Browser-based Need for Speed: Underground 2 Revived brings arcade-style street racing back with an online component in tow

Gamers can once again relive the glory days of arcade-style open-world street racing in the elusive, nostalgic metallic-green Nissan 350Z in Need for Speed: Underground 2 Revived, except now you’ll race against 6,000 online racers in Bayview. The best part is that racers can play NFS Underground 2 Revived right in their Chrome web browser.

A surprisingly well-tuned browser-based racing experience

Developer th0mk has released Need for Speed Underground 2 Revived, which runs in the Chrome web browser and supports multiplayer with a capacity of 6,000 players on a single virtual LAN server. The game is compiled from the PC version of Need for Speed Underground 2 and translated to WebAssembly.

During free roam, one racer can see up to 32 other racers nearby. While the repo claims to contain no game data, prompting players to dump their own copies, the public website serves a 2GB download from its own server.

You can play NFS Underground 2 Revived online with 6,000 other players too

Need for Speed Underground 2 was released on November 9, 2004, and 22 years later, gamers can play the best racing game of its time with their friends in the open-world Bayview alongside 6,000 other players.

All users need to do is head over to nfsu2.xyz in either Chrome or Firefox and press Play. The 2004 PC game will start loading game data, and you’ll land in the spawn area with numerous other players already cruising around.

The project comes from a developer who goes by th0mk online, who initially started working on it as a private project to play Need For Speed Underground 2 with his brother again. On GitHub, th0mk says that NFS Underground 2 was something they enjoyed and played together 20 years ago, and that porting it to a web browser would let them share the nostalgia side by side.

The project worked better than expected, and things soon snowballed, which is how a private project ended up becoming a Need for Speed Underground 2 Revived with its one public virtual server. The developer says he’s pretty happy to see how many people have turned up to relive the old-school game.

The game itself isn’t emulated; rather, it’s been recompiled into WebAssembly and built with modern web graphics and audio tools. The game runs on the PC port of NFS Underground 2, not the PS2 version, and supports 120 FPS, Widescreen, game controllers, steering wheels, and on-screen touch controls.

The “no install” title still requires a download and faces licensing questions

However, the project isn’t entirely new; it’s a fork of Talha Muderrisoglu’s Apple Silicon version of the game, which ran natively at 119 fps on an M1 Pro MacBook.

Need for Speed Underground Revived claims that no installation is required, but you still have to download 1.4 GB of game content, assets, and data to your browser. Your saves will also remain in the browser unless cloud saving is enabled.

As for the legal status of Need for Speed Underground 2 Revived, things are a bit murky. The GitHub repository says it doesn’t contain the game’s code or data and asks players to dump their own copy, but the public website downloads the game files from its own server.

There’s a licensing dilemma as well: Muderrisoglu’s repository explicitly states that it’s not open source and requires permission to fork or create a port, whereas th0mk’s NFS Underground 2 Revived is MIT-licensed.

The site states that it is a fan project and is not endorsed by or affiliated with Electronic Arts in any way. EA has not yet commented on the project.