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Need for Speed: ProStreet (Video Game)

— J-Mac

The one that turned street racing legitimate, featuring The Stig Expy.

Need for Speed: ProStreet is a 2007 racing video game developed by EA Black Box and published by Electronic Arts, the eleventh installment in the Need for Speed series. Unlike its immediate predecessors, which focused on the illegal street racing scene, ProStreet focuses on legal circuit races that take place on closed tracks, blending elements of both sim and arcade racing games, similar to Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport and TOCA Race Driver. Most races take place in real-world locations such as the Portland International Raceway, Mondello Park, and Autopolis.

The player assumes the role of Ryan Cooper, a former illegal street racer who went "clean", who enters a series of showdown events run by several racing organizations. Each event comprises a number of races where the player must compete against opponents to earn points and cash in four race modes; besides the already well-known ones in the franchise, Drag and Drift, this game features Grip, which is a more traditional approach to circuit racing, and Speed, which puts high acceleration and top speed into priority. The overall objective of the game is to ultimately confront four elite drivers simply known as the Kings, with each one specializing in one of the aforementioned race types: Nate Denver, the Speed King; Ray Krieger, the Grip King; Karol Monroe, the Drag King; and Aki Kimura, the Drift King. Defeating all of the Kings will lead Cooper to face against a fifth driver, Ryo Watanabe, called the Showdown King for mastering all four disciplines, for the ultimate title of Street King.

It is the first Need for Speed game that was primarily developed for high-definition consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, although versions for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, and Wii were also released, with the last two being stripped back in graphics and content for the less powerful machines.

• Artificial Stupidity: The Kings are actually a lot worse than the AI-driven cars leading up to their levels. Some notable examples are: Nate Denver's car being too slow, Karol Monroe jumping the start or unable to maintain a wheelie, Ray Krieger being lapped easily or even the Showdown King himself, Ryo Watanabe, wrecking his car.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • Some of the racing circuits (mainly Willow Springs's GP Circuit ^note whose actual name is Big Willow) can be ran in reverse, which can not be done in Real Life.
  • The Short Circuit of Infineon Raceway ^note Currently Sonoma Raceway as of 2012 is nonexistent.
  • The main Willow Spring Raceway has a large hill in the middle of the track, which presumably only exists to prevent participants from taking a shortcut. In reality, the whole area is flat wide.
• Bowdlerize:
• Bragging Rights Reward: Beating each of the Kings wins you their car... except that each car, despite having unique cosmetics, isn't even fully upgraded, let alone fitted with any unique parts or hidden extras. In fact, Ray Krieger is the worst offender, having the lowest stats (Tier 2) among the Kings.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Regarding cars:
    • The Acura NSX is probably one of the biggest examples in the franchise, as it appeared in the original The Need for Speed (in its NA1 model) in 1994 and didn't return to the series until it was brought it back in this game (in its NA2 model) in 2007, 13 years later.^note And just to rub salt into the wound, the NA2 NSX was put on another bus after 2011's Shift 2: Unleashed, where it remained until the second-generation NSX returned in 2017's Need for Speed Payback. It was all due to licensing issues, due to Honda not allowing their cars being used among police chases prior to Need for Speed (2015).
    • The McLaren F1 appeared first in Need for Speed II and didn't reappear again until Hot Pursuit 2 (although its GTR "Short Tail" and "Long Tail" models appeared in High Stakes in the meantime), then missed the entire Underground-to-Carbon era, and returned in this game, albeit only as a DLC car. It would fully return in the base game in Need for Speed: Undercover.
  • Regarding race types, Drag returns to a Need for Speed game after being absent in Need for Speed: Carbon.
  • A small but subtle one. Al Murdoch, who provided narration for the track information in III: Hot Pursuit and High Stakes returns in providing track introductions for the PSP version of ProStreet.
• Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": The series' traditional Circuit race mode was renamed to Grip race.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover art for most versions of the game has a recolored Nissan GT-R Proto with stickers slapped in. In-game, it cannot be customized with vinyls or decals, let alone repainting, unlike its production counterpart. Ironically, the PSP version has a GT-R Proto slapped with vinyls and decals as a bonus car for completing the game.
• Crazy Is Cool: In-universe, you (well, Ryan Cooper) are considered to be this by the announcers if you perform good enough. They insist a lot on this at the beginning of drag races.

  Big J: Did you see this guy? He's just bananas!

