381 · Days of Thunder
You play Cruise's Cole Trickle character (his name, like many of the others, is slightly different to that of a real NASCAR racer of the day) against your rivals on 8 tracks, based on real-life counterparts. The races are all on ovals, although the exact lengths, corner types and gradients are varied. This means that the ideal racing line on one track can put you into the wall on another. Qualifying is incorporated alongside the races themselves.
Days of Thunder is the NASCAR game from the Tom Cruise movie, with Cruise on the box and nowhere in the game. You start with a qualifying lap at Daytona Beach and work through races toward the Daytona 500. Mike, Sean and Joe were on this one. We were curious, we spent a lot of time on the movie, and nobody had much fun.
What we liked
- It's a NASCAR game, not a scene-by-scene tie-in. The racing, the fuel gauge and deciding when to pit are the point.
- Tracking the field. Look ahead through a turn and you can see how far ahead the next car is, instead of racers popping up every two seconds. Sean was charmed by that.
- It gets friendlier. After fussing with it, the driving settles into short taps and learned turns, and it looks pretty good for a faked 3D track.
What got in the way
- The gas pedal. Hold A to set a speed, then let go and it holds. Press B once and it's as if you pulled the keys out of the car: you lose a huge chunk of speed and have to tap A again. With a turn every second and a half, that is odd to manage.
- Nobody crashes. For a NASCAR game, bumping does nothing. When we hit them it didn't affect them, and when they hit us it didn't hurt them either.
- The pit stop is a whole other game. You select each crew member and do each job yourself, and the wrench guy can't work the jack on the other side. One first attempt took two minutes thirty, and a let's-play we watched did it in about 20. Losing places there is painful, and the AI doesn't give them back.
- No reward for moving on. The second race is 35 laps, and a new track gets you no faster car or power-up. We joked that Nicole Kidman should at least come out and hug you.
- Not much speed. The engine effect impressed us until we turned it off, and there's no music. Joe felt the excitement at no point.
Beyond the game
The movie is Top Gun with cars: Cruise shows up with no NASCAR experience and posts the fastest lap. We spent a while stuck on the scene where he T-bones his rival after the race. We'd still recommend it on a huge screen, like 77 inches.
The bottom line
Skip it. All three of us voted against it: Mike said it isn't even the best driving game we've played, Joe found the racing dull, and Sean, who liked it most, said it beat his expectations but isn't essential. We put it below Excitebike, Rad Racer and RC Pro-Am and above Bigfoot, with Rad Racer 2 a near tie.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
- Core Features:
- 1. Racing Action
- The game features stock car racing, where players take control of the driver, Cole Trickle, as they race against a field of competitors on different tracks.
- There are various tracks to race on, some based on real-life NASCAR courses, with a top-down perspective and scrolling roads.
- Players can race in both single-player mode or two-player split-screen mode, which adds some competitive multiplayer fun.
- 2. Car Handling & Controls
- The driving mechanics are relatively simple, with the player controlling the car’s speed and direction while avoiding obstacles.
- Players can shift gears, manage fuel and tires in pit stops, and deal with the challenges of maintaining speed and handling, including navigating through other cars.
- 3. Pit Stops
- In true NASCAR fashion, players must pit during races to repair damage and refuel their car.
- Pit stops are a unique minigame within the game, requiring players to complete a series of tasks in a short time to minimize their loss in time.
- 4. Qualification & Progression
- The game features a qualification mode where players must race to secure a spot in the main race.
- Players must race through different stages, including preliminary qualifying events leading up to the major races, culminating in the championship event.
- 5. AI Competitors & Rubberbanding
- The game features AI-controlled competitors that can be quite aggressive. They tend to follow a rubberbanding AI model, meaning they can catch up if you make a mistake but also fall behind if you're doing well.
- The difficulty can sometimes feel unfair as the AI seems to adapt to the player's progress, making it challenging to maintain the lead.
- 6. Graphics & Visuals
- The graphics are basic by today’s standards, but considering the limitations of the NES, the game’s visuals aim to provide a sense of speed and excitement.
