I think the Need for Speed series needs no special introduction. Many people are familiar with both the modern and the older (well, retro by now) games in the series.
In my case, I was introduced to the series by Need for Speed: High Stakes, or Need for Speed 4, as we usually called it. I only learned the game's full title much later.
The career mode was a very interesting idea: every race and every tournament was not just a ten-minute event, but a building block, a step on the way to the Tournament of Champions.
Of course, we also tried playing simple races, including split-screen races.
These memories will stay with me forever.
Many years later, I wanted to play through the career mode again. However, the night races significantly diminished the experience: they were quite difficult and not particularly enjoyable, especially when rain was added to the mix. Gradually, I started thinking about digging into the game files and removing both the night and the precipitation. It turned out to be quite simple: all I had to do was replace the files containing the night and rainy settings in the track folders with the daytime versions of those same tracks. Playing through the career again was much more enjoyable and brought back many memories...
During another bout of Need for Speed fever, I got the idea to see what could be done with mirrored tracks. I have nothing against reverse tracks, but mirrored ones...
That led to a primitive career editor, or rather, an editor for the tournaments within the career. It was not yet possible to edit the career mode in full.
This playthrough was also quite interesting, but I felt bad that I still did not get to drive many of the cars while completing the career. For the AA class, experienced players (or, well, lazy ones like me) choose the Porsche 911 Turbo, win the hidden Porsche, and then drive it whenever possible. But what about all the other cars?
I wanted a tournament with the BMW M5, or one featuring only Ferrari models (that sound!).
That resulted in a more or less full-fledged career editor, which I spent quite a bit of time playing with. I came up with some fairly interesting career variations. How about a scenario where, apart from the initial $25,000, there is no significant income to be expected? You have to complete all 11 events in your first car with the remaining $5,000. And so on.
For a long time, I had been thinking about creating a site with different career variations. I even planned to make a launcher that would simplify replacing the files and so on. I have not abandoned that idea, and I will definitely implement it as far as I can.
The only thing I regret is not creating this site five to ten years earlier. Many people for whom this was one of their first car games will no longer be able to play it...