Game-Art-HQ

The Need For Speed illustrated by Christopher Jones aka Mawnbak

Our April / May art challenge and contest in the deviantART community of Game-Art-HQ was all about taking one of around 20 listed games and try to illustrate its gameplay in a fan art.

The long-time GA-HQ contributor Mawnbak took the challenge and picked the classic Need for Speed, one of the first 3D arcade-type racers that were first released for a home console.

He captured the in-game action by drawing two of the popular cars in the game that were introduced with short videos. The Need for Speed was one of Christopher’s favourite game back in the early nineties, he even bought the 3DO console for it. The two cars racing are a McLaren P1 and a Lamborghini Diablo SV.  This illustration was done completely on his phone using the Autodesk Sketchbook app for Android.

The classic Need for Speed was first released in 1994. Unlike the majority of racers that were released in that time, it was not released for Arcades but for the 3DO home console and PC’s. It received Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn ports around 18 months later in March 1996. A big feature, not seen in other 3D racers before was the traffic on the tracks as well as the Police that would pursue the players.

If the player received 3 tickets by them, he would be arrested. This mechanic was used in later Need for Speed games as well and eventually became its own “Hot Pursuit” game mode. Three of the Need for Speed games were also completely built around the Police pursues feature later. 

If you see the video you might laugh how basic the graphics and the gameplay looks in comparison with the racing games we have today, but back in 1994 it was a revolution that turned into one of the longest running and most successful racing game series worldwide for over 20 years now.