And this one is a little bit different.

This is a collection of Need For Speed games for the PC that I imported from China.

And yes, this does come in a big box, much like a lot of the PC games did in the 90s here in the US.

But this is a much later release from around 2012 and it still comes in a big box like this.

That was one reason I wanted it and another is just because I like collecting imports

of various types, especially for games of my favorite series.

So when I saw this “Need For Speed Archive Collection,” a Chinese version, the EA logo

and everything, I'm like “okay, this looks interesting.”

Electronic Arts does have an official presence in China, they have for some time now and

they did release a lot of their PC games in big boxes for much longer than they did here in the US.

So at first this looked pretty legit, but the more I got to looking at this package

[chuckles] the more suspicious it became.

Because as you can see on the back here it comes with a bunch of Need For Speed games.

In fact, the entire series that was released on PC, from the mid-90s 1995-96 with the first

Need For Speed, all the way up to Need For Speed Most Wanted, the remake of sorts by Criterion.

And well, that was a bit of a stretch that EA would do this kind of release in China.

I don't know. I thought it wasn't the most unbelievable thing ever.

But then you look at the rest of the box and it just sort of all comes together. Beyond

the generic marketing blurbs here saying “ooh racing games are cool and it’s gonna be

doing fast speedy Need For Speedy car things with cool music and stuff.”

The biggest giveaway though was the rest of this which typically doesn't look exactly

like this on the official EA Releases from China.

Usually the system requirements area is a little more professional-looking than this.

And then the biggest thing that was a dead giveaway was this UPC right here.

That is a legit code but it appears that it's actually been lifted from the official release

of Need For Speed Carbon in China, so that does not actually tie into this individual release.

And I saw like this little section right here starts off with “health advice.”

You know, “don't play for too long games, are addictive and there's all sorts of warnings

and such.”

So yeah, as far as I'm concerned this is a Chinese bootleg collection of Need For Speed

PC games on nine DVDs.

This pretty much just says “a Chinese racing game” and then the price which is 128 Chinese

Yuan, which at the time of recording ends up being about twenty US dollars.

I do have a curiosity for gray market releases and a lot of that just comes from having lived

in the Caribbean for a while.

And seeing official releases in stores was the uncommon thing -- finding bootlegs?

That was just the norm.

Well, anyway, let's go ahead and unbox this thing because I am just absolutely curious

what comes inside of this.

[tasty cutting noises]

[chaotic tearing of plastic]

Alright I gotta say this box is constructed very nicely, I mean

it feels as official was any early 2000s big box release we would have gotten here.

Of course, this is not an early 2000s release, this is from around 2012 I presume.

Alright, so inside we just have, uh not a whole lot really?

Okay, there's some extra stuff in here.

Oh my.

Well seems the big box was just for show more or less.

I was thinking that maybe it would come with some larger items since they were using that

big box, but I suppose not!

Alright so that's a little that's a lot of DVDs.

I guess eight of them maybe if there's anything in here?

Yeah, that's a pretty nicely-pressed DVD in this sort of very cheap, questionable packaging.

Looks more like a Video CD release.

I'm assuming that's disc one, but I really don't know.

I'm not actually seeing any numbering on these.

Okay. So yeah, I guess the numbering is just on the bottom of the discs.

Wow. [chuckling in potentially-misguided amusement]

And I'm curious to what is actually in this manual like, what did they come up with?

Alright well, there's a bunch of serial numbers for the games that actually require them.

I am sure all of those are totally legit...

All right, well this is all going to be something that I won't be able to read unless I whip

out Google Translate again and go through it all.

But if anyone would like to give me the gist in the comments that would be fine.

I'm sure I could figure it out with enough time, it just it looks just like some generic

kind of installation stuff really and some FAQ kind of things about like “ah something’s

going wrong or how do I set this game up” or whatever, so.

I don't know it's probably just normal manual stuff.

So yeah, let's get these installed on something.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to be doing here because I don't necessarily want

to install it on my main PC so I might install it on a VM or just a computer that's not filled

with sensitive information or connected to the internet.

Because you know, I don't know, you never know.

Releases like this are iffy.

So yeah, super curious to see if these come with like original DOS and Windows 95 versions

for the early ones or if they've been updated in any way at all, this is exciting!

Alright, so I've got an XP machine going here not connected to the internet nothing personal

on it, just something that I use for various XP uses.

And then we have the autoplay here which is what you get when you put in the DVD.

This is the first DVD and it has eight Need For Speed games that we can choose from here,

so: Need For Speed one, two, three, four, all the way up through looks like Underground.

And then it sort of skips over Underground 2 and Most Wanted and then goes straight to Carbon.

So it is split up probably depending on the different sizes of the games. And then down here

we have the readme file and check this out!

You can see some references here to DT Lite and Daemon Tools or “Demon” Tools, if you will.

Which is for doing virtual disks and getting past copy protection and all sorts of things

that we may have to do -- or at least it probably will expect us to do

if we were to run certain games, perhaps.

I don't know, I haven't installed them yet.

