Today we bring you an interview with Carter, the last still active competitive German NFS Underground player from the old days.
Back in 2003/2004 he was part of one of the strongest German clans, competed in the Giga Liga, and later returned to the game
with his own YouTube channel and detailed guides that helped a new generation of Underground players. Interview with Carter 1. When did you first start playing NFS Underground and how did you get into the German scene back then? I think I got the game for X-Mas 2003. I don't remember if I bought it myself or if it was a present.
I played through the career mode first and then I started to play online.
Back then NBC had their own gaming TV show in Germany called "Giga Games". They also had their own eSports league called "Giga Liga".
So I started to compete in that league and this was also the first eSports experience I got (I was 16 years old at the time).
I still remember my first game, which was against Flipmode from pro-Gaming (one of the most successful German clans back then).
I drove a Golf, while he drove an RX-7, and he destroyed me. :D
But what left a big impression on me was that this "pro" player didn't make fun of me,
was super friendly, helpful and gave me tips (like don't drive a Golf).
I guess this motivated me to practice and play more the following months.
2. You were part of one of the strongest German clans at the time.
How did you join them, and what memories do you have from the clan wars or league competitions? I first was playing for a clan called "Supersonix". It was mostly playing for fun there.
But over time I got better in NFSU and I climbed the ladders in Giga Liga and ESL.
I guess this aroused some interest for other teams, because I was contacted by the team "noChance!"
(kinda cheezy name looking back on it :D) and joined them in early 2004.
This team was more professional and participated in leagues, tournaments and events.
I think back then we were the 3rd strongest team in Germany behind pro-Gaming and DkH.
Platzda was also a big German clan, but if I remember correctly they didn't really participate a lot in tournaments,
mostly they drove Ranked online.
3. Back in 2004, what did competition feel like? Was the atmosphere different compared to today's scene? What I remember from that time was that everyone I knew was playing NFSU, everyone in my school was talking about it, and showing off which kind of car tuning they had, etc. You always had people online. It felt like a huge community. German sites like nfs-players.de and nfs-planet.de helped to promote the game even more; e.g. when nfs-players.de was organizing a clan tournament, 22 clans participated. With 22 clans having at least 4 drivers, there were at least 88 people in a tournament run by a small German NFS fan site. I mean, that felt huge. Here the old tournament tree for anyone interested: https://web.archive.org/web/20040810091503/http://nfs-players.gamesurf.tiscali.de/turnierbaum.htm
4. What motivated you to keep playing Underground for over 20 years while so many others stopped? I actually also stopped for some time. I stopped playing Underground as soon as Underground 2 came out at the end of 2004.
Most of the competitive scene moved onto the next title, since tournaments and leagues always promoted the newest, latest title.
There was still a big community playing NFSU online, but the players who played in clans and participated in online leagues moved on.
So did my clan. We started playing NFSU2, and had some success. But for me it never felt as good as NFSU.
Playing with a wheel just didn't work well for me in NFSU2, and I didn't really like playing with Gamepad.
Our clan then switched to playing NFS Most Wanted, but most people got tired of it.
So some people stopped playing altogether, and a few others from my team started to move away from an arcade racer to sim racing.
We started playing Live for Speed (LFS), and during that time actually a few other NFS players from other teams were also switching to that sim.
I played LFS from like 2005 to like 2008, participated in leagues like the ESL and other smaller ones.
After that I switched to playing Race07 in another German League (called "Virtual Racing") from 2009 to 2010.
In 2011 I switched to playing iRacing and stayed there for a while until 2018
(playing everything from Road to Oval). After that I took a simracing break for a few years.
Now to answer your question, why did I start playing NFSU again? In 2020 I was surfing around on speedrun.com and noticed the NFSU section.
I noticed that some of the "world records" on that site were not so fast actually and not so close to the times players achieved from 2003-2007.
I was comparing the listed times to my old written notes from way back then. I thought that I should be able to beat the times on there.
So I started to practice again and posted my times, just to make sure the times on speedrun.com were kinda competitive.
I also went down another rabbit hole researching the fastest times for each track.
My ultimate goal was to beat all old NFSU records - the "real" ones from back in the day :D
5. You are still hotlapping today. How has your driving style changed compared to the early years? When I played 2003-2004, I was already using a wheel. But I wasn't using the Double Steering (DS) technique.
I remember DS was talked about in the scene back then (maybe around mid to end of 2004),
but there were not really any tutorials on how to do it, and after a while most people moved on to play NFSU2 anyway.
So, of course, nowadays even though I use a wheel, my driving style is completely different with the use of Double Steering.
Double Steering makes hotlapping both easier and harder at the same time. :P
6. You run a YouTube channel where you post your runs and also guides.
What made you decide to share knowledge and not just keep it to yourself? I think sharing hotlaps and guides helps create a community and bring in newcomers.
It shows people what is possible and hopefully motivates people to practice and try out things.
7. Your guides on Double Steering and Double Tapping have helped many players in the scene.
Do you remember how you first discovered these techniques yourself? When I came back to the game in 2020, I didn't know how Double Steering worked. I did some research on the topic first.
There was not a lot of information about it out there, nothing to explain these techniques in detail.
People had the wildest ideas about DS, and a lot of people called it "cheating".
From my research, I validated that DS and Double Tapping all happen within the parameters of the game.
