So a short introduction:
With all the recent racing games, and shitty Need For Speed releases I had gotten a bit nostalgic and looked at the old game disc shelf on the desk, looking back at my very first racing games. My first real racing game would be Need For Speed Road Challenge, or High Stakes, as it was released in the US. With “real” I mean I don’t account Lego Racers 
Previous attempts to get the darn game to work on Windows 7 had been futile, hell, it wouldn’t even work on Windows 2000 (Yes, it’s that old, it’s from the age back when noone asked why a public road that only goes in a loop exists). So I went on a search and found a way to get it to work again (linkie).
Boy has it been fun. Playing this game reminds you how much modern day race games baby their players. “So you messed up that corner? Oh here, let me rewind that for you.” “Wrecked your car? That’s just fine! Here, just as new for free.” “Still couldn’t finish first huh? How about a restart?”
Well… this game doesn’t do that, or atleast, didn’t do it already. If you crash your crash you aren’t like “Well, that’s banged up pretty badly” with a grin, no, you’re in ****ing tears. If you take a nice high jump, well, that’s probably going to cost you in suspension repairs.
This is what I like in this game, you can’t just go and race like it’s a destruction derby, if you do that you won’t really run a profit, even if you finish 1st. You have to look after your car.
The career mode is pretty fun too, although completely lacking a story it’s pretty fun to work your way up, and upgrade your car on the way. Surprisingly you can even race a car for pink slips. Too easy to make money? Remember that there’s no restart button whatsoever, either you get it right from the first time and get another ride, or you’ll lose yours. There also is a cop vs racer mode, which is pretty damn fun with early spikestrips n all, although racers can be quite…predictable when they only drive around in loops 
The physics are…surprisingly good, especially considering the recommended specs were a 266 MHz processor . I expected something like a flash game, but it wasn’t, it actually felt pretty realistic, well, besides from going offroad doesn’t slow you down enough. What is positive though is that every bit of oversteer is going to cost you some time, like it should, unlike some drift physics in some modern titles
What about the AI? Well…They’re more what you’d expect of the 90’s. The early easy ones wobble from left to right on the road like drunken grandmothers, but as soon as you get further in the campaign you won’t be laughing at them anymore, trying to find a balance between careful driving to preserve your car and staying ahead of the competition. It isn’t too rare to see one car into a pillar like a player would, which is a plus to me (a nice thing to see after you have been driving a catch-up race the whole time).
All in all: Surprisingly good for being over 15 years old, from the days when EA actually considered their customers, and delivered one hell of a driving experience.
note: I’ve used screenshots from others since I can’t figure out how to pull them ingame.
and the original NFS 3 Hot Pursuit too.
Atleast they bothered sticking a story in, which really added to the game for me. It’s saddening to see them screw up the franchise with the latest titles though. Need For Speed Rivals was a disgrace to what NFS had once been, I mean, it had some pretty good bounty ideas, but it was made plain shitty and the story had so much cheese it would sink the titanic. The physics were bound to FPS, which said enough. Raise max FPS to 60, and your car also would go twice as fast 
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