Video Game / Need for Speed: ProStreet – Pepega Edition

"Become a king."

The one that turned street racing legitimate - but with a crossover and memes aplenty.

Need for Speed: ProStreet - Pepega Edition, also referred as ProStreet's Pepega Mod, is a Game Mod created by Team Pepega released in the April Fools' Day of 2023. Announced in September 2021, it is the sequel to Need for Speed: Most Wanted - Pepega Edition, complete with a new storyline, extended car roster, a new career progression, improvements and bugfixes and added new features to it.

Pepega Trope Festival

• Achievement System: This mod introduces achievements to the game, as Eden puts it, in order to modernize the game. With each achievement completed, the player is able to unlock cheat codes. However...
• Achievement Mockery: ...since this is the Pepega Mod that we are talking about, of course some of them would be basically for the most ridiculous tasks. Examples include:
  • "Broke": Having less than 100 credits in career mode.
  • "Captain Slow": Complete a race using the 1886 Mercedes-Benz Patent Motorwagen, a 19th century vintage carriage that only has 1HP with a max speed of 11 km/h making it one of the slowest vehicles in the entire racing video gaming that made debut and only in Gran Turismo 4.
  • "Fine, It's Yours": Trying to buy a vehicle that hasn't yet been unlocked ten times. Doing so adds the lock from Underground 2 used for the mod to the car lot roster.
  • "Get Wasted": Basically totaling your vehicle like on the normal game. There's also the "Game Over", which is this, but to all your vehicles in the same race day.
  • "Top Gear Challenge": Blowing the vehicle's engine in all the three heats of the drag race.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: The main racing organizations have alliterative names.
• The Alleged Car:
  • Played with "Car Wrecks", in which the player has to find a specific number of damaged versions of the reward vehicle in all the three speed challenge courses,^note Except Tokyo Expressway, as the course was too cramped to hide secrets in it. and by finding all of them will award the vehicle to the garage, as well make it available in the car lot.
  • This trope is played straight with a number of vehicles added in the roster that are available in the beginning of the career, such as the Zastava Yugo, Polski Fiat 126P, Trabant 601S and the FSO Polonez, which are infamously unreliable in Real Life. However, if you tune them properly, they can be pretty useful in career mode.
• Alternate History:
  • The Top Gear team, as the "Classic Trio" (Clarkson, Hammond, May) are still depicted being in the show instead of The Grand Tour.
  • Ken Block, from Monster Energy, is depicted as set to retire from racing. By the time that this mod was released, Ken had died four months prior and the mod's development was close to the finish line.
• Announcer Chatter: The announcers from the vanilla game were changed, with DustinEden replacing BigJ, Allister McKenzie (voiced by JamesVariety) replacing Roger Evans, and Zyphir replacing JMac, each with their own sets of new voice lines. However, this only applies to the race day menus, as during actual races, the old announcers' voices can be heard, making references to Ryan Cooper and the old Street Kings.
  • DustinEden's lines (Rookie Rampage)
  • Allister McKenzie's lines (Ricey Riders)
  • Zyphir's lines (Peak Performance)
• Art-Style Clash: The Java cars, which are super low-polygonal versions of the cars that exist in the roster ported from the Java releases of Underground 2, Most Wanted and Carbon. They also have their Java sounds ported from said versions and they have their own exclusive race day in career mode, where in which their drivers are simply referred as "Java Car" in the leaderboard.
• Artifact Title: Downplayed. Although the mod still contains a lot of memes and jokes, they're not as "in-your-face" as Most Wanted Pepega Edition.
• Artificial Stupidity: Played for Laughs for opponents who drive vehicles that aren't equipped for racing, and as a result they're left on back of the pack to ocasionally the point of being lapped, such as Pontiac Aztek drivers like Frank Malcov and Walter White and especially the Polski Fiat 126P ones like Garbage Time and Kirby.
• Book Ends: The second half of the races against Pepega!Eden takes place at the Autobahnring, where Nick Cooper's racing career started.
• Canon Immigrant:
  • Sector Knockout, a mode based on the "Gate Knockout" from the main game's PlayStation Portable release, appears in this mod, replacing Sector Shootout.
  • Ryo Watanabe, now Demoted to Extra, uses the Koenigsegg CCX that he drives in the PlayStation Portable release of Need for Speed: Shift.
  • Vince Kilic, as an AI opponent, drives a Mazdaspeed3 (BK) instead of a Lexus, which is a nod to the Mazda3 he uses in Most Wanted 5-1-0.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The racing teams and organizations are represented with different color schemes.
  • Green - Rookie Rampage and Monster Energy
  • Red - Ricey Riders and Ravenwest
  • Blue - Peak Performance and Top Gear
  • Orange - Hotshots
  • Purple - Team Pepega
• Continuity Nod: Given that's a sequel to Most Wanted: Pepega Edition, expect a few of those.
  • Many of the previous mod's Blacklist racers make a return, with the exceptions of Sonic, Takumi, Charles Leclerc and Riolu.
  • Pepega!Eden's ringtone and Nick Cooper's first ringtone is "BlackPants Thang", while Nick's second ringtone is the Risitas remix of "Issou", both of which were featured on the soundtrack of the Pepega Mod for Most Wanted.
