NASCAR Thunder 2004 Is Better Than NASCAR Chase For The Cup 2005 

As a die hard Nascar fan myself. I would say 2004 is the best Nascar game for console. The presentation. The in depth career mode. You actually feel like your in the game. The car handling. I could go on. I’ve played the new heat games. Yes the graphics are better in the new ones but the overall gameplay in this beats them all. Just my opinion.

In NASCAR 05, a long time ago, I figured out in that game, when making turns, the best way to slow down is to keep your finger on the gas while lightly tapping the brake, instead of letting off the gas entirely. It made it so much easier and I was no longer sliding in the turns. That’s actually what the assists does in the game when making turns if you have it turned on. You’ll notice when making a turn (on let’s say Atlanta) only the little red light blinks (brake) while the yellow light (foot off the gas) doesn’t. It’s all about just tapping the brake while staying on the gas in that game. That’s the key. And the car won’t slide everywhere.

Great video. I would have to say that Thunder 2004, Chase for the Cup 2005, and Dirt to Daytona are by far the best 3 Nascar games ever made. But I really preferred 2005 Chase for the Cup because I loved the idea of working my way up from featherlight to cup and eventually owning my own team. Finally winning a cup championship really made you feel worthy because you paid your dues, especially if you played on the hardest difficulty like I did. You really felt proud of yourself for running decent enough in terrible equipment to get offered better contracts and seats in top rides. I think it would be a tie for first with Dirt to Daytona if they had included the Busch series.

Honestly.. I find myself wanting to find a small team of Thunder fans who have some game dev experience and create a fan-project that encompasses the best of the EA Nascar titles. Basically the "Thunder era" (2002, 2003, 2004, Chase for the cup 2005) And take all the good from these games... and make one hell of a stock car arcade game. Like.. it's not aiming to be a NR2003, closer to Thunder. With a in-depth career mode, more customizations, features, rulesets... Hell, imagine this.. A career where you start in say 2001, then as you go through your career even the makes and models of the cars change. As they did irl. Say going from the Monte Carlo to the Impala or SS for an example. Or the Taurus to the Fusion. A silly season with drivers retiring and changing rides (One way to do this is to make the game moddable and make all drivers fantasy drivers loosely based on real ones possibly, which may have to be done for makes and models of the cars and tracks to boot) Physics that are realistic enough for things to "Make sense" and handle comfortably or how you'd expect, but also isn't a full on sim. again, like Thunder was. Maybe add some challenges, heck... make a mode where YOU make a challenge to share with your friends to complete like the thunder challenges did. Add a full blown paint booth but also have a "Classic" mode that's more simplified like Thunder's was. With mod support, updates and maybe Spotify integration... you could even make your own bad-ass soundtracks! It's a pipe-dream... but damn would it be one hell of a love letter to Stock car gaming.

I agree 100% EA cheaped out once they got the exclusive license, the damage model is better in Thunder 2004, and in 2005 of you had enough money you could just buy the upgrades and instantly be the best, in 2005, Kasey Kahne, Scott Riggs, Scott Wimmer, Brian Vickers never lose their rookie stripes...Carl Edwards had a contract with another company to sell a plug and play game and that's why he's not in NASCAR '07 and '08.

04 05 06 are honestly 1a 1b 1c. 04 has the most in depth career mode 05 has Busch and truck and you can move through the ranks 06 has the cool feature of controlling other cars and buying teams

Thunder 04 is the best nascar game period

great video bro! i still play my copy of Chase for the Cup 2005 on my ps2, but i got used to all the issues with it. it seems like EA's recurring trend in their sports games is to remove features they had in previous games. Madden, FIFA, even NBA LIVE.

05 Dover tire wear is so damn frustrating.

Carl Edwards couldn't be in some NASCAR games because he signed an exclusive license to make his own game.

I feel like EA purposely made the handling twitchy in '05 probably to encourage players to make wedge adjustments to their cars according to their own liking, since increasing it makes them less twitchy and more responsive, perhaps somewhat the only way to adjust steering sensitivity in-game. On my playthrough, I would set them to either 1.0 or 1.5 in most tracks no matter what series it was except in Superspeedways where I would set it around 3.0-4.0 to avoid loss of speed when taking high speed corners. So yeah.. a weird decision they made if that's the case.

NASCAR thunder 04 is the best NASCAR game ever! The only thing that would make the best game ever is if it had the team control added to it that came out 2 years later. The presentation The rivals It felt really going 200 MPH The paint schemes The difference voice for the spotter and crew chief. The soundtrack. Damage really effecting the car. NASCAR thunder 2004 is GOAT

I noticed this every time and maybe people need to hear me out, competition makes a product better. Without it you can do whatever you want and not have to worry about another company making a better game.

I just bought a ps2 a few months ago also. I bought madden 06 ncaa football 06,07 nfl 2k5 and Mlb the show 06. All games I loved as a kid. I just bought NT2004 on eBay and it says it will be here tomorrow. I’m so excited to play it again. I had NT2004 when I was kid but it was so scratched up and didn’t work and it crushed me and I haven’t played it since.