- The top-down view offers a bird’s-eye perspective of the car and the track, with fairly simple sprite work for the cars and the environments.
- Scrolling backgrounds represent the racecourse and the other cars in a somewhat repetitive manner.
- 7. Audio & Music
- The game features a limited soundtrack with sound effects that enhance the racing experience, but it lacks a memorable or catchy tune.
- The engine sounds and crash effects are standard for a racing game of its time, but the overall audio design is rather sparse compared to other games of the era.
- 8. Movie Tie-In & Story
- The game loosely follows the plot of the movie, where players assume the role of Cole Trickle, aiming to win the NASCAR championship.
- The licensed characters and names from the film, such as Cole Trickle and the antagonist Rowdy Burns, make brief appearances in the game, but the story is largely absent except for some pre-race introductions.
- 9. Two-Player Mode
- Days of Thunder supports a two-player split-screen mode, where both players race simultaneously. This adds an extra layer of competition, but the lack of refined multiplayer dynamics makes it a bit of a chaotic experience.
- Summary of Features:
- Stock Car Racing: Authentic NASCAR experience with car handling, pit stops, and qualifying.
- Pit Stops: Minigame mechanic for refueling and repairs.
- Qualification Mode: Earn your way to the championship through qualification rounds.
- AI Opponents: Challenging, with rubberbanding mechanics.
- Graphics & Sound: Simple visuals and sound, aiming for immersive racing feel.
- Multiplayer: Two-player split-screen racing.
- Movie Tie-In: Based loosely on the Days of Thunder film.
- Driving Mechanics & Controls
- Did you find the car handling responsive, or was it more like wrestling a shopping cart on ice?
- How easy was it to stay on the track at high speeds—was there any room for finesse?
- Was downshifting and upshifting intuitive, or did the gear system just get in the way?
- Pit Stops
- The pit stop minigame is infamous—how long did it take you to figure out how to do it correctly?
- Did the game explain the pit mechanics at all, or was it trial and error every time?
- Did managing your fuel and tires add to the strategy, or just break the pacing?
- AI & Difficulty
- The computer racers seem to have rubberband AI—did that make the races feel tense or unfair?
- Was there a real learning curve to beating opponents, or did wins feel random?
- Did the other drivers feel like competitors, or just obstacles?
- Game Progression & Design
- Did it feel rewarding to qualify and progress through the different races, or did it all blur together?
- Did the game do a good job creating a sense of progression from the Daytona race to the championship?
- Were the qualifying laps genuinely important, or just frustrating roadblocks?
- Visuals & Audio
- How well does the game replicate the NASCAR atmosphere with its limited NES graphics?
- Did the perspective and speed feel immersive or disorienting?
- The music during races is basically nonexistent—was that a good choice to focus on sound effects, or did it make things dull?
- Licensed Tie-In Elements
- Did Days of Thunder feel like a faithful adaptation of the movie, or just a generic racing game with a logo slapped on?
- Was there any actual story or character involvement, or just a name-drop of Cole Trickle?
- Did knowing the film make you appreciate the game more, or did it set expectations it couldn’t meet?
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Days of Thunder, better buckle up.
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Did you guys see the Days of Thunder movie? It's a great question, Mike. I'm not going to answer it.
No, this is one of my larger action movie blind spots. I've never seen it. I watched the trailer before playing. It was everything that I expected it to be. I'm really glad that Randy Quaid, How Would Be Their Name, is in the movie. So yeah, it's on my list of things to watch. We got a lot of good people in this movie. We got Randy Quaid. You obviously have Tom Cruise starring in it. Robert Duvall.
Nicole Kidman. Sure. John C. Reilly. Okay. I mean, like, you know, I could keep going, but that's pretty strong. But most importantly... You could have stopped at Randy Quaid. Yeah, no one's going to beat that. But the most important part of Days of Thunder, which I did not know before watching the movie, is that Days of Thunder is like the Top Gun team getting together and saying, we're going to do what we did for planes. We're going to do that for cars. We're putting cars on the map. Right. Well, do you think they put planes on the map? Yeah. I don't think anyone really flew before... They didn't know how safe it was. At least that fast. Yeah. Now that's just a commercial jet now. That's what they fly like.