• Creator Provincialism: The opening race and the second part of the Showdown King races take place at the Autobahnring, which is set in Germany, Eden's home country.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The Vintage Record Breaker Race Day in Peak Performance puts you to this, as you are racing Interwar Period Germany Streamline vehicles such as the Auto Union Type C and Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen)
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Pepega!KuruHS. In comparison to his role in Most Wanted Pepega Edition, where he was the first in Cockport's Blacklist rank, here he's only one of the four kings of the Pepega Racing Festival. Since he's also the one with a connection with Pepega!Eden, he later helps Nick Cooper to uncover the truth of the festival.
  • Ryo Watanabe also got this treatment in comparison to the original game, in which he was the main boss. He's now relegated to just another AI opponent, using his Koenigsegg CCX from the PlayStation Portable release of Shift.
• Drives Like Crazy: The Speed Challenges in comparison to the original, as since the speed limiter from the original game is disabled and the upgraded stats for all speed cars get almost filled to the max, players now should have skill of steel to get to the finish line in one piece.
• Excuse Plot: The cutscenes made for the mod while enjoyable and funny on their own right, aren't essential for the entertainment for the player.
• The Faceless/The Speechless: Just like Ryan Cooper before him, Nick is never seen without his helmet. Although this aspect of his character is exaggerated for the laughs.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The "Jay Leno" achievement, which requires the player to fill up their garage with 40 purchased vehicles (Reward Cars don't count).
• Green Aesop: The first Peak Performance even requires the player to drive a Tesla Roadster and a Tesla Model S in Tokyo Dockyard in order to dominate it.
• Improbably Cool Car: Besides some common average cars, the mod also include a few super prototypes the player would never drive in real life like the Mercedes-Benz Biome and the NIKE One 2022.
• Infodump: Used in the "Meet the Kings" trailer (which is also in a cutscene), to introduce all the new Kings and their backstories for how they entered in the Pepega Racing Festival.
• Joke Character: This mod has the addition of a good chunk of shitboxes, average vehicles and basically cars that doesn't have any business in being in any racing game other than for historical value if put in a more serious setting like the Gran Turismo series. With that said, a bunch of those vehicles can be turned into Lethal Joke Character with good performance tuning and upgrades.
• Large-Ham Announcer: Out of the new racing announcers, Allister McKenzie is by far the hammiest.
• Lighter and Softer: While it still retains the zany memes from the previous installment, it's the Pepega Edition after all, it's much more toned down by comparison.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Ford Transit SuperVan 3 and the Renault Espace F1. Despite being big vans, they were clearly made for racing, with strong handling capabilities and quick acceleration. The player can also win one of the vehicles by completing the first unlocked Ravenwest event.
• Marathon Level: The added "endurances"; courses on looped speed challenge courses^note Autobahnring and Tokyo Expressway and the Texas World Speedway Oval Circuit are this with the objective being to complete long lapped runs in them and finish the race in one piece.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover / Weird Crossover: Besides drivers from other Need for Speed games appearing, there are also other drivers from other games outside such as Forza Horizon, Midnight Club, FlatOut, Grid and... Kirby? The real Kazunori Yamauchi? In addition to YouTubers such as Jimmy Broadbent, Shinyodd, Nolan Sykes of Donut Media and Garbage Time, non-video game fictional characters such as Walter White, public figures as Elon Musk, real racing drivers, and small names of Need for Speed developers, and notable community names in the fandom, some of which helped in the develop said mod.
• MegaCorp: This is how Monster Energy is depicted in this mod, trying to profit off by making people addicted to their products and taking over every food establishment in the areas that the Pepega Racing Festival is organized.
• Mighty Glacier: The Pontiac Aztek, a vehicle that isn't fit for racing due to it being a SUV but if the player equips with performance parts and it tunes it well, it'll be able to dominate race events.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Top Gear trio uses muscle cars that they've used in the season 3 premiere of The Grand Tour, "Motown Funk" - Jeremy Clarkson uses the Ford Mustang RTR, James May drives the Hennessey Exorcist version of the Chevrolet Camaro, and Richard Hammond drives the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon. Meanwhile, the mod's Drag King, the Stig, drives a Mazda Furai, which was shown off in the studio in a 2008 episode of Top Gear, but the Furai caught fire during road tests.
  • The drivers in the Top Gear invitational race day are named after celebrities that appeared in the show's "Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car" segment, including Rowan Atkinson, Michael McIntyre and Jay Kay.
  • Pepega!KuruHS always starting first during drag races before the "Go!" prompt is a reference to his infamous habit in ProStreet, getting often disqualified due to muscle memory.
• Nintendo Hard: More like "Pepega Hard". As the career progresses throughout, the game becomes less forgiving. It's especially noticeable in Peak Performance's showdown and all of the events leading up to the Kings.
