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The Need for Speed with DOSBox

I recently stumbled upon my beloved old copy of the absolutely fantastic original "The Need for Speed". This fabulous game came out in 1994 and blew me away. My sister, her boyfriend (now husband) and I spend a crazy number of hours playing this game. It rocked!

How to get it to play now though...? Well, I've used the wonderful DOSBox before for playing Doom 2 and Commander Keen and the like. This software runs in Windows (XP for example) and emulates a DOS environment with an old SoundBlaster 16 soundcard. Would it work with TNFS (The Need for Speed)?

After a lot of trial and error I finally got it working after getting a tip from a forum on a site called "alldeaf" (www.alldeaf.com). I hadn't mounted the CDROM drive properly. Here's what you need to do:
  • Create a folder/directory on root of your C: drive called "tnfs" (i.e. c:\tnfs)
  • Run DOSBox
  • Type "mount c c:\tnfs"
  • Type "mount d d:\ -t cdrom"
  • Type d:
  • Type "install"
  • Follow the on-screen instructions
Hopefully this should do the trick for you. What a trip down amnesia lane! It really brought me back! It's still a brilliant game even if the graphics are a bit grainy.
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Comments

Burby said…
Hello Steve,

funny that I did the same just now! My friends and me spend hours and hours with racing, telling each other the new minimum time.

Did you get the videosequences running? If so, I would be very interested for a "howto". For me its not visible, just jammed pixel with sound.
Thank you!
Martin
1 September 2009 at 20:46
MIke said…
Thanks for that, i still have a bit to learn about using dosbox, now there's a little bit less i need to learn.
Cheers.
Mike
28 August 2010 at 06:42
Unknown said…
When I try to do this it says the following: "getvesainfo - IVALID VESA INFO. VESA driver is installed?" Any ideas?
31 July 2011 at 15:43
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