• Critical Existence Failure: Zig-Zagged, as non-terminal damage very slightly impairs performance, mostly as reduced stability at high speeds. Flipping your car will instead be automatically counted as "Totaled," even if the car seems fully functional.^note 7th gen console versions and the PC release at least require the car's roof to touch anything while flipped, in order to count as Totaled; on the PlayStation 2 and Wii versions, it instantly gets Totaled the moment it flips, with no chance of recovery. While it seems odd for even full-simulation racing games, this is what happens in real-life motorsports; flipping your car leads to automatic disqualification.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Veterans of the Underground duology, Most Wanted (2005) and Carbon are gonna have a tough time adapting to this Genre Shift:
  • The overall theme leans away from arcade racing and more towards simulation, meaning players will have to have to rely on braking, realistic handling, tuning, and taking good care of the car.
  • Drag races now feature a tire warm-up stage and are split to three rounds where the driver with the best time overall wins the event. Oh, and launches are done manually meaning you will have to time your launch and try not to jump the start or you will face disqualification. In addition, you must steer your car manually as oppose to autodrive.
  • The nitrous system is changed: it now has a limited number of charges that are engaged with just one button press, last a short while and you cannot stop while activated until it's depleted, and require recharging between uses, instead of the on-demand boost that previous installments were known for.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: The customization and Autosculpt from Carbon returns but this time, it takes a step even further:
  • Autosculpt, which allows you to create minor alterations of certain areas for each part, now affects the performance of the car, affecting either the car's top speed or the overall stability and grip, with windtunnel included. This makes it the first game to introduce downforce.
  • For wheels, you can use a different set of wheels for both the front and the rear.
  • Averted for its PSP counterpart. Only the paint and wheels can be changed, as well as adding window tint, windshield banners and racing numbers. Simple put: it's customization just without the body kits.
• Developer's Foresight: The announcers here have lots of personality, and have different lines for various circumstances. For example
  • If you take a questionable car of choice in certain disciplines, such as a Ford GT, to a drift event, and the announcers will have unique (and baffled) responses. J-Mac

    : Well, uhh... okay, we're going sideways in a GT. I'm telling ya, this is not what I would've chosen! But c'mon, let's let him

    [Ryan]

    try!

    
    Big J

    :

    What's this man thinking

    ?

    A GT at a drift race

    ?

    Does he know what day this is

    ?! That is, uh, not something you see people driftin' in. <chuckles> You know what I mean?

    
    Roger Evans

    : Well, a lovely car, but that Ford GT is a perplexing choice.

    They're not known for drifting,

    and there's a good reason for that!

  • During drag events, announcers have special dialogues for specific car vs car battles:

    J-Mac: (Chevrolet vs. Chevrolet) Yes, sir, we got duel Chevies out there; the battle of the bowties! That said before, the driver is all that's gonna matter on this strip.
    Big J: (1965 Pontiac GTO vs. 2006 Pontiac GTO) C'mon people! Y'know you wanna see these two cars throw down. Am I right? We got a classic goat taking on a 2006 upgrade! <chuckles> This is sick!
    Roger Evans: (Audi vs. BMW) Pure German craftsmanship tested here, as an Audi meets BMW. I can't wait to see how they'll fair in the strip. It's going to be so good!

