The game focuses on street racing-oriented game play involving a selection of events and racing circuits found within the fictional city of Rockport, with the game's main story involving players taking on 15 of the city's most elite street racers to become the most wanted racer of the group in order to get their car back from the antagonist, while developing a feud with the city's police department in the process.
An additional version, entitled Need for Speed: Most Wanted 5-1-0, was released in the same year for PlayStation Portable. Developed by EA Canada and EA Black Box and published by Electronic Arts, it was released on November 11, 2005, for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, Nintendo DS, Microsoft Windows, Game Boy Advance and Xbox 360. Need for Speed: Most Wanted is a 2005 open world racing video game, and the ninth installment in the Need for Speed series.