This product is like new. At NexWave Games, like new means:
Additionally, all discs at NexWave Games are carefully inspected and assessed for quality. When discs arrive, we do not accept any that are so badly damaged that they are unlikely to work. We only accept discs with light scratches at most. Discs with scratches are then treated in our professional disc repair machine. By warming the disc and polishing it with soft brushes, these machines can remove a very thin layer from the disc. This removes the layer containing surface scratches and improves the disc’s readability. This ensures the disc works properly, even on consoles with ageing lasers that have difficulty reading games! Great news for the player.
Need for Speed: Underground Rivals for PlayStation Portable
Need for Speed: Underground Rivals for PlayStation Portable lets you build a garage of street-racing cars. You earn points by winning events and use them for other cars and better parts. In the Pocket Garage you adjust both performance and appearance. A faster engine helps on straights, but you also have to get that extra speed through the corners. Circuit races and short skill challenges give you different ways to unlock new points and parts.
In Drift Attack you slide through marked zones to increase your score. Drag instead demands well-timed gear changes: holding a gear too long costs speed and can overheat the engine. Nitrous Run revolves around boost and gates, while Rally Relay lets you use two cars in succession. After the first lap you park in the changeover area and continue in your second car. You must already have both cars in your garage for this relay.
You can race alone or play local Head to Head with two players; each needs their own UMD and PSP with wireless networking. Party Play works differently: two to four players take turns passing around one PSP with one UMD. This is not a simultaneous race using four systems. Through My Underground you save your profile or enable autosave; you need a Memory Stick Duo to store your progress.
Region and language
Our PlayStation Portable games are European editions and come with a Dutch or English box, unless stated otherwise. By default, you receive the version for the European market. We note it in the product details if the region is different or the box is in another language. In almost all cases, the game is playable at least in English, and often in the other five common European languages too.
You receive the physical UMD edition. You need a PSP with a UMD drive to play it; a PSP Go cannot play this disc.
Manual
Need for Speed: Underground Rivals for PlayStation Portable includes the manual unless the product title states otherwise. If the booklet is missing, the title says “No Manual”. This lets you see before ordering whether the game comes with a manual.
The manuals included with our games usually contain at least English and often around six European languages. The exact languages vary by edition, so Dutch is not always included. The booklet explains the controls and the main rules. You can use it to check how to control the game, which actions are available and how its different features work.
The history of Need for Speed: Underground Rivals
Electronic Arts created Need for Speed: Underground Rivals among the first generation of PlayStation Portable games in 2005. The project came from EA Canada and was part of Team Fusion, a collaboration between developers in Vancouver and EA Tiburon in Florida. This brought together EA's expertise in controls, sound and graphics on Sony's new handheld. Underground Rivals took the Underground series' street-racing culture as its starting point, but received its own structure of circuits, short challenges and a personal car collection.
In January 2005 EA presented the game alongside five other PSP projects at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. That announcement described how established series were being adapted specifically for portable play, rather than simply lending their names to a handheld release. On 24 March EA reported that Underground Rivals, Tiger Woods PGA Tour and NFL Street 2: Unleashed were in American shops for the PSP's launch. The European market followed later that year.
The new hardware also brought different ways to play. Head to Head let two devices connect directly, whereas Party Play was built around a single handheld passed between players. EA Pocket Trax additionally turned the music playlist into a separate feature with visualisations and videos. This combination of races, short challenges, local competition and music shows how EA linked its early PSP offering to both the games console and multimedia player that Sony was presenting at the time.
Similar games for PlayStation Portable
Juiced: Eliminator for PSP shares the interest in recognisable cars, performance tuning and a personal collection. It also includes a career in which money, bets and crew respect determine the opportunities you receive. Underground Rivals lets you buy new cars and parts with event points. You build a collection in both, but Juiced adds the risk that staking a car can genuinely cost you ownership.
Burnout Legends on PSP also uses boost and responsive handling for street races. However, it rewards eliminating rivals with Takedowns and turns collisions into separate Crash challenges. Underground Rivals focuses on improving cars and completing circuit, drifting and gear-changing challenges. Hitting an opponent is not the central source of progress that shapes the aggressive driving in Legends.
Ridge Racer for PSP links its cornering to long drifts and a nitrous system. You mainly learn how to maintain speed through a circuit and when to use extra acceleration. Underground Rivals also uses drifting as a separate scoring challenge, but alternates it with drag races, relays and tuning. Both develop your driving skills; in Underground Rivals your own car also changes through purchased parts and visual customisation.
Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition on PSP shares the street-racing culture and customisation of vehicle appearance and performance. Rockstar places races on urban streets where you drive through traffic. Underground Rivals organises its progression around selected circuit races and short skill challenges. The similarity lies in the personal collection of cars; smaller challenges, such as a drift zone or a change between two cars, give Underground Rivals a different structure.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted 5-1-0 for PSP retains tuned cars and event-based progression, but puts the police firmly at the centre of the action. You climb past rivals on the Black List and can take the wheel of a police car yourself in Tuner Takedown. Underground Rivals focuses its different challenges on circuit racing, drifting, gear changes and nitrous. Both are distinct PSP releases within Need for Speed, with different emphases.