• Difficult, but Awesome: The manual clutch transmission, which requires you to engage the clutch in order to shift gears. In return for the extra button press and timing, it can greatly reduce the shifting time between gears, allowing you to shave seconds off in your race. Very handy when doing time attack, sector shootout, and especially drag events.
• Drives Like Crazy: While it's common to see a racer go nuts behind the wheel, Speed events emphasize this trope to a T, as this discipline is all about races with lots of long straights and corners, as flat-out high speed is the emphasis.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Averted for once. Whereas previous games would feature opponents mocking you and/or your skills, here, if you perform good enough, the DJs and announcers hosting the events will constantly praise you.
• Elite Four: Prior to facing the Showdown King, you have to take on the four Kings, each being a specialist for a certain discipline. The names are Ray Krieger (Grip), Nate Denver (Speed), Karol Monroe (Drag) and Aki Kimura (Drift).
• The Faceless: Ryan is never seen without his helmet on.
• Funny Background Event: Some event hubs have the Pit Girls posing sexily in front of some cars (including your car) and having men passing by taking pictures of them.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • In the intro, Ryan Cooper is shown taking part in Drag and Drift events in his custom Nissan 240SX. This is normally impossible, as the car is a unique blueprint that can only be used in Grip races.
  • Also in the said intro, Ryan competes with an opponent side-by-side during Drift event. In the singleplayer however you compete alone while your oppenent gets a headstart and vanished, whereas in the multiplayer mode, both players compete at the same time.
• Genre Shift: After the games from Underground to Carbon focused on illegal street racing taking place at night (with the exception of Most Wanted 2005, which did take place at day), ProStreet switches to a sanctioned racing competition taking place at day, akin to Forza Motorsport, TOCA Race Driver, Gran Turismo, or Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights.
• Hood Ornament Hottie: While previous games tended to do this with said game's resident Ms. Fanservice in promotional material, ProStreet took this to the logical extreme, with the boss intro for Nate Denver having Krystal Forscutt sitting on top of the bonnet of Nate's GTO. While moving.
• Improbably Cool Car:
  • Like in Carbon, the game features the Dodge Challenger and Chevrolet Camaro concept cars, whose production models wouldn't come out until 2008 and 2010, respectively. (They would also appear in Undercover.) ProStreet in particular has a Nissan GT-R Proto (a pre-production Super Prototype) available alongside a production Nissan GT-R. Bugatti Veyron 16.4, the fastest production car at that time, also makes its video game debut here as Downloadable Content. Among the road cars listed in the roster, it also features a non-street legal race car, the Aston Martin DBR9.
  • In a lesser extent, you can bring up cars that were never available in the US market such as the Ford Escort RS Cosworth, SEAT León Cupra, Nissan Skyline (BNR34) GT-R and even the Nissan Silvia (S15) despite the American "25-Year import rule" where the said cars are illegal to be imported or driven if they're less than 25 years old. Even the announcer will comment about that if you bring the said Skyline to an event. BigJ:

    And he's tracked down a Skyline

    R34

    . I mean seriously, that takes some dough to get it over here. And it's not even legal in the States! Whereas they're hard to find and when you can get 'em,

    they ain't cheap

    !

• In Name Only: The PSP version of ProStreet is nothing like their console and NDS counterparts, instead having plain career mode which has no plot at all.
• Instant-Win Condition: As long as you're ahead of the race in a Time Attack, Sector Shootout or Top Speed Run event with a score higher or lap time faster than all your opponents, crossing the finish line results you're opponent's current score to be instantly finalized, even if they didn't hit the last checkpoint/sector or two, or set their last best lap time.
• Large-Ham Announcer: The in-game announcers speaks out at the top of their lungs, mostly in relation to Ryan Cooper, hyping him up like there's no tomorrow.

  JMac: OH YEAH! RYAN COOPER!!!!!!!!!

