Need for Speed: Nitro is an arcade style racing game that emphasizes speed and excitement over realism and vehicle tuning. The Wii version allows up to four players to race, with a maximum of eight racers at once. The Wii version lets up to four racers compete in drag races, too.
Modes Events feature different modes, namely circuits, elimination races, drift challenges, speed trap challenges, drag races, and time attack challenges. Career mode allows players to compete in several cups and build up a roster of vehicles, while Arcade Mode lets players immediately jump into a race with customized difficulty and race conditions. During races,
police will attempt to block and ram racers, causing damage that will reduce the players' top speed and amount of
nitro available. Police are not in drag races. The game features power-up icons in the race that immediately repair vehicle damage or increase your opponents' police heat level. During a race, players are awarded "style points" based on performing powerslides and drafting, and nitro is recharged over time. There is small nitro and powerful nitro similar to the Wii version of
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.
Own It The game has an aesthetic feature called "Own It"; while a player is in the lead, the surrounding landscape and buildings are textured with their car's colors, graffiti, and tags, all of which can be created with the game's new car customization system. Lines on the road will also have the color of the car colors. The "Own it" feature is a convenient way to indicate the race leader, and players get additional style points for staying in first place.
Tracks The five cities that in which are in the game are
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
Cairo, Egypt Madrid, Spain,
Singapore, and
Dubai, UAE (and
San Diego in the DS version). Each city has two full race circuits, one track for drag racing, and the game takes certain parts of a circuit for time trial, speed trap, and drift events. The two circuits in Dubai are the
Palm Jumeirah (
artificial islands) and the
Dubai Marina. The tracks for drag racing are almost in straight lines. In Dubai, the
Burj Khalifa, the
Burj Al Arab, and the
Jumeirah Beach Hotel are seen in the video game while racing. In Singapore, races take place during
sunset. In Rio de Janeiro, racers use muscle cars such as the
Dodge Challenger and
Chevrolet Camaro. In Singapore and Dubai, exotics such as the
Audi R8 and
Lamborghini Gallardo are used by racers. In Dubai, there is even Lamborghini Gallardo traffic. All the leaders' cars have unique livery and can be unlocked, except for Thiago's Challenger SRT8 and Omar's Lamborghini Gallardo. Instead of the Challenger and the Gallardo, alternative versions of them having different unique livery are unlocked by the player.
Controls Both versions of the game support multiple control schemes. The Wii version supports five control schemes across four Wii peripheral configurations - the
Wii Remote, the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, the
Classic Controller and the
Nintendo GameCube controller. Two of the five control schemes involve using just the Wii Remote, in which one uses it
as a steering wheel and the other holds it in one hand and twists it to steer, similar to
Mini Desktop Racing. The Nintendo DS version has two control schemes, one that assigns pedals to the shoulder buttons, and another that assigns pedals to face buttons. ==Soundtrack==