Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 was insanely good. It was fast, it was gorgeous, and smooth as butter – well, on the PS2 at least. Which is why we're more than a little excited about the prospect of the next NFS game, developed by the same guys at EA as the Hot Pursuit 2.



Need For Speed Underground follows the newest trend in racing carved out previously by Test Drive and the recent Midnight Club 2 and takes to the streets for racing thrills, dropping you into the urban sprawl for a little nighttime competition. In fact, NFS Underground even bit Test Drive's drag races, which were a fun way to test shifting prowess.



So where's the originality? It lies in an area the aforementioned racers haven't yet touched: customization. A full 20 different cars from major manufacturers like Mitsubishi, Toyota and Subaru, plus a handful of others EA's keeping tight-lipped about will be available to build and upgrade as you see fit with literally hundreds of different aftermarket configurations thanks to parts from AEM Inc., Audiobahn., Bilstein, Dazz Motorsport, DC Sports, Eibach Enkei, GReddy Performance Products Inc., HKS, Holley, Injen, Jackson Racing, MOMO, Neuspeed, Nitrous Express Inc., O.Z, PIAA, Skunk2 Racing, Sparco, StreetGlow, and Turbonetics Inc. Impressed yet?



Need For Speed Underground has a nebulous ship date of "early next year" according to EA, but with a solid dev team behind it and plenty of licenses thanks to EA's deep pockets, we could be looking at the next big arcade racer of 2004 come E3 time in a couple weeks. More when we get it.