Need for Speed II original retail CD

This is the original 1997 release, not the demo or Special Edition. Its need-for-speed-2-full candidate remains a private source fixture, with no registered game app or accepted browser launch route. Registration would not establish startup or gameplay.

The original CD was recovered on 2026-10-28 from the package pinned in source revision e2f39b5e48fe9d2e5c0dfd26fe65f6afc3f640f9:

The retained cd/ tree uses the disc's Joliet names. Comparison by original extent and length found five ISO9660/Joliet name differences: four document case changes and FEDATA/PC/SAVE/TEMP. versus FEDATA/PC/SAVE/TEMP. Those five names were corrected to Joliet without changing file bytes or inode identity. Both namespace inventories, the original content hashes, the five-path delta and all 71 original directories are retained.

Installation boundary

The CD README documents the autorun INSTALL action, destination selection (default C:\Electronic Arts\Need for Speed II), component selection (minimum/standard/maximum/remote), file copying, and a DirectX 3.0 prerequisite. It then describes starting the installed shortcut with the CD present.

The exact English bootstrap is SETUP/ENGLISH/SETUP.EXE, 44,928 bytes, SHA-256 8b40dd7bb91ca280e90f9097697b0f93c4c1b732caeec9bb10e7d3a888a3d876. Its new-header offset is 0xe00 and signature is NE. Preserve its original adjacent _SETUP.LIB, _SETUP.DLL, _ISDEL.EXE, _INST32I.EX_, SETUP.PKG, SETUP.INS, SETUP.INI, bitmap, README and license. No installer was executed in this task, and no installed directory or registry state was synthesized.

Static examination of the unchanged original NFSW.EXE identifies a relevant guard at 0x4462dd–0x44634e. The code forms an INSTALL.WIN path, extracts its drive letter (0x47fbbc), and checks for a CD-ROM working drive (0x47fbe4, GetDriveTypeA(...) == 5). On that branch, the English case selects the install-first error at 0x44631b; other language cases select a CD message. This is evidence against registering a direct optical-drive launch. It does not prove that every fixed-drive copy requires installation: that alternative has not been accepted and must not be represented as an installed game.

The source INSTALL.WIN is an original 721-byte relative-path configuration. Its presence alone does not establish an installed layout. Preserve it unchanged; do not borrow the demo's preparation, rewrite its paths, invent registry values, or patch the executable to skip the guard.

Next gate and retained evidence

Qualify the original installer route and resulting file/configuration changes with separately authorized execution, or establish an authentic fixed-drive direct-launch contract. Only then add a local-only app and validate its complete case-insensitive VFS mapping against the recovered originals. Startup, CD checks, menus and gameplay remain untested.

The canonical recovery and acceptance receipt is scratch/usage-watch/nfs2-retail-recovery-registration-oct28/receipt.json on the Boat host. It binds immutable source/media pins, exact operations and controls, production-registry/manifest checks, remote evidence and lifecycle handback. The original ISO, extracted tree and full inventories are retained under /home/user/nfs2-recovery/ on bx_6d46zgy6 for the coordinator's snapshot. Do not deploy or commit the ISO or extracted assets. Expiry is 2026-10-28 12:21:54 UTC; the coordinator owns snapshot/shutdown at 12:15 UTC.

Acceptance imported the actual production APPS export and confirmed that no app resolves to this retail fixture. The existing candidate-browser-manifest and debug-game-app registration tests passed. Separately, an explicitly diagnostic invocation of the unchanged production manifest writer covered all 1,123 original files (1,122 companion mappings plus the executable), checking hashes, sizes and case-insensitive paths. Missing-executable and missing- INSTALL.WIN fault injection each rejected before replacing the inventory; the original files were untouched. This diagnostic inventory is not configured in the candidate or app registry and is not an accepted launch route.