I’ve been playing the PS1 version of High Stakes on an emulator, and I have to say it is a very decent entry to the series when it was first released back in 1999. Whenever people think of the old NFS (I’m talking about the pre-Underground era here) they think of the first three games and Hot Pursuit 2. I’ve never played this as a kid so I had no memories of it, yet I’ve never hear about anyone talking about it. As with most other NFS games, it had a gimmick: Head-to-head pink slip racing, hence the “High Stakes” title. Along with that, it had other modes such as a standard single race, multi-car tournaments, hot pursuit mode, and car-specific events. However what really got my attention were the various features and details that never show up in later games

Car Showcases

Just like the other NFS games of the era, High Stakes comes with a Showcase mode which has a narrator talk about the specs of the car you selected as well as the history of the car in question and of the company that made it.

When I was first saw these, my first thought was “Why doesn’t NFS have these anymore?”. It felt as though the game was trying to sell me the car, which added a bit of “real world” into it. The last NFS game to include something like this was Hot Pursuit 2010, to really complete the throwback to the good old days.

Hot Pursuit Mode 173 KB

Hot Pursuit mode in High Stakes is more or less the same as the other games before and since: Race other cars while the cops deploy roadblocks and spikes to take you down. But this game spices things up. In High Stakes, the tracks all take place in different countries. Hidden in the track options menu is something called “Local Police”. It’s turned off by default, so if you race on the Landstrasse track in Germany the cops all speak English with American accents. But if you turn Local Police on, the cops then speak in the language of the country you’re racing in! When I tried this out, my mind was completely blown. Another neat detail is in tracks that are set in the UK, the cops speak English of course but with English accents.

But it’s not just the language the cops speak that change with the country, so the paint job each police car has. And even then the differences don’t end, the cars used by the cops are different according to the country: The US and Canada use Chevy Caprices and Corvettes, while the European countries use the BMW M5 and the Porsche 911 Turbo. And to top it all off, the sound the sirens make vary by country. The Diablo below is used to demonstrate each livery on one car since its the only cop car used by every country in the game.

Smaller Gameplay Details

There are a many smaller details are quite unnoticeable at first but are very neat once you do notice them. One of them in particular is a setting where your speedometer changes units from MPH to KM/H automatically when you finish racing in an American track and start another one in Europe. Another detail is how racing in a UK track always sets whatever car you’ve selected to RHD.

I have never seen any NFS game before or since that got to this level of detail

NFS High Stakes is a game with a ridiculous level of detail and it is a enormous injustice that is also the most ignored game in the series. It is obvious that this was made in a time before EA became the greedy empire of crap it is known to be today because a game like this took time and effort. Hopefully NFS 2019 will show at least some of this stuff but with Payback not even getting the basic stuff like car upgrades right, I wouldn’t hold my breath.