This might be crazy to say, I don't know, but I have never heard of Days of Thunder until this week, the movie. Is that like... Is this like a crazy cultural blind spot? I mean, I share it. It made a lot of... Yeah, but have you heard of it? It made a lot of money. I had heard of it, yeah.
But I also don't have that much interest in NASCAR, even though I have been to a NASCAR race. That was when I was very young and didn't... Yeah. It wasn't really a thing for me. The funny thing is, once you know about the whole like Top Gun connection thing too, though, where it's like same director and all that, it's like Tom Cruise is basically just playing Maverick, but if he was a NASCAR driver, you know, it's like the guy has no experience in NASCAR, just shows up to the track.
He's like, yeah, I'll ride your car, dude. He pulls like the fastest lap ever. I'll ride your car. He pulls like the fastest lap. And then the guy, of course, whose car he rode is like pissed off at him. He's like, yeah, go find your own car, buddy. Like, this is my car. And they have like a, you know, a film's length worth of rivalry to unpack after that opening scene. But like, then the rest of the movie is just like, yeah, Tom Cruise is fucking awesome at NASCAR. It's like, I don't think that's how it works. Like, I think everybody wishes that they were like the people in the stands watching.
He's got his license. Well, but yeah, but they're just like, they're just turning to the left. You know, it's like, I could do that. Get me down there. And it's like, I don't think it feels like that. Like, I think what you get in the car, it's a little bit of a different story. Yeah. Like if you've never like driven like this, I don't think it's like, yeah, I don't think it's going to be like super analogous to like driving your car around the block. It's like, I got to imagine it's a very different experience.
Right. And he has driven before, just not at the NASCAR level. It's not like, it's like, it becomes a thing where it's like, he, he's obviously like done some kind of racing at some level, but it's like, then he just starts winning. And it's like, that's what you, I guess that's what you want out of a movie, but it's also like not very realistic, but like the movie otherwise is going for like, we are going
to capture the excitement of NASCAR on film in a way that like, we, you know, again, like what we did for Top Gun where it's like, this is going to be like reference quality, like amazing sound design. Like you're going to want to own the VHS so you can play it on your big CRT and impress all your friends. It's like, they're doing all that, but then they're also like trivializing just how freaking hard what these guys do on the track is.
I mean, I liked, I liked Talladega Nights and I think that that, that doesn't really, I think that that, that's sort of like my days of thunder, you know? Sure. I don't, I think he had driven before in that one though.
Yeah. He was the NASCAR, like he was already at the top, right? He was at his apex mountain before the movie starts. I did hear though, that in days of thunder, that Dale Earnhardt is not in it and it's just kind of like, why? Yeah. Well, praise hell, praise Dale man. Is, is, is NASCAR in general, like is the term thunder there because the cars sound like thunder as they roll past you? Is that, is that the idea? I believe so. Okay. Cause it's like days of thunder. Isn't just like called that for being a pretty, you know, sexy title. It's also like, you know, I, I know there was like a NASCAR thunder game on like either Xbox or dreamcast or something.
I just don't watch enough NASCAR to know. Yeah. It's like, you say that instead of like vroom vroom. Right now NASCAR F1, like all that stuff. Like I want to know, I want to know all about the indie series. Like I want to watch that stuff because they all cut great promos and have great like TV
specials. But when you watch the actual races, it doesn't, it doesn't ever quite get there. It's kind of, it kind of feels like it's like, oh, well that's just like, that's just who had the best car that day. And they started in the pole position and they finished in the pole position or like, you know, they were in second and they finished in the pole position. Big fucking deal. Right. It's like, it's like, it just kind of feels like a foregone conclusion when she watched it where it's like, oh, I don't know what I was expecting. I guess I was expecting crashes.
Right. Like that's the other reason to watch all this stuff is like, let's see somebody die. Right. Like that's another part of this whole thing that nobody wants to unpack, but it is another reason why people watch this sport days of thunder. The video game that we are playing today goes out of its way to separate itself from the movie. Agree.
