NASCAR Thunder 2002

NASCAR Thunder 2002 is a racing simulator video game released for the Sony PlayStation, Sony PlayStation 2, and Xbox by EA Tiburon and published by EA Sports. The game’s theme song is “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. It is the fifth game in the NASCAR video game series and the first to have a new title (the other games simply read “NASCAR”, followed by the year). Notably, it is the first NASCAR game to feature cars with different paint schemes. On the cover was 2001 Cup Series Champion Jeff Gordon, and on the disc was 2000 Cup Series Champion Bobby Labonte. NASCAR Thunder 2002 Nascar2002.png NASCAR 2002 cover art Developer(s) EA Tiburon Publisher(s) Electronic Arts Series NASCAR Thunder Engine enhanced NASCAR Thunder engine Platform(s) Xbox, PlayStation, PlayStation 2 Release PlayStation NA: October 1, 2001 PlayStation 2 NA: October 15, 2001 Xbox NA: November 15, 2001 Genre(s) Racing Mode(s) Single-player, Multiplayer NASCAR Thunder 2002 Create-a-car, Quick race, Season mode, Career mode, and practice are the game modes. Before each race, the player can qualify for a starting position, get to know the track in practice, or ‘race’ other cars in Happy Hour. The game includes 35 drivers from the 2001 Winston Cup season (minus Dale Earnhardt due to his death, but the game has many tributes to him, including a black No. 3 screen on start-up) and several then-Busch Series and fantasy drivers that can be unlocked. A significant game mode in this version was a system of power-up/cheat cards and challenges, similar to Chase/Thunder plates and Lightning/Dodge Challenges in later editions.