially they seem boring but coming back from school/work and having a saved world in GTA Vice City was nostalgia.
With the current pace of developments, there is less time to relate with most games because we have updates in <1 year (except Rockstar obv) that changes the experience.
donatjyesterday at 1:50 PM
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.
MayeulCyesterday at 11:05 AM
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.
ionwaketoday at 2:26 PM
I might be wrong but I’m getting the feeling patents only have a negative affect on a society.
iharhajstertoday at 5:16 AM
Works like a charm! Great work. I played this game at 1024x768 a lot back in 2004./2005. during my college days, with a keyboard, on brand new PC (AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 512 MB RAM DDR1, ATI Radeon 9600, CRT monitor) which is first PC I bought with my own saved money.
It will remain my all time favorite NFS game, with the best soundtrack.
havalocyesterday at 2:18 PM
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.
swiftcodertoday at 11:50 AM
It is amazing, from the perspective of when this game came out, that we can just run AAA titles in the browser on a laptop now.
Dathuilyesterday at 4:19 PM
The absolute nostaliga wave that just hit me playing this. I was visiting family friends over Christmas and this was the game that year. Played it for about 6 hours straight with my brother and our parents friends kids.
Introduced me to so much music that shapped my musical tastes for years afterwards.
I miss this era of games when it felt like there was genuine inovation and competition in games and consoles. THPS2, THUG, Need for Speed. WWE all of them had unbelivable soundtracks and felt like they were trying to push the envelope with new features.
Was the 2000s-2015 the golden age of modern gaming?
dom96yesterday at 5:27 PM
This is the best Need for Speed game. I don't understand why no other racing game tries to emulate it in the modern era.
zacianyesterday at 12:17 PM
Riders on the storm ...
perarnengyesterday at 10:32 PM
When can I play the new Zelda game in the browser? ;-) some people seem to have ported it to a lot of places.
whycomeyesterday at 4:09 PM
This just shows what's possible. Copyright should be 10 years
ourcattoday at 11:01 AM
Incredible. And less than 10Mb of wasm.
stuxnet79today at 2:52 AM
Fun fact - the fictional city of Bayview in this game was modeled after Vancouver. Lots of fun Easter eggs to uncover if you are a local and look closely enough.
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!
WarmWashtoday at 2:24 PM
So cool, thanks!
herpderperatortoday at 2:23 AM
How is this possible? According to the GitHub[0] README:
> The game's x86 code is translated to C ahead of time and compiled to WebAssembly.
So they decompiled the x86 into C which was fully able to be recompiled to WASM?
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.
Dries007yesterday at 11:17 AM
The chaos of all of the other players joining in career mode is really funny.
tap-snap-or-napyesterday at 12:30 PM
It played perfectly for me, very nostalgic. Amazed how it just worked.
senfiajyesterday at 12:03 PM
For me performance is poor, it's unplayable. To run the game, I had to turn on Chrome's enable-unsafe-webgpu setting.
ayarostoday at 7:26 AM
Has anyone done this with Hot Pursuit 2 or Porsche Unleashed?
fartfeaturesyesterday at 5:24 PM
It detects Safari as not having webGPU support but that isn't true any more.
gbraadyesterday at 11:13 AM
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).
Xenoamorphousyesterday at 2:58 PM
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.
grasoyesterday at 1:43 PM
It is surprising that it works decently on an old Android phone (A525G)
Allwyndyesterday at 2:28 PM
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.
janczechowskiyesterday at 4:51 PM
I think it's really cool bringing old games back to life with all the conveniences of the web platform. I did a HoMM3 typescript rewrite with Claude Code recently exactly for this reason: ability to run in the browser, incl mobile devices with cloud saves. But I'm not hosting anything publicly for that
tevlonyesterday at 11:35 AM
serious question: how is this legal?
geekgod382yesterday at 2:22 PM
I am a huge fan of Need For Speed. This game gave me nostalgia. The best 60 minutes I have spent!
bwnklyesterday at 2:55 PM
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.
SylonZeroyesterday at 3:34 PM
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.
andixyesterday at 12:40 PM
Can I selfhost this game locally? I have the suspicion it won't stay online for long.
selectAllyesterday at 3:09 PM
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.
diegochavarrosuyesterday at 4:08 PM
No, my brother, this was simply incredible. The interface for using it on a cell phone blew me away, and the fluidity is amazing, but seeing that multiplayer mode, that truly blew me away.
harrisonedyesterday at 2:39 PM
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.
gmmachineyesterday at 4:27 PM
That brought me back, what a classic game. Thanks for this.