Anyway, I'm not gonna do that.

I just want to go ahead and look through the DVD and see what we get here because... well,

there's a lot of things in here that I was not expecting to see.

Not only are the individual games just sort of spread out like this but if this is not

at all what the installations looked like.

It looks like they've gone for some completely custom installers for each game and just sort

of made their own InstallShield Wizards.

And then there's a few random folders just sort of sticking out for no reason, like these

appear to be the files from Need For Speed II SE.

I don't know why those are hanging out over here and they're not in the Need For Speed

II -- I don't know how they're doing this exactly, but that's just kind of interesting.

Let's see what we got here in terms of the first Need For Speed, whether or not it's

the Windows version or DOS.

Well, there's one question I wanted to have answered: is that the special edition or not

and it appears to be.

Again with this custom installer that they put together.

[laughs] And they even included an EA EULA.

That's what's so mysterious about these things.

Who knows where it came from, what we're actually gonna get?

It's a lot of familiar files it was installing there and it looks like it put them to

Electronic Arts\Need For Speed I.

It's running DOSBox! What!

Sure, why not? I wonder what kind of settings they went with.

It looks pretty standard.

Yeah, it looks like they barely changed anything here.

Well, let's just try it out!

Well like what is the shortcut pointing to?

It's got the Need For Speed II icon, for one thing.

“PLAYNFS.BAT” All right.

[jazzy interlude in lieu of game audio not capturing]

So it's running it in a window, which is actually a good idea

when it comes to this game, it does have some problems.

This is just fascinating!

I gotta say I was not expecting that.

Oh, it's running in the interlaced mode as well.

[clicking of keyboard keys]

Some of the controls are different.

What have they done to this?

They've changed handbrake to Q and horn to E. Why?

[car horn honks] Also, that's the

horn for the Viper on this Acura NSX and... yeah, that engine’s not right either.

So this is definitely some sort of strangely-ripped version of the game because

it does not have... oh.

Not only that but I don’t know if you notice the music is just playing the same thing over

and over and over.

This is not Need For Speed Special Edition, this is just The Need For Speed.

It does not have the extra game modes, it doesn't have all of the music, and some of

the resources obviously were a little screwed up there.

Yeah, there's definitely some stuff missing that's for sure.

Let's try a Need For Speed II, just curious what they did with that because that can be

a little tough to get running sometimes, Need For Speed II SE.

Okay same basic installation crap. [laughing] What is it telling me to do?

It has an app compatibility database file.

Alright, I mean sure, let's try what it says to do!

All right it says to open the database file, which is right here.

Hit save, hit run, and then we browse to... yeah, that's -- that's what this is.

Okay.

Oh wow!

It's running.

Huh!

Interesting!

And yeah it does appear to be Need For Speed II Special Edition, at least judging by the music.

Yep.

It's got all the special edition cars, so let's go with one of those like the Nazca C2.

And we'll just go with the one opponent to go against, the Italdesign Cala.

Let's see what we got!

Curious if they screwed with any of the graphics options again,

because the last one -- yeah they did!

Well what in the world, interesting.

It's the interlaced video again on lowest settings.

[keyboard clicking away]

All right horn is at least in the right spot and so is handbrake.

But yeah the smaller window, low settings, interlaced.

This seems to be that they've configured these games for like, the lowest possible settings

right out of the box which is fascinating.

It's not like a totally virgin install or anything like that, it's configured for you.

Okay, so the last one that I'm gonna try is Need For Speed III because again, that's a

pretty infamously annoying one to get running.

I mean not necessarily on XP, but still.

I'm curious what they did with it.

Interesting that they chose the alternate box are here, like from the back of the box

instead of the yellow Lamborghini Diablo.

Hmm, what's with all the VBasic distributions?

PhysX?

What the heck kind of version of Need For Speed III is this? [laughing]

This is all stuff from the mid-2000s.

I really don't know where they're going with this, Okay, it's installed whatever it needed

to and it didn't even ask me to restart so I don't know what is going on here.

I mean this looks all pretty standard.

You know, whatever let's just try it.

I'm not gonna friggin let that connect anything.

Okay intro video there, menu right here and okay.

Ah right, so it's not asking me for a name so I'm assuming this is already configured once again.

There's some replays.

This is the last person that played? What did they do?

Ha. How bizarre.

Yeah, it looks like it's defaulting to the lowest settings once again, but uh.

They just left all of their files on here.

“Player 1” that’s a great name they came up with.

Let’s see what the options have.

Audio.

“Audio mode: BAD TEXT INDEX 0.” That was a classic, classic audio mode.

This all looks pretty much the same.

It's just once again graphics on the lowest setting by default.

Yeah we'll just go with the Aston Martin DB7 because

I don't race with that car very often in this game.

Eh Hometown is good, seems they left the weather on.

Sure why not.

Good stuff.

Need For Speed III, lowest settings [chuckling once again]

I mean, I'm surprised that all

of these work right out of the box.

I was expecting less somehow, but it seems like they have configured these to just work!