ReNFS

The Need for Speed Special Edition (Electronic Arts Canada, 1996, MS-DOS), written again for Linux and Windows by reading the original program. A MiSTer version is next.

The whole single-player game is in: every car and track, head to head, single race, time trial, tournaments, the rally, the police, the traffic, replays and highlights, the cars' showcase with its films, the records, saved tournaments, the original's typed codes, its music and speech, English and German. Races run at 640x480 or 320x200, as the original's two settings, and smoothly at 60 frames a second. Keyboard, game pad, joystick and mouse; a pad rumbles and a force-feedback wheel gets the original's effects.

Not in it: the network and modem race (greyed out in the menu).

On the MiSTer, races can also be 320x240, 640x240 and 640x200, made for 15 kHz screens:

Beta: the latest version is on the releases page. Please report problems on the issues page.

You need the game's CD

ReNFS contains no part of the game: it reads the files of your own copy of The Need for Speed SE CD, as they are.

1. Download ReNFS for your system (below) and unpack it.

2. Copy everything on the CD (or in an image of it) into a folder named NFSSE next to the program:

   renfs                      (renfs.exe on Windows)
   NFSSE/NFS_DOS.EXE
   NFSSE/FRONTEND/...
   NFSSE/GAMEDATA/...
   NFSSE/SIMDATA/...
   

   Or keep the files anywhere and start the program with -data <that folder>. Upper or lower case in the names does not matter. Nothing has to be installed or unpacked.

3. Start the program. If the files are not found, a message says what is missing.

It needs the Special Edition CD (the DOS program NFS_DOS.EXE on it); the first Need for Speed CD of 1995 is a different program.

Download

Built programs are on the releases page:

• Windows (10 or 11, 64-bit): renfs-<version>-windows-x86_64.zip. Unpack it, put the NFSSE folder next to renfs.exe, double-click renfs.exe.
• Linux (x86-64): renfs-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz. It needs SDL2, which most systems have (sudo apt install libsdl2-2.0-0 on Debian, Ubuntu and Mint, sudo dnf install SDL2 on Fedora, sudo pacman -S sdl2 on Arch). Unpack it, put the NFSSE folder next to renfs, run ./renfs.

Playing

The menus work with the mouse, or the arrows, Enter and Esc. Alt+Enter switches between a window and the whole screen.

Driving (as the original; every key can be changed in Options → Controls):

Key
← →	steer
↑ ↓	accelerate, brake
A, Z	gear up, gear down (the automatic starts in neutral: one gear up to drive)
Space	handbrake
H	horn
C	next camera
M	the map

During a race:

Key
Esc	the pause menu (continue, replay, options, quit)
P	pause; P again goes on
F1	the view's size (from outside)
F2	the picture's detail
F3	how far the road is drawn
F4	the sky
F5	sound on or off
F6	the markers over the other racers
F7, F8	the bar at the top: shown or not, which figures
F9	the view from the bumper instead of the cockpit
F11	smooth motion on or off (below)
Shift+End	give up the race
Ctrl+Alt+1..8	watch another car

A game pad is found when the game starts; the first time, the original's calibration screen appears (move the stick round its corners, let go, press a button; Esc skips it). Options → Controls → Calibrate joystick does it again.

Pad
Left stick (or the d-pad)	steer; the menus' arrows
Right / left trigger	accelerate / brake
Right / left shoulder	gear up / down
A	horn; Space in the menus
B	the map; Enter in the menus
X	next camera
Y	handbrake
Start	Esc: the pause menu, back in the menus

For analogue steering, accelerator and brake, choose Joystick in Options → Controls (Steering "Joystick Left/Right", Accelerate/brake "Joystick Up/Down"), as in the original. With the controls left on Keyboard the pad still drives, but all or nothing, like keys. The mouse can steer too (Controls: Mouse): move it left and right, its buttons accelerate and brake.

Typed codes: the original's codes work, typed in Control Central (the main menu).

Smooth motion

The original moves the cars 33 times a second. ReNFS draws the race at every refresh of the screen (60 times a second at 640x480, 70 at 320x200) with the cars and the camera between those moves, so the motion is smooth. The race itself is the original's: the same steps, the same physics, the same replays. F11 switches it off and on.

Races are at 640x480 by default, as the original's own setting; Options → Graphics → the first row gives 320x200.

Rumble and force feedback

The original could drive a force-feedback wheel. ReNFS sends the same effects to what you have: a pad rumbles (hits, walls and crashes on the strong motor, the road's surface and speed on the weak one), and a wheel or stick with force feedback gets the kicks, the road's shaking and the steady pull of the car's forces.

Settings and saves

They go to ~/.config/renfs on Linux and %APPDATA%\renfs on Windows (or -home <folder>), never into the game's folder: the game's settings and records, saved tournaments (<name>.sav), replays, the joystick's calibration, and renfs.cfg, ReNFS's own settings:

smooth 1            smooth motion (F11); 0 as the original
fullscreen 0        1 the whole screen (Alt+Enter)
forcefeedback 100   the strength of rumble and force feedback, 0 to 100; 0 none

Language

English, as the CD starts. For German start it with -lang de (the CD holds both; on Windows, a shortcut to renfs.exe with -lang de after it).

Building from source

SDL2 (the development package), CMake and a C compiler:

cmake -S port -B port/build && cmake --build port/build
port/build/renfs -data <the CD's folder>

renfs --help lists the options. tools/release_linux.sh and tools/release_windows.sh make the release packages (a Debian 11 container, and MinGW-w64).

How it was made

ReNFS is not an emulator and not a machine translation: the original program was taken apart (Ghidra, with the tools in tools/), and each routine written again by hand in C. The game's fixed tables are read from the player's own NFS_DOS.EXE at run time, so nothing of the game is in this repository. The races, the physics, the computer's drivers, the drawing, the dashboard, the sounds and the force feedback were checked against the original's own code, run in an emulator beside the port's, until they agree to the bit; the CD's four replays play back exactly as recorded.

docs/NOTES.md is the full record (the program's map, the file formats, each routine and how it was checked), docs/HANDOVER.md where the work stands, CLAUDE.md the summary and the switches for testing.

Licence

GPL-3.0 (LICENSE). The Need for Speed is a trademark of Electronic Arts; ReNFS is not connected with Electronic Arts, and the game itself remains theirs.