• No One Could Survive That!: The "Richard Hammond Moment" achievement, in which the requirement is flip your car and survive.
• Real Is Brown: Fittingly used in a tier 1 Leipzig special event, that contains pre-tuned variants of the Civic Cruiser^note With a green scheme and a PEPEGA marking instead of a generic one saying POLICE, from Most Wanted: Pepega Edition and the pizza car, both from Most Wanted.
• Rule of Funny: Being a meme mod. it's expected that it was going to run on this.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Leitmotifs for each King are music tracks from the Like a Dragon games.
  • During race days in Tokyo, Godzilla can be seen in the background.
  • The starting screen for the mod uses beauty videos of the vehicles from the mod, in a style very similar of the first Forza Horizon and uses the Troublemaker Remix of "Daylight" by Matt & Kim, as a nod to Need for Speed: Nitro.
  • The music playing in the "Speed King Defeated" cutscene is "Dream Big" from Art Of Rally.
• Starter Mon: The Volkswagen Golf IV that Nick Cooper owns in the first cutscene and it's used in the first race, is the first car kept in the player's garage.
• The Stinger: Ryan Cooper, the original protagonist of the game, asks to a mysterious character where his cousin Nick is, learning that he was directed in Carbon Canyon, teasing the possibility of a third entry in the Pepega series.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • Eden's Pepega Street Festival commercial that Nick Cooper watches at the start of the story. The way the commercial's done would make Saul Goodman blush.
  • The intro video for Ravenwest's first lackey, Darius, is just his bio video from Need for Speed: Carbon with a VHS filter applied and the Ravenwest logo hastily slapped over Stacked Deck's logo.
    Allister McKenzie: Recycled content! What lazy prick edited this?
• Thememobile: Each of the organizations' invitational race days and special condition race days involve usage of cars appropriate to the race days' themes.
  • The Rookie Rampage invitational race day has beaters and shitboxes, including the Yugo, the FSO Polonez, the Polski Fiat 126P and the Trabant 601S.
  • The Ricey Riders invitational race day has riced-up sports cars tuned by VeilSide - the Honda NSX and the Mazda RX-7.
  • The Gran Turismo race day at Infineon uses the franchise's meme cars, including the pink Toyota Yaris/Vitz, the yellow Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution V, and the Suzuki Escudo Pikes Peak Special.
  • The Top Gear invitational race day has racing drivers using a WTCC variant of the Chevrolet Lacetti and a Toyota GT86 with a Rocketbunny body kit. The stock versions of these cars were used in the show's celebrity lap segments: the Lacetti appearing as the second car in the Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car segment, while the Toyota GT86 was used in the Star in a Reasonably Fast Car segment.
  • The Hotshots invitational race day involves all drivers using various models of the Volkswagen Golf, because, according to Hotshots leader Kuru, the Golf is better.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: During the mod's release date, a lot of the King events were pretty much nearly impossible to unlock due to the domination scores being unachievable in most races, even with the best vehicles and impeccable driving. An update was released afterwards to correct this issue.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Exploited with the "Trade Paint" achievement, since it's certain the player will definitely try to damage the opponent at some point.
• Voice Grunting: The dialogue is presented this way in the "king defeated" cutscenes for the Grip King, Drag King, Drift King and Speed King.
• What a Piece of Junk:
  • DoVe_7's Yugo in one of the Rookie Rampage events. Compared to other drivers that use junk cars, you might not want to underestimate this one.
  • Members of the Hotshots drive sleeper cars which go at hypercar-like speeds, such as LPN05's Trabant.
    Allister McKenzie: I may be as fluent in German as I am in Klingon, but I don't need to understand the words to know that Lukas and his Trabant mean business. (in German) Beware, this master of speed!
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Used literally in the first cutscene. In order to solve the engine problem in Nick Cooper's Golf, what did Pepega!Eden do? Use a hammer.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Right after The Stinger, you get one stating the aftermath of the game.
  • Following his victory, Nick travels to Palmont City to take a vacation, being now in charge of the Pepega Street Festival as he was promised.
  • Pepega!Eden stays in good terms with Nick after his loss, continuing his role as a stage announcer around the world. He's also taking part in illegal street races to recruit new drivers.
  • Pepega!Kuru ends up becoming The Ghost following his disappeareance from the Pepega Street Festival, with multiple rumors stating he's now picking off unsespecting street racers at night, becoming The Dreaded.
  • Ryan Cooper has been missing since his comeback to street racing in 2020, becoming a mystery to everyone who crosses him.
  • The Pepega Street Festival gets hit by multiple changes following the events.
    • Nathan and Ravenwest faced heavy charges once again due to another cheating scandal.
    • The Top Gear Trio got under scrutiny once their covered-up events got leaked to the public.
    • Ken finally retires once his contract with Monster finally ended.