The one where Need for Speed meets Pixar and Mario Kart.
Need for Speed: Nitro is a racing game and the fourteenth title of the Need for Speed series. It was published by Electronic Arts for the Wii and Nintendo DS platforms. It is also one of only two games in the franchise to date (the other being the mobile No Limits) to not be made for PC and the only game of the franchise to be released only for Nintendo consoles.
Unlike the sim-style Shift released months earlier, the game is an arcade-like racer akin to Underground games, combined with highly-stylized cartoonish graphics. It takes place in five exotic real-world cities: Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Madrid, Singapore, and Dubai, with each city having a top racer and three tiers of cars. The DS version of the game also includes San Diego, but lacks top racers.
The game was developed by EA Montreal, who have previous experience with Nintendo titles, while the DS version was developed separately by Firebrand Games' Florida studio. An improved version of the DS edition of the game, Need for Speed: Nitro-X, was released for DSiWare. It makes police cars available for players to use.
Need for Speed: Nitro features examples of:
- Artistic License – Cars: None of the aforementioned cities use Hummers, Shelby GT500s or Lancer Evolutions as their police cars in Real Life. In fact, none of them would actually have the funds to procure a sports car for a police unit. The sole exception is Dubai in which they have a fleet of police supercars, but only used for show. Singapore used to have Subaru Impreza WRX in their police fleet, but that's it.
- Ascended Extra: The Volkswagen Beetle, which was a traffic car in Need for Speed II, becomes a player-usable vehicle in this game.note
- Boss Bonanza: Each of the Grands Prix has you, all five of the top racers and two normal opponents battle for the championship title.
- Cel Shading: The main graphic style in Nitro uses cel shading.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: You can get busted by the police if you get unlucky enough. All that happens is you respawning none less than wear with the only penalty of losing a few seconds. Averted in Elimination mode, where getting Busted counts as getting eliminated.
- Denser and Wackier: Nitro is definitely this in comparison with the rest of the franchise. While even the most arcade-style games strived for being somewhat realistic-looking, this one features cartoonish art styles and gameplay to boot.
- Final Boss: Jawad, the Top Racer of Dubai, is the final racer to beat.
- Fisher King: When a racer leads the race, the surrounding landscapes, buildings and even lines on the road are textured with the graffiti, colors and tag of the leader's car. Everything may change if another racer takes the lead.
- Fragile Speedster: Among the high-end supercars in the roster is the Pagani Zonda R. It has max stats in speed, accel, drift and handling, but extremely low in strength, meaning collisions can make you lose a chunk of your nitro bar easily, hindering from regenerating any nitro.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: The police in each city speaks in their respective languages. The police in Rio speaks Portuguese, Cairo and Dubai in Arabic, Madrid in Spanish and Singapore in English note . Even the texts of some of the top racers' opening sequence are in its respective languages.
- Green Aesop: The games features the Tesla Roadster, an electric car. It comes with a unique nitro backfire as it spits out electric tendrils from the rear, which is ironic since the car in Real Life has no exhaust pipes.
- Lighter and Softer: This game (alongside Shift) is this in comparison to Undercover. While Undercover's story mode was about infiltrating the criminal underworld, and Shift was about sanctioned track racing, this game is straight-up wacky races with wacky art styles.
- Marathon Level: Grand Prix has 5 races in 5 different cities.
- Mighty Glacier: Among the cars included in the game are the Volkswagen Type 2, Porsche Cayenne GTS, Hummer H2 SUT and Ford SVT Explorer Sport Trac Adrenaline. The have low performance stats, but are very durable allowing you to withstand impacts from opponents and police.
- Nitro Boost: It won't be Nitro without the nitro, hence the name. It comes in two different nitro boosts, a small basic nitro by simply shaking the Wii remote and a powerful nitro (which depletes even more) by shaking the Wii remote twice.
- The Smurfette Principle: Zarinah, the only female top racer of the five.
- What a Piece of Junk: Some old-school cars are featured in the game, but also pack quite a punch and are customizable. Some examples are the Volkswagen Beetle and its Type 2, The Renault 4L and a Nissan Cube.
- A Winner Is You: Congratulations, you won the last Grand Prix of the Gold Cup. So where is the ending? Roll credits!
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: As the boss cars are obtainable when you beat each of the Top Racers for each cup, Thiago's Dodge Challenger SRT-8 and Omar's Lamborghini Gallardo are the only boss cars that cannot.
- Updated Re Release: The DS exclusive Nitro-X which includes content from the original and police cars are available for players to use.
- World Tour: Nitro explores five different cities (six in the DS version of the game) with different road conditions and a top racer in each: Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Cairo (Egypt), Madrid (Spain), Singapore, and Dubai (United Arab Emirates). The DS version also features San Diego, California, United States.