No extra code or hack to make it work; you use just what the game offers. So for me that is not cheating.
I created the tutorials mostly to show people how it works and to take that mystery away.
What also really helped me figure DS out was actually watching old videos of JuAnChOcNarg,
with his pixelated 240p videos from 11 years ago (haha). I watched him drive and would try to imitate his driving.
8. Do you think the skill ceiling in Underground is fully reached, or are there still tricks and improvements left to be found? I still think the full potential is not yet fully reached. I think the gains will not be as high as what we saw in 2024 anymore.
That year, new records were broken nearly everyday; and the community figured out how to use Double Steering with front-wheel drive cars,
like the Integra and Neon. (Shoutouts to Marchiii, ScorpioNNN and GTB for pushing these).
However, I still think we can still push certain cars and tracks even more.
We are still a small community, and there is always a chance someone new will come and show us what is possible.
9. What's your favorite track for hotlapping, and why? To be honest, it always switches. After I practice a track for too long, I get annoyed by it. :D
But in general I like tracks which are not too luck based. What do I mean by luck?
There are just some tracks where you can't consistently be fast all of the time,
since you're not always getting that perfect bounce or a perfect drift.
This can become quite frustrating for hotlapping.
10. How did you feel seeing players from all over the world compete in a game that is over two decades old? It is nice to see that players all over the world are still interested in NFSU,
and it is great to see that the community is still so active and can exchange easily via Discord.
11. Back in the old days, how strong do you think the German scene really was compared to other countries? It is really hard to tell. In 2004, most of the competitions were still local/country-based. You didn't really play against a lot of people outside of your country. I think the German scene was one of the most active, besides Russia, Brazil and Argentina. In the biggest international tournament from that time, the World Cyber Games, the German player Sliver from "pro-Gaming" won https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cyber_Games_2004Basically, you can think of the World Cyber Games as like a type of Olympics for video games at the time. It was a big deal. So I think based on Sliver's win alone, you can say that the German scene was strong in retrospect.
12. Are there any old multiplayer teammates or rivals you wish were still active in the scene? Of course, it would be cool to see some other old players coming back to play the game.
It is still nice to see people like Juan and Skeich active in the community. They've also been playing for ages. But to be realistic,
the game is over 20 years old and most players who played the game back then probably have a different life now (haha).
But yeah, it would be great to see German legends like BusterOne, BATM0bile, Sliver;
other known players like MasterrRX7, Merdok, Malaasoy, Newbiewheel, DDVPablo…
(the list can go on); or some of my old team-mates back online.
P.S. Bullet4one and McDeath, if you read this, come back and play some rounds with me! :D
13. What was the most memorable moment you've had in NFS Underground over the years? I guess a great moment for me was qualifying for the Giga Liga Grand Slam 3, which were the playoffs for the Giga Liga league. During this, I was mentioned on Live TV as a participant. You can actually still see the footage in low quality here: https://youtu.be/4uIIMAxMEyE?si=fshWVZtfVXMCbHUP&t=4691During that same Grand Slam, I was also super proud of beating [pG]BusterOne, one of the best players, who played later in the final. (Let's just ignore the fact that I lost every other race in the Playoffs and didn't make it to the next round). By the way, the footage of the final can still be seen here: https://youtu.be/aypX4jWmL68?si=kkWCiwkYO2xklADz&t=409. If you watch that video now, you can already see how much faster the community currently is, compared to 2004. And the netcode and collision model was already shitty back then. :D
14. With NFS.onl it is now possible to upload and compare runs worldwide.
How important do you think this platform is for keeping Underground alive today? NFS.onl, Redhair's work, as well as Jericho's work with his "collision off" patch,
and also your work, Ravage, are extremely important for keeping the game and the scene alive.
Without it, I doubt we would still see so many players playing and competing.
When I started in around 2020 there were basically just a handful of people still playing the game competitively.
Now with kickStart and nfs.onl, it is super easy for newcomers to get into the game and compete.
There's a foundation that's already been laid.
15. Do you believe Underground could still attract new players in the future if the scene continues to stay active? Yes, I think so. I actually see a higher chance of attracting newer players rather than old players.
What makes the game so special is that it is easy to learn but hard to master. And with all the different techniques,
you always have the feeling that you can go just a little bit faster, if you practice just a little bit more…
16. If you could bring one thing from the old NFSU scene back today, what would it be? It is hard to say. The NFSU scene back then was just huge.
So it would be great if so many players would play the game again, but this is not realistic.
Also, a lot of people don't know how to "acquire" this game anymore so easily.
You could go on eBay and find old copies, but this is already a lot of work.
It would be great if NFSU could be sold and downloaded again via Steam or any other platform.
Something else, which I think would help to have more people play online,
would be a way to host without having specific router ports open.
So maybe instead of P2P connection, if the game would use a client-server model, that could help.
But besides that, I think in large part due to Redhair's work, we have a lot of better tools these days,
than were ever available in 2004. I mean collision disabler, automatic time tracking, a leaderboard, soon Delta.
Seeing all of the options available now, I think we're at a much better place than in 2003/04.
We've come a long way from when I started playing. :)
Big thanks to Carter for sharing his journey with us.
We wish him the best of luck for his future hotlap runs and hope to see more strong times from him on NFS.onl. | 
