Underground 2 will always be my favourite. Carbon is good, but the map is average compared to Underground 2 and Most Wanted 2005, which have incredible maps. Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2010 is also great, a crossover between Need For Speed and Burnout done right (Most Wanted 2012 is an example of it done wrong). The remastered version runs at 4K 60fps on the latest consoles and looks great, obviously on PC it runs at whatever you want. Burnout 3 is another great game, also Burnout Paradise.

I'm currently playing Unbound, the story is trash (almost all characters speak like a gen alpha kid, incredible amounts of cringe), but gameplay is alright, you can choose between the black box need for speed style grip handling or burnout/Criterion style tap to drift handling. Thankfully you can turn off the cartoonish effects for your own car, not the opponent's cars though sadly. There is some absolutely bullshit map/level/track design with the checkpoints, you can't hit the apex of a corner of the checkpoint doesn't allow you to. Also barriers everywhere to catch you out. The music also sucks.

My mom had a blast with the very first nfs game back on the playstation when we rented it from a blockbuster once. I should play some of these sometime.

I gotta' come back to Carbon. I started it briefly after I finished Most Wanted last year. I love the autosculpt feature. The customization is really solid. I kinda' like the quasi-RPG class system for the car types: tuner, muscle, exotic. The Tokyo Drift canyon drifting boss battles are cool.

I don't like the city as much. MW felt like a more cohesive product. Also I'm more into Metal than the indie rock Carbon has. Also don't like that it switched to CG for some of the cutscenes, the composited live action MW and Carbon has otherwise looks really good.

I liked Underground 1 a ton when I played it in college, and Most Wanted's open world was fun enough to get me to (mostly) ignore the piss filter.

Not a need for speed, but for games of that genre and era, I really liked Juiced 2 Hot Import Nights. Wouldn’t play it now, but I picked it up very cheap second hand when I had absolutely no money and very few other games, so I played it way more that it deserved and as such it’s got weird pedestal in my head.

I played a lot of Underground 1 and 2 on the Xbox back in the day. The car customization was fun, the aesthetic was extremely early 2000s, and the soundtrack was iconic

Most wanted. In this one I can actually see, while in carbon and underground, I constantly have to look at the map. And the fun part, the cop chases, are actually important there. And the "Pursuit 1" theme is one of my favorites (Edit: its in carbon too). The campaign is way too long, but the challenge mode has a good length.

Only played a couple of NFS games and the most recent one I played is Heat which is pretty cool, specially with friends. I haven't finished the story, but it is kinda bad, like it's just super forgettable and kind of annoying to do, and some of the important characters are gusanos which is not something I expected lol. But the actual game outside of that is pretty cool, I really like the idea they were going for where by day you get money and by night you level up, but have to worry about the police and getting caught makes you lose all the progress you made that night, although the day part feels boring most of the time.

Why emulate it? NFS Carbon had a PC port.

the only need for speed game i've played was underground rivals for psp, it was alright

i'm not big into racing games but my favorite is midnight club 3 (lil wayne in a che shirt at 2:30 lol)

Controversial, but I always preferred Carbon over Most Wanted, purely because I found the Canyon duels to be great fun.