EA Black Box’s 2004 sequel moved the street-racing scene to Bayview, a city you drive around freely between races. You find events and hidden shops by exploring, build your car with body kits, vinyls, neon and car audio, and race in circuit, sprint, drag, drift and Street X events, or challenge drivers you meet on the road to an Outrun. If you own the GameCube version, Nagori lets you play it on iPhone and iPad.
What you need
- An iPhone 12 or newer, or an iPad with an A14 chip or newer, with iOS 17.6 or later.
- Nagori from the App Store. Your first game is free.
- A disc image of your copy of the GameCube version:
.iso,.gcm,.rvz,.cisoor.gcz. The game fits on a single disc. - A controller, if you have one. Racing is easier with a real analog stick.
No BIOS file is needed.
How to play Need for Speed: Underground 2 on iPhone
- Install Nagori from the App Store.
- Copy your Underground 2 disc image to the Files app, in iCloud Drive or On My iPhone.
- Open Nagori, tap + and select the file. Add GameCube games this way, from inside Nagori: the Files app’s Open in menu doesn’t work for every GameCube format. Nagori copies the game into its own storage, so you can delete the original file afterwards.
- Pick a touch layout with a stick, such as D-Pad + Stick or Stick Focus, or connect a controller. The default Standard layout has no stick, and steering with a stick is much smoother than with a D-pad.
- Find Underground 2 on the GameCube shelf and press Play.
Controls
Steer with the stick. Drift events reward smooth, steady steering, and a controller’s analog stick gives you far more control than a thumb on glass. Bluetooth controllers that iOS supports, including DualSense, DualShock 4 and Xbox controllers, work with Nagori. The right stick acts as the C-stick, pressing the left stick opens the pause menu, and if the controller disconnects mid-race, Nagori pauses the game.
The GameCube’s L and R triggers were analog. In Nagori they’re digital, so a press always counts as a full pull. If you accelerate or brake with a trigger, that means full throttle or full brakes, so tap it to ease off through tight turns.
Drag races play differently: the game keeps the car straight, and you change lanes, shift gears and time your nitrous. On touch, if those buttons don’t sit where your thumbs rest, switch to My Layout, drag each control into place and pinch to resize it. GameCube games don’t vibrate in Nagori, so there’s no rumble.
Saves: retry a bad launch
On the GameCube, Underground 2 saves your career to the memory card. Nagori keeps that working and adds:
- Quit any time. Leave the app while cruising Bayview and Continue puts you back on the same street.
- Save states. Pause and choose Save on the start line of a drag race or before a long circuit race. If you miss a shift or hit a wall on the last lap, Load and try again. Nagori keeps your last four saves per game.
- The memory card still works. The game’s own saves go to its memory card inside Nagori, as on the console.
Let the game save your career as you go, and treat save states as a shortcut on top of it. The GameCube memory card isn’t shown in the Files app, and Save to iCloud isn’t available for GameCube games.
Best settings
- Quality: Medium, the default, balances frame rate and heat. Low keeps the device cooler, and High is for the newest iPhones and iPads.
- Play long sessions on Medium. An evening of cruising Bayview warms up any phone, and the lower settings keep your iPhone cooler. If it still gets hot, drop to Low.
- Resolution: Nagori shows GameCube games at their original resolution, without upscaling.
One player only
Nagori plays GameCube games for one player, so anything in Underground 2 that needs a second controller isn’t available. Cheat codes aren’t available for GameCube games either.