Second, accepting donations for an EA game might be a bad idea; the recompile itself freely accessible without donations might stay around.
estebarbyesterday at 7:31 PM
Oh wow, and this thing is playable on a cellphone; I'm very impressed. I remember when this was launched, my PC was barely able to run it.
redbellyesterday at 1:04 PM
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.
sgtyesterday at 10:58 AM
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.
pmarrecktoday at 5:45 AM
holy shit, I forgot how fuckin SICK this soundtrack was LOL
I really wonder why nobody even bothers to write their own marketing copy for even hobby projects like this. Is there no voice behind the person who decided to build this? What inspired them? Why? It’s just the usual AI language Claude wrote.
sheepscreekyesterday at 3:30 PM
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.
joshdavhamyesterday at 8:24 PM
This was super fun and really impressive! Thanks so much for sharing this
AlfeGyesterday at 3:46 PM
Very nice loading times. Almost instant from cold start. Some clever tech used.
assadkhan84yesterday at 12:40 PM
Wow, that brough back some memories, thank you for sharing this :) are there more available?
animalrapyesterday at 5:13 PM
This is one of my favorite games of all time. What a time to be alive.
whatever1yesterday at 8:32 PM
HOW IS IT BUTTERY SMOOTH ?
My Pentium 4 + Geforce 6600 was struuuugling!
hypferyesterday at 4:28 PM
This is just piracy compiled to wasm.
Which I guess is cool that LLMs can compile stuff to wasm, but there is absolutely nothing new, interesting or good about this.
We had piracy before. The only thing that changed is that it is packaged into an html wrapper now
ReptileManyesterday at 12:33 PM
Give us Porsche Unleashed ... that was proper great NFS.
wg0yesterday at 2:11 PM
How does it work technically speaking? WASM decomplication?
wald3nyesterday at 7:02 PM
Worked great until it started raining haha
gejoseyesterday at 2:52 PM
What a throwback, thanks for making it!
alexpadulayesterday at 4:18 PM
That was rather fun in online mode!
boredemployeetoday at 1:58 AM
the quality of the graphics still impressive
bix6yesterday at 1:54 PM
One of my all time favorites! God bless.
wald3nyesterday at 7:41 PM
Please do NFL Street next!
kzzzlyesterday at 10:22 PM
That looks so cool! Old games are built different.
chiengineer3yesterday at 3:33 PM
chitown26.com - turned my portfolio into a full arcade with custom games
Uptrendatoday at 1:43 AM
I really wish we could do stuff like this without worrying about getting sued. Like, think about it. The copyright for games is extremely long (I won't google it) yet they only have a short period where they make money. All that work went into those games that are no longer financially viable. But no one can do anything with them due to copyright.
I've thought about this so much as I'm building my own game. I see all these amazing assets in older works like music, 3d models, textures, and so on, yet if you use any of it you're just going to get sued. I feel like there could be a good middle ground that might work for the publisher better than just keeping everything in a warehouse...
This website here is likely to be sent some not-so-polite emails soon telling them to take it down as they don't own the assets...
sevenseacatyesterday at 3:05 PM
I played the absolute shit out of this on my GameCube. Even had a racing wheel for it. And the soundtrack was the bomb!
monster_truckyesterday at 6:08 PM
It makes me sad to see the Pontiac billboards. GM needs to do some necromancy and bring them back from the dead.
Potentially controversial opinion but I think the WS6 has aged extremely well compared to a lot of other designs of 02-03. Those ram air scoops still look cool as fuck
holodukeyesterday at 11:05 PM
Awesome. Of course take down will follow. But sure you can prompt it to change it to a completely different racing game with ai generated assets only. There will be a massive amount of clones coming from every possible game you can think of. Where lies the border of legality.
tsssyesterday at 10:47 PM
Would be nice if you could type chat messages to other players in free roam.
alexpadulayesterday at 4:01 PM
That was fun!
gigel82yesterday at 6:56 PM
Damn, if someone ports HOMM3 to run in the browser, I'm getting fired.
polytelyyesterday at 12:19 PM
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
brcmthrowawayyesterday at 6:22 PM
What engine was used here? UE1?
logicalleeyesterday at 6:15 PM
I just played it, worked awesome and was pretty fun. If it uses the original game assets then it's a pretty clear copyright violation, I'm not sure if AI is able to produce the same level of artwork and gameplay so I'm not sure if there's anything the author can do to avoid being copyright infringement.