It would be cool to see you do a comparison between Nascar Thunder 2003 and Nascar Thunder 2004.

They are the best, I do prefer 2005 to 2004 but that's just me. I didn't own 2004 back in the day but had 2005 and it was one of my most played games on the PS2. So that's probably why I prefer it to 2004, but both are definitely must own Nascar games. Too bad that these games are the peak, definitely wouldn't have foreseen that as a kid. I must say though as an adult I am leaning more towards Thunder 2004. I wish both games could have a baby, it would be the best Nascar game. Also I have to bring it up, I love that you can pick your favorite driver in 2005, but that's something else they didn't bring back in 06, 07, 08, or 09.

Nascar thunder 2003 batter than 2004

carl edwards wasnt in 07 either

My biggest complaint with Chase for The Cups was that the career mode races were way too long, and you couldn't adjust it below like 15 percent length. When I made my way up through all four series, I'd start a cup team, run the 500 and then just hire a guy to run the remaining 35 races

if ps2 nascar games from 2001 to 06 had fantasy tracks from ps1 games of nascar 98-2002 on the ps2 it’ll be best racing games ever for ps2 era

Love your videos bro. You're dope. Peace 💯

Thunder 2004 had the same model lol. I would get bad twitching and bad sliding on old tires 😂

I just finished a race where I went the last 20 laps in first place and then the last two laps I get passed by Rusty Wallace and at the very end of the race I managed to pass him but I had to push him out of the way so his car came flying and crossed the finish line before me

I liked 07 better than 05, but thunder 2004 is the best.

It depresses me that 2004 is not the best working on my steamdeck, but 05 and thunder 2003 gamecub versions with mods atleast work.

I play thunder 2004 on my xbox and when you said that 05 is twitchy, I remembered how twitchy thunder 2004 was. (The slitest touch send me across the whole track and on the straights I only do zig zags)

I remember my dad got 05 for his birthday christmas 04, and by the next day my dad hated the game and played thunder 04 again

No way at 2:40 man had a smoke alarm beep.

The only con in the NASCAR ps2 games in create a car, is that, your VERY limited on what number you can use. You want to re create Marty Robbins 777 car, well too bad, you don’t get that. And yet in PS1 version, you aren’t limited on the numbers you can use, you want to re create Marty Robbins 777 car, go for it. I’ve always felt like this was very very lazy on EA’s part on the ps2 games. I mean it’s already dumb enough that a ps1 has less space than a ps2, and yet there is more creative options to create a car than a ps2. A very odd yet lazy thing to do.

Nascar 2004 has the best career mode in any racing game I have ever played Like I dont even care about nascar anymore but I still play it regularly

Chase for the Cup has Jeff Gordon’s rainbow paint scheme and Thunder doesn’t, but it does have his Pepsi scheme. I wish Thunder would’ve had his rainbow scheme.

For me, the idea of hiring and firing crew chief’s/crew members, would’ve worked better in Chase for the Cup. Let’s just say, you own a team, and you have about 5 drivers, but only 4 of them are actually winning, so you look at who the crew chief is and the driver is, you find out both are talented, but they can’t click, so you swap crew chief’s around and then all 5 are winning. Or the same can be said about crew members. A missed opportunity that would’ve worked in Fight to the Top.

Meh. Besides 04, I preferred 07 more than 05. True 07 is 95% the same game than 06, but 07 has better driving physics, and a fixed career mode, oh and I absolutely love car swapping.

great video my brother

It’s sad how bad EA has gotten when they got exclusive rights to certain sports games. Getting exclusive rights hurt them more than it helped them. No more competition, means terrible games, that either don’t work properly, or gameplay works just fine, but there’s purposely missing content from previous games, and or glitches that happen randomly. You could already see the next NASCAR game was going to flop because of how Chase For the Cup turned out, nothing on that game, as it was the last good NASCAR game. Madden would follow suit. It’s amazing how great these games were, and how many features they could fit onto a disc with smaller space than today’s games. You can do more on a ps2 disc than a ps5 disc could ever think of doing.

Nascar ‘08 is where I gave up on these games. Literally a dirt cheap game. Didn’t even give the cars makes. In fact, in ‘08 when the tires wore down it was damn near impossible to hang on to your car.

Nascar 2005 had a great online mode that none of the new games ever had it.

Knew I subbed for a reason 💯

I prefer 2005 because I enjoy racing through the smaller series up to the Cup Series. Either way, you can't go wrong

For me, 04, 05, and 07 are the best NASCAR games ever. Although 07 looks a bit cartoonish.

My birth year 2005 game tags:3

I like 2005 more but 2004 is very good too

05 had all the series and a fun fight to the top and all your trophies and it's my favorite but 04 is a close second and 3rd will go to nascar 09 on xbox or ps3 then 4th nascar 2011 and 5th nascar 07

"Beep" 😂

I'm going to guess that you are a Scorpio.

Nascar 07 in my opinion has a terrible handling model I love the handling model of Nascar Thunder 2003 and 2004.

Zero 0 5.

Here at 2,100 views.

DtoD aged awful

NOOOOO 2005 is way better more racing series