One of the most beloved racing games of the 2000s is back — and now it runs in the browser. The fan project Underground 2 Revived has brought Need for Speed: Underground 2, the 2004 classic from EA Black Box, to the browser, with online multiplayer that turns the game into a kind of street-racing MMO. Released on November 15, 2004, the original was the first Need for Speed with an open world and sold around 11 million copies worldwide.
What is Underground 2 Revived
The port was released in late October 2026 by a developer known as th0mk and uses WebAssembly and WebGPU to run the original PC game code directly in the browser, with no installation. Just open the project website, pick a username and jump into free roam. The project builds on the NFSU2Recomp static recompiler by Talha Müderrisoğlu and, according to the project documentation, was developed with the help of AI coding tools.
Multiplayer for up to 48 players
The big new feature over the original is multiplayer: up to 48 players can cruise the same map of Bayview, organize car meets, compete in lobby races and create crews to always see friends in free roam. There is also chat with nearby players and an optional ghost mode that prevents cars from crashing into each other. Anyone who prefers can play solo, as in the original — the multiplayer chaos is optional.
A viral hit in November
The project went viral in early November, with clips of dozens of player-controlled cars bumping into each other around Bayview. On November 4, the site listed more than 7,000 players online, with nearly 3,000 in free roam alone, according to GameRant. A November 1 post on X by user @no3ish, showing about 3,000 people free roaming, helped spread the project.
Unofficial project
One important caveat: Underground 2 Revived is an unofficial project, with no affiliation with or endorsement from Electronic Arts, which owns the rights to the game. EA has not publicly announced any legal action against the project so far, but there is no guarantee the hosted version will remain available indefinitely.
How to play
To play, you need a WebGPU-compatible browser — Chrome and Firefox work — with hardware acceleration enabled. On first run, the browser downloads a few gigabytes of game data. The project promises support for up to 120 FPS, widescreen and controllers.
Geekiki has covered a similar project: RecompLauncher, which brings together more than 200 ports of classic games for PC.
Sources: Underground 2 Revived (project website), Kotaku, GameRant, ScreenRant and GamingHQ.
Image credit: original cover art of Need for Speed: Underground 2, by Electronic Arts, via Wikipedia.
Transparency: this article was produced with the help of artificial intelligence, drawing on public posts on X and sources from across the internet. Please consult the original sources linked throughout the text.
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