Need for Speed: Nitro | Nintendo Wii

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Street racing with an exaggerated style

Need for Speed: Nitro gives Wii players an arcade approach to street racing, combining licensed cars with a deliberately stylized world. Its events take place in cities including Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Madrid, Singapore and Dubai. The cars and surroundings have a caricatured appearance, but the competition still asks you to read corners, maintain speed and make effective use of boost. The result is a racer built around short-term decisions on the road, with a career that turns those individual events into a continuing set of goals.

Pick a controller setup

Nitro offers several ways to steer. You can use the Wii Remote alone, including a one-handed option, hold it in a Wii Wheel, attach a Nunchuk, or choose a Classic Controller. A GameCube Controller is another supported option on compatible hardware. The one-handed Remote scheme uses tilting to steer, with buttons handling actions. This flexibility is useful when different people join a session: the group does not have to agree on one style of input before finding out who can handle the course most effectively.

Build and spend your boost

Nitrous is an active resource throughout a race. Drifting through corners and drafting behind another car help build the boost available to you, and Nitro provides two tanks to draw on. That gives you a reason to think about the next stretch of road as well as the current one. A good corner or a useful position behind a rival can help prepare a burst of speed. Deciding when to release that burst makes maintaining momentum more involved than simply holding the accelerator and waiting for the finish.

Put your mark on first place

The Own It feature makes the lead visible across the course. As the front-running car passes, scenery takes on that racer's chosen color and emblem, while the driver earns Style Points. First place therefore changes more than the order shown on the screen. Your customized identity becomes part of the track's appearance, giving a lead an immediate visual reward. Losing that position means another driver's design can take over, so keeping the front spot becomes a small continuing contest within the larger race.

Manage damage and police pressure

Pickups supply two useful ways to change a race. A repair item restores your car, which matters because damage can affect its performance. A police badge can direct attention toward a racer ahead of you; when there is no suitable rival to target, it can reduce your own heat. Police vehicles are part of the traffic and pressure surrounding the street competition. These items add decisions about the situation immediately around you while keeping your attention on the next stretch of road.

Different events ask for different skills

The event selection includes ordinary races, elimination contests, time trials and challenges built around drifting or acceleration. An elimination event makes avoiding last place a continuing concern, while a time trial puts the main comparison against the clock. Drift challenges give controlled sliding a more direct purpose, and acceleration events ask for well-timed gear changes while avoiding traffic. These formats let the same driving system test different habits. A car and control style that feel comfortable in a standard race can still ask for more practice when the objective changes.

Move through the career cups

Career progress earns stars and money, opening more events and helping you purchase cars. The three cups move through different vehicle classes: Bronze uses Class C, Silver uses Class B and Gold uses Class A. Each city also introduces a Top Racer as part of its presentation. Progress is therefore a mixture of improving your results and moving into another group of vehicles. You can return to an event with a clearer idea of where its corners, traffic and opportunities for boost fit together.

Finishing position is not the only target in a standard career race. Stars can also reward beating a lap-time goal and earning enough Style Points, making it useful to consider how you race as well as where you finish. That gives a return visit a specific purpose. You might already know how to win an event but still want a cleaner lap or a stronger run through its scoring opportunities. The career's additional targets turn familiar roads into a set of results to improve rather than a route you only need to finish once.

Customize the car's identity

Car customization lets you choose colors, emblems and graphic designs. You can use prepared artwork or draw designs of your own, giving the vehicle a look that can then appear in the scenery through Own It. This is a visual activity outside the race itself, so taking time with the design changes what you see when you return to the road. For a local group, a distinctive color or emblem also makes it easy to recognize whose lead is currently being celebrated around the course.

Race with people beside you

The Wii version supports up to four players locally, including play in Career mode as well as its quicker race options. It does not include online play. Choose the controllers that suit the group, then share the competition through split-screen racing on the same console. Nitro's combination of boost, visible ownership of the scenery and several event types gives those sessions different goals, while the solo career supplies a longer sequence of races and results to work through.