Disagree. I, I, I wouldn't know. I can't, I can't really have an opinion on it cause I haven't seen the movie and Sean you haven't either. Like you never, you didn't pick up any plot beats, right? You weren't like, oh yeah. Right. figured out my name is trickle well and sometimes i have i have bad luck or rough luck or what do they say i think it's funny that like we're basing what a movie game should be by like how the uh the back to the future games did it of like trying to just like oh this scene and that scene
right um and i i guess we didn't we didn't really get a lot of like just not when we think of movie tie-in games we think of like the kind of hero action tie-in games and not a racing game so what they're actually doing here is just like this is a nascar game and it really doesn't have anything much to do with the movie itself except the fact that you are that racer i don't know it's yeah i mean days of thunder has the benefit of the movie has the benefit of having like its story but also
revolving around this sport and then you can take the sport and that's perfect for gameplay whereas back to the future it's like well yeah they just do a bunch of different things in that and you got to translate all of that into gameplay or else it's not going to seem like back to the future or you know it'd be like if they made a mighty ducks video game you're probably just gonna
be well i mean it would be cool to do other stuff in that kind of thing too but like you could make a mighty ducks video game where you're just playing hockey you know and it's it has something in it that can be very easily gamified that people we know people want to play already so you don't need to yeah go to the hospital or whatever happens in the movie yeah the best you get at like understanding
the movie or at least like you know building upon it is in the manual um because it's again another one of those very like lengthy text heavy manuals but also doing some like world building not just like tutorials and shit it's like you know i don't even know who it's pretending to be it it starts off with the overview let me drive you build me a car and i'll win daytona next year that's not like in quotes or anything that's just that's just text and then the next paragraph is think so huh you're raw untested it's like this is a conversation like this is the overview like it's a little confusing
what's going on but um as as joe mentioned yes you're cole trickle rookie driver and you are uh going to try and win uh the daytona 500 yeah to do so you have to go uh you know kind of like through various races in nascar and that is like where that's the best part to pick up into the actual discussion of the video game in this episode uh because the very first uh level of the game you're at daytona beach and uh you will immediately be thrown into it with a uh uh what like a lap what's a qualifying lap qualifying lap so that's like you know hey now go drive here's the keys go drive so how's driving
it's it's it's it's pretty sim i guess like i feel like it's a very it's super simplified um maybe too simplified in in so much that like it's not a typical racer we have played racers like this before where you aren't holding down an accelerator you are holding down an accelerator to then set the point at which you want to go that fast um and then you can just let go of the controller and it'll just stick at that that speed so it does not feel like the i have played nascar games before and most racing
games feel this way too it doesn't feel like that yeah it doesn't feel like you're putting the pedal to the metal it doesn't it doesn't feel like you're pushing the car forward just by like i don't know there's like this there's this feeling of when you're holding like the a button and that is the accelerator and like when you let go you decelerate that like it that makes it feel like you're driving i don't know yeah i think that this was maybe we've seen something like this before but have we ever seen
something where you hold until the point that you want to be accelerating at but then pressing the decelerate just like is like turns it completely off you know like then like that's what's weird to me i would like if you're gonna have it like hold a to to kind of like accelerate until you want to stop and stay at that speed then it should be like hold b to decelerate and stop and stay at that speed but instead it's like press b once in like it's like you turned off cruise control and you're gonna now coast and then you have to press it again to set it again no it's like you pulled the
keys out of the car yeah yeah right and then and then all that to say is like all what that really translates to is when you're taking a taking a turn which is every every one and a half seconds of this game when you're taking a turn you have to slow down but then it's like this weird combination of button inputs where you like you have to hit b to slow down they have to watch it slow down and then press a again real quick when you want to stay at that speed or else you're gonna lose a ton of speed
yeah so that that took took a while for my brain to to readjust to it's weird that this whole thing has happened at least twice where a car has worked like this when if you think about a car and you think about a gas pedal and a brake pedal and you think like oh there's an a button and a b button like this is one of the what this is why there's so many racing games like it's it's pretty easy to transpose this onto a controller and yet we've got this weird way that a car doesn't work yeah
as the controls um that said like you know once you get used to that like you you're typical like if you play a lot of racers you then end up trying to do like apex turns and like decelerating into a turn and trying to accelerate out of a turn but the problem there is that like once you start decelerating it's like you can't just feather it like you you immediately lose like 50 miles an hour yeah tap it and so there's not really that smooth transition that always feels good when you actually hit something like that in gran turismo or some other game uh it feels kind of jank at that point