• Lighter and Softer: The game is much more colorful, and its plot is much more relaxed, than the two previous games. Whereas Most Wanted (2005) was about the player's marathon-like efforts to go through the Blacklist to retrieve their car taken from them through underhanded tactics, and Carbon was about the player having to clear their name after being framed for a theft, here the player is simply a guy competing to win a legal racing competition.
• No-Damage Run: Finishing the race without taking light damage nets you a Clean Race Bonus of full 500 points to your overall track record. For the 6th-gen consoles, a slight small collision would be considered "Cosmetic Damage" but still nets you 500 points nonetheless. Its PSP counterpart rewards you with an extra cash bonus for performing a clean race.
• Metropolis Level: The Tokyo Dockyard track puts you around the docks of Tokyo.
• Mythology Gag:
  • At the Super Promotion hubs, J-Mac will call out for a blue car with a license plate that spells "N-F-S C-A-R-B-N", in reference to the blue Toyota Supra that the protagonist of Need for Speed: Carbon drives in flashbacks, the implication being that the protagonist of Carbon abandoned it outside the race track.
  • One of the vehicles found in a Race Day menu and during Drift mode (only seen in a cutscene by a chance) is a BMW M3 E46 with iconic stripes similar to the protagonist's iconic vehicle from Need for Speed: Most Wanted.
• Old Save Bonus: Similar to Most Wanted (2005) and Carbon, having an existing save file from previous Need for Speed titles grants the player some additional repair and total repair markers upon starting a new career.
• Permanently Missable Content: When battling with the Kings, you can break the track record of each race events they provided. While these are purely optional as you are only required to beat the Kings in the first place, however these races can never be replayed again once you've defeated the Kings and effectively locking the track record from breaking again.
• Pit Girls: Two Real Life models, Krystal Forscutt and Sayoko Ohashi portray the game's two starting girls, who launch the races at the starting line.
• Product Placement: Apart from the aftermarket decals, there were numerous promotional billboards scattered throughout the track. Brands such as Progressive, Castrol Syntec, Energizer Lithium, Coca-Cola Zero, and the promotion of EA Sports's FIFA 08 at the time being.
• Second Hour Superpower: The Challenge Weekend race days lets the player choose one of two pre-tuned cars as a reward for beating the dominate score.
• Shifting Sand Land: The game features a desert level in the form of a track across the Nevada Desert. Willow Springs would technically count too since the track is located within the Mojave desert.
• Shout-Out:
  • During the Drag Race warm-up, J-Mac may shout "I love the smell of burned tires in the morning, smells like a victory!"
  • At the start of a drag race, the announcer may sometimes say "Two men enter, one man leaves."
  • Look closely at the map of the grip circuit of the Nevada Desert. Looks closely like Watkins Glen, doesn't it?^note It does. Just that the track is mirrored, the finish line is positioned in a different area, as well as the Inner Loop chicane and "The Boot" sections are placed on the opposite side of the track.
  • J-Mac in Drift mode may shout "Ssssmokin'!" if you performed well in drifting.
• Shows Damage: Unlike Most Wanted (2005) or Carbon, where damage is limited to cracked windshields and car scratches, ProStreet shows more realistic damage: broken lights, detachable and deformable body parts, and smoke coming out of the engine. Instead of gradual worsening of car performance, it's divided into three stages dependent on the hardest single hit the car sustained - unless it's a single massive hit or a roll-over, the location of damage doesn't matter. At the end of the race, cars need to be repaired with either a Repair Marker, a Total Repair marker, or with the player's own cash.
• Slo-Mo Big Air: When your car goes airborne and flipped over. Usually followed by being totaled.
• Style Points: You accumulate points based on finishing position, how far you beat the target time and the amount of damage you take from your car. Every Race day has a certain amount of points needed to win it. And if you wish to stay, you can acquire additional points beyond the criteria to dominate or even surpass the record holder's score!
• Take That!: The announcers at the race day may mock the opponents when their vehicles gets totaled in the last race. In Ryan's case, they'll sympathize with him instead.
• A Taste of Power: This game averts this by having you start the game with a 240SX in a relatively low-speed circuit race with other lower tier cars like the Corolla and the Escort Cosworth. Justified as this event is supposed to be part of the qualifying league in order to be able to take on the Kings.
  • Played straight with the Challenge Weekend race days as the player is provided pre-tuned cars for each event type.
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Downplayed. While there are race events set in Tokyo, there are also Japanese tracks that take place outside of the capital. Locations such as Autopolis and Ebisu.
• Version-Exclusive Content:
  • The 7th-gen (PS3, Xbox 360 and PC) console versions have more exclusive vehicles and Downloadable Content than the 6th-gen (PS2 and Wii), possibly due to the latter's technical limitations.
  • For some reason, the PSP gets a console-exclusive track: Beach Front. It's a Los Angeles-themed reskin of the Beach Front track in Carbon, just set in daytime.
  • Its DS version adds the Hydraulics Mini-Game mode, which showcases the car's hydraulics system by tapping buttons to the beat of a song, akin to DanceDanceRevolution and the Low Rider minigame from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • The AI opponents can have their cars totaled, something you can purposely cause by pushing them off the road on the Highway tracks or having them crash into objects without being penalized, though at the expense of taking damage to your car and reducing your track record points.
  • Taking a shortcut by simply cutting corners or leaving near the track limits has absolute no effect in your racing. You don't get penalized for doing so, allowing you to shave off even more seconds of your time and even blaze way ahead of the pack.
• Violation of Common Sense: Due to how the drag races works with a set amount of rounds and the only matter here is to set the fastest time or the longest wheelie against the opponents, you can skip the following rounds entirely by simply disqualifying yourself with "False Start" and cuts down time from completing the drag. You'll win the drag race if the opponents are unable to break your time or your wheelie distance.
• The Voiceless: Ryan Cooper doesn't speak at all due to him wearing his helmet entirely.
• World Tour: The game has a sanctioned take on this, with races held on fixed race tracks and drag strips as well as street tracks in different countries, something that would be repeated in the two Shift games.

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