The people who know me well, know, that I am not a completionist, I barely complete any game at all, even not racing games, despite I am a sucky gamer in general, racing games are my go-to and I am generally good at them. Recently, I posted about Need For Speed – The Run and the challenge of how EA shutdown the Autolog servers and how to get it to run nevertheless.
I have completed the game, yes, I really did and it was the most joyful Need For Speed Game I ever played and game I ever completed (the other moments I really cheered it was completing F-Zero on the SNES and Danger Freak on the C64).
I loved the action, the risk of dying in this game because of too much speed and bluntly crashing into something because of it and totally smash the car and the challenge against the AI racers and beating them all and ultimately the game.
I am also a fan of “Detroit: Become Human” and therefore loved the quick time events they put in “Need For Speed – The Run”, all in all a perfect game. Looking for similar games, I found Split/Second to be my current action racer to go to.
In the Discussion Forums of Split/Second on Steam, I found Blur as a similar action type racer to go to.
After my challenge with Driver: San Francisco, here came another one!
More info about the “Why”:
Challenge accepted!
(Just to make it clear, I am always trying to go the most legal route to play an EOL game, anybody can just download a crack and play it, that’s no challenge)
In general I prefer Steam (as they stated multiple times if the service ever shut down they will release a patch to make all purchased games still playable) and physical releases as I am a collector.
However unfortunately, even when buying the game sealed on PC DVD (Only the German version is left available as new and sealed on Amazon), we know that due to print or label glue and other chemical issues, the DVDs begin to rot (even if not visible to the naked eye) and barely readable by DVD / BluRay drives or not readable at all anymore) after the 10+ years those optical medias are old.
So trying to install my German version I bought sealed from Amazon I gave up after trying for over an hour!
(often, even if the discs are readable still, Windows 8.x and later do not support used copy protection anymore and since it’s a grey area or even illegal in many places of the world, I never link to no-CD patches) , so what I looked for was an ISO that I could download just for the sake of installing it on my Windows 11 (as it is delisted from Steam, getting a digital copy was no option either), and I found that archive.org has an ISO with a re-packed installer!
Getting it to run was easy, just compatibility mode set to Windows 7 and run as admin and you are good to go.
Then I was created with a dialog asking to create a new account and enter my serial key to register my game, I was almost certain, this could be the end.
I was mistaken!
The key was confirmed, my account created and logged in and now I can play the game on my PC in Windows 11, 12 years after it was created!
Thanks to the team who re-packed the game files, thanks for archive.org for offering it for download and thanks to Activation for caring about your customers and not shutting down servers for EOL products!
And I didn’t have to dip into grey areas for this one!
Let’s be cheerful for not all companies being mindless and making it impossible to play EOL games!