yeah and speaking of losing like 50 miles per hour all at once i think this kid this was more of a factor when you had other racers on the road but right away in this preliminary round like it was weird because like it takes a while for the visual feedback of what your car is doing to catch up to that so it's like yeah i see i just lost 100 miles per hour but does not look like i'm going any slower on the car screen so like that makes it a little a little weird too that could just be the turns though too right because you're only decelerating on the turn so it could just be that now like it's it's wider and you're on the turn so it doesn't look like the same sense of
speed that you were getting on the straightaways yeah but even if i like bumped into somebody or like bumped into a wall on a straightaway for some reason i don't know why that would happen but like even if i did it on a straightaway i remember thinking like why does it say i'm going so much slower like when i'm accelerating like i'm not noticing a ton of feedback that makes it like oh yeah now i'm going faster than i was a minute ago sure sure and when you bump into people too it's like well hold on a minute huge problem here no crashes the hell's going on yeah that's the whole point people playing nascar baby like oh here's the crashes it's just like you bump into people and it's like bumper
cars it's like oop now they now they take the lead and it's like why is it that like when i bump into them it doesn't affect them but when they bump into me it also doesn't affect them they're just really good at bumping into me i mean if you if you block well enough like it they they end up like you're usually bumping into the into the ass of somebody else obviously you're gonna start going slower but you can also have them just hit your ass and then they'll kind of drag behind you that's true that's true and everything you guys were describing about how to control this car it it all checks out it is it is as confusing as it sounds um but like sean said it is something you kind of learn to
adapt to for this specific game it's not like all of a sudden you're gonna go play uh like an actual sim racer and be like oh i thought i was just gonna lock in there like no you know you know it's happening here but it kind of becomes because the tracks are small too becomes almost rhythmic of like you know those those extreme drops from when when you uh press the b button to uh you know break it you you start to you know learn that it's like it's a very quick tap and then you're right back into accelerate mode and like you learn the turns am i wrong in thinking that like the way to do the turn is to start on the inside and drift out to the outside not hug the inside the entire time
yeah because i tried hugging the inside the entire time and that just actually winds up making you lose a lot of speed to be going slow enough in fact what it should be if this game had a wasn't just like faking 3d which it actually does look pretty good just to throw that in there um
would you would want to start on the on the exterior of the track then at the you know at the middle of the turn sort of try and kiss the left side and then as you're accelerating allow yourself to drift to the right as well anybody that plays racing games like kind of has that in their head as how you should try and take a turn at least at the most like basic level um but you can start on the interior and allow yourself to drift to the right because it's not really it's it's not really simulating anything there and other than managing your speed and uh the apex of the turns and everything you
also have to manage your fuel uh there's a big fuel um uh gauge in the uh top left corner and when that is coming close to running out obviously you'll have to pit stop to pit stop uh there isn't like an actual lane you have to enter you'll just see uh the words pit stop written uh along the side of the track usually near the um the checkered uh starting and finishing point uh so you just kind of hug that and then you enter the pit stop and then you welcome to a whole nother game baby welcome to a whole different game i thought i was playing uh you know nascar checkers but i was playing nascar chess
yeah my just before we get into like the actual mechanics of the actual pit my favorite thing about this is that if you try and go fast and you don't slow down enough as you're entering the pit you will just blow right through it and have to go back around yeah it'll like actually give you the little cut scene of you entering the pit and you just keep going you just fly through the little cut scene but then you get in there and now you are all of your pit crew and i hope there's some time dilation going on here because it's gonna take you a while to do everything you need to do
yeah and i know that how a pit crew works yeah i was gonna say i know pit crews like nowadays are like really like like a second or so maybe even like a second is too much at this point but like obviously like in the 90s it wasn't that fast but it also wasn't like i don't know i was clocking in like 40 seconds or something like yeah it's like it doesn't take 40 seconds either but joe i think you know i'm not gonna scoop your story but like i think you were about to say this isn't how pit crews work you're right but but why go go for it well because you have to you have to select each
member of the pit crew and do their task individually it is so you have to yeah you can't all they can't all be doing it at the same time so you just have to like it's it's it's weird the first time you do it i i will say the first time i did it i was clocking like two minutes and 30 seconds because i was like what is going on here so you can still you can almost get it to look like they're all doing
