Need For Speed Pro Street

Need for Speed: ProStreet has taken the Need for Speed series in a different direction of gameplay from the previous installments of the series. Unlike them, where racing scenes are set around streets with moving traffic, all racing in ProStreet take place solely on closed tracks, thus making it the first game since Need For Speed II not animating illegal racing behavior, which in turn features no police as a result. Performance tuning feature is enhanced, compared to previous versions, especially Autosculpt. Unlike Carbon, where only certain body kits can be autosculpted, this can now be applied to all body kits, including stock bumpers and wide body kits. Furthermore, every adjustment through autosculpt impacts the cars' aerodynamics.

In ProStreet there are four different game modes: Drag (a race in a drag strip, point to point), Grip (similar to Circuit races but with four different types of Grip races available), Speed (similar to a Sprint race) and Drift.

* Drag race is simply a 1/4-mile drag race, where the fastest time, out of three runs, wins. There are also 1/2 mile drag races, and wheelie competitions.
* In Grip races, there are four different modes (normal Grip, Grip reverse, Sector Shootout and Time Attack), the player has a choice to race rough, such as ramming, smashing, or blocking the opponent in order to win the race, or race cleanly and follow the given racing lines.
* Normal Grip races feature 2 to 4 laps around a circuit track with up to 7 other racers. First driver to cross the finish line wins.
* Grip Class races take 8 racers and divide them into two even groups. The racers are placed into the groups based on their vehicles performance potential. Group A starts about 10 seconds ahead of group B, both groups race on the same course but are only competing against the 3 drivers in their group.
* In Time Attack the driver with the fastest overall single lap time wins the event
* In Sector Shootout the track is divided into several segments, with drivers attempting to complete these sectors in the shortest possible time. Extra points are awarded to drivers who 'dominate' the course by holding the fastest time for every segment of the track.
* In Speed Challenge races, players must cross the finish line first to win the race (in a similar fashion to how a Sprint race works). The courses are normally fairly straight and braking is not usually required, but the races are high risk and the slightest mistake could send you off the track, and most likely out of the race. It is the highest speed type of race.
* In Top Speed Run races, the course is divided into 3-6 sections (just like that of Sector Shootout in Grip races) and at the instance a player crosses a checkpoint their speed is clocked and added to that players score, the player the highest cumulative speed wins(similar to how a Speedtrap race in Carbon and Most Wanted works).
* In drift, players drift to emerge as the driver with the most points scored in the event. Points are scored based on speed, angle, and how long the drift is held intact.

Other than gameplay itself, ProStreet features detailed damage modeling, unlike previous Need for Speed games (except NFS High Stakes and Porsche Unleashed) where damage is relatively little or non-existent altogether. The new damage system introduces more depth of damage (except on the PlayStation 2 and Wii versions, where the damage modeling has been scaled down due to the limited processing power, so the damage is similar to the previous two games) where any object in the game world has the potential to inflict cosmetic damage, light damage, or heavy damage on a car, and even has the potential to total a car immediately after impact. Damage must be repaired before tuning or upgrades can be added to a car.

ProStreet features customization of cars. The changes will affect the aerodynamics of the cars, and players can test them in an enclosed chamber called the "Wind Tunnel" (not available in the PlayStation 2 version).

The Speedbreaker does not return for ProStreet (as the game lacks a police presence; the Speedbreaker was mostly intended for police evasion, however it returns for the Nintendo DS version of the game).