Game:

Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (1998)

Category:

Show

Duration: 5:11

280 views

4

..::READ THE DESCRIPTION::..
ENGLISH ONLY

Shalom, Comrades - Internets! Welcome to the next, demo "special" segment of "Play the GAME!" series. In today's episode, we're going to keep on playing "Need For Speed III Hot Pursuit"; this time however we'll change the theme of video by putting less focus on the contents of demo itself and concentrating on its technical aspects instead. Therefore, I feel responsible to give you short explanation first.
As you may know, demo releases of late 90's "Need For Speed" games appeared in the time of 16-bit and still developing 32-bit architecture prime. They were given to the public "as they were", which means no patches, external add-ons and even technical support were available for them at all. Consequently, attempting to install and eventually play them on newer 64-bit machines, just for technical curiousity (and oddity as well), turns out to be almost, if not completely impossible. Hence, if you read descriptions from previous episodes covering this game, you may have noticed small annotations of the system and its architecture, that allowed me to capture the footage. Having this in mind however, I decided to approach a slightly different direction.
Having had the demo game already installed on 32-bit OS, I still wanted to check its performance on 64-bit machine. That was possible by copying it from one computer to another with the use of a flash drive. To my suprise, it all worked! The game was stable, no issues with performance occured, so it's all great, right!? Well, not exactly...
You see, "Need For Speed III Hot Pursuit" (and "High Stakes" too) originally uses an external (and very outdated) graphics configurator. This program allows the user to choose between various graphics rendering options, which include full 3D support (Direct3D and 3Dfx acceleration if present) and the so-called "Software" Mode. Considering the times when the game was developed, "software" was a "give-and-take" for those players, who didn't own a 3D accelerator (most notably 3Dfx Voodoo) at the time and whose graphics cards weren't powerful enough to generate advanced graphics without the afforementioned acceleration (believe me, I personally used ATI Rage II with 8MB of VRAM back in the day, yet it was a pile of crap, hence the 3D accelerator was a "Must Have"). This renderer allowed to play the game in its full 3D, but without any smooth-texturing, with questionable Z-Buffer and mostly low-end graphics settings as well. In other words, "Software" renderer offered a PS1 look-alike graphics very close to its full 3D counterpart - decent, but not mind-blowing.
So "why didn't I choose the 3D renderer for the gameplay and went with "Software" one instead?" you may ask? There is a reason for that. It appears that the graphics configurator has its own unique registry entry, that is being created at the end of game's instalation. Once it's signed to the system, the set-up becomes accessible to the user and so the renderer for graphics display can be selected. Otherwise, the game will run in its default renderer, that is "Software". Hence you have an answer...
As I was able to choose the full 3D renderer for previous videos, because the game was successfully installed on 32-bit machine, on 64-bit "Software" mode was the only option available for multiple reasons:
1. The installer is 16-bit program, so it won't run on 64-bit OS at all;
2. No instalation = no registry entry for configurator, thereby it's not accessible and no gameplay;
3. I made the game working on 64-bit OS, just because I copied its pre-installed version from 32-bit system, however the copy itself didn't include the copy of a registry entry for the configurator specificaly, hence the "Software" renderer only. Also, I personally doubt if the configurator could work, if the entry existed. It's already outdated and a bit unstable, even on 32-bit machines.
Despite these inconveniences, it's quite interesting to see the game working on 64-bit architecture OS with these settings, as it kind of reminds me of my old days. And if you're old "millenial boomer" (or whatever it's called) like me, then you may find some interest in it as well. Anyway, all I can say is: enjoy the video and thank you for your support.

Toda ve l'hitraot!

Video's info:
Racing Mode: Hot Pursuit
Track: Rocky Pass
Car: Chevrolet Corvette C5
AI Difficulty: Aggressive
Weather: Off

The following race was driven with Analog USB Controler.
The gameplay footage depicted in this film was captured on 64-bit machine.
This video can be displayed in 1080p quality, in 60 frames per second.

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DISCLAIMER!
The following video may contain visual and audial imageries and themes that may not be suitable for children under the age of 13 and as such, it is NOT MARKED FOR KIDS!

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