it at once because once you select like let's say you've got the guy at the jack and then you raise the jack up now you can quickly select both of the wheel guys and their animation keeps playing even if you switch to another uh oh see i didn't realize i guess yeah you don't have to wait for like the tire change to to finish uh to start another task so you can get a few going at once but then
you have to like walk all the way around because the guy with the wrench who works on the engine for some reason can't man the jack on the other side so in order to get the other wheels up you gotta walk all the way around get the other jack going and then also for some reason the guy with the fuel can't be uh it can't be fueling while the jack is up so i guess you would want to work on the engine
and gas up at the same time i i don't know but there's a lot going on to joe's point though it's like i agree with you that like you know at least you can you can get them started but like that's not how a pit crew does everything all at once no absolutely yeah so it's like why is it why isn't it just like you don't know who you're gonna be on the crew this time right and it's like all of a sudden
you have to like do that job and then everybody else is working too like i don't know that doesn't sound great either so i'm just throwing that out there on the fly but like there has to be a better way to do this i like that they made it interactive like that is that if that was unexpected i wasn't actually even doing anything the first time i entered the pit i just sat there and i was like oh oh this
is me yeah maybe like they could abstract it a bit more and like make it just like a quick time event but that doesn't exist yet so yeah like if you had to get like a couple things in the middle of like a uh of like a like a bar with a hot zone or something but i don't know it's weird that it that that you do it this way but i think that's part probably one of the draws to make it more authentic
yeah i i like the idea of it and i and i think i would like the idea of it more if if you really had like more of like uh oh you're you're getting new cars as you go and you're you know you understand it your your specific car more outside of just the pit but i i like the idea it's just hard for me to come up with a good alternative on the nes that's still fun you know it's i'm sure there's a way to do it but like i don't think this was it but i also don't think i have a great alternative myself i think it could have just been though like where the the individual crew members still like do their thing but then like you know i'm not saying quick time events but like all of a sudden you know the
guy goes and he uh has the jack and you have to hit control pad up a few times right and then like another guy comes and it's with the wrench and it's like hit the aaa you know and it's like maybe that's like enough whereas like you're not trying to like move all these parts at once but you're just being the the active role as they're doing it this way it's like you're just clicking
like the up button three times the a button three times like as as these things roll through because this isn't this isn't that kind of game like this doesn't have to be intense and it isn't intense for what it's worth but like you want to get back i mean it's kind of intense because you over time you're you also get like that little uh boop every time you're passed and you want to get this done fast
enough so you don't get that many boops that's why i do think there there is some time dilation going on here because it takes it takes more time to do this than it does for you to do a full lap so uh but then they should just time dilate the the clock too right like they should just make it this way you you know what your your actual time is compared you know it's weird that it has this other i'm not against that um i meant it's not that intense as in like it's not the world's hardest thing to do it's just it's just that unfortunately it takes a lot of time and it takes you out of the race that you're like you're building a rhythm for you know like it's not that easy to pass people in
this kind of thing either you know it's to make up ground and everything uh especially after you lose those places in the um pit it's not like oh well i'll just get them right back when i start driving again it's not like the ai is stupid i mean yeah so i know that we're being we've been a little crass and talked about just turning left and like where the crash is but i think that the like when and how to pit is one of the and this is just me guessing is probably one of the pillars of strategy in nascar uh so i i i appreciate that something that is important to the sport is is more than just a you gotta do this every 10 to 15 laps and it's just gonna like you automatically lose x amount of
time there's no way for you to be better at this um so i i i appreciate that it's there in the form that it's in it's just it is goofy yeah i wonder i wonder how much of like our experience with it is that we're we're one we're amateurs at this this video game but as an amateur of this video game i do feel like when i go into the the pit like i get that this is something that all racers are dealing with yes i'm gonna lose time but so is everybody else and yeah you gotta strategize about like when and how to do that but i do feel like the computer is just so much better at it than me and better at like keeping its place that i feel like it's just if this was a game against other people
it would feel a little better to me what's funny too is as we watch uh as we as i watched a let's play while we're talking i just saw the person that recorded this do it in 20 seconds yeah oh oh
Thank you.
make you like race more often like you don't do like you know 80 laps or anything like you usually just do like five laps it's all like streamlined and it's like everything's going much faster and it's just like did this game capture nascar a little better than like some games do now like on a on like a not on a sim scale but just on like a strategy point of view like i think this game is the right balance of like if you know nascar and you're good at it you'll be good at this
game and if you don't know nascar but you're willing to like you know learn the driving system the complicated driving system that they've laid out here you can also play this game and i say play this game because i'll be honest like i wasn't placing first i wasn't getting anywhere but like i was enjoying like myself racing right like like getting better at making the turns learning how the pit crew thing worked like i can't say i'll sink like 100 hours into this game or whatever but like
it's not it's not very friendly at first and it does get friendly which means that somehow they they have designed something right yeah i'll agree that it is more intuitive after fussing around with it for a bit than one would think uh i i was expecting this to not really have any intensity and like the sense of speed is definitely debatable um but it's it is i would i like your use of the word friendly there
like it's something you can get into i'm torn because i do think yeah the more i played it the more like i got it it felt a little smoother i think the sense of speed is middle of the road from what we've seen on the uh nes which is which is not you know not a bad thing not a good thing i just i i don't know i mean i don't know if i needed music i needed something but i don't know there's no music i just found these races just kind of boring like it was just i mean i didn't feel the excitement
really at any point it's a good point though joe about the about the music like maybe they were trying to make it sound like the roar of the car but they can't do that on the nes yeah and hey i was impressed with that sound effect at first and i was like oh yeah it does sound like a car and i was like all right turn it off maybe if there was just like smaller gaps between the checkerboard pattern that they got to even have there be any sense of speed like maybe if that was a little faster this would feel more intense but um yeah i i get it and then you know not not to like again i feel
like i've often lately i'm just like really uh scooping my own essential games let's vote but like the when i'm on like the second race and it's like and this race is 35 laps i'm like i'm like i cringe at that idea i'm just like that's not a good sign for me well that's actually a an order of magnitude fewer than there would be in a real race oh i know yeah but like still it's still much more than we've seen in most uh nes races and it's not particularly uh other than from like a there isn't a story but like from a progression point of view there isn't any like reward for
moving on to the next race you know like it's not you don't like get a a power up or or a faster car it's just like okay cool you did that now do this it's like oh that's it's not very friendly you know like that to to the opposite of what i was saying earlier it's like okay like new track so new something new to learn and everything maybe if you win or at least place in the race like nicole kidman comes up and like gives you a hug or something like that would be pretty cool oh hell yeah or she tells you how great it is to be at the movies
what else do i have here um no because this is all well yeah i guess i should mention that even though i said that it wasn't tied to the movie i meant by the video game standards at least tom cruise is on the box art of the game as well which would be confusing because you might think oh he'll be in the game as well but you'll never see like a detail he's in the car yeah he's in the car take our word for it and that's tom cruise he drives the car days of thunder 2 the movie is actually coming out why now they're just following well top gun 2 yeah yeah well apparently there's also another
the top gun 3 is happening as well i don't know if i'm gonna get like in trouble for saying that um what do you mean no you know like it because i haven't seen like a trailer for it or anything but like you just know because you're an insider yeah i'm an insider right well nda is you know yeah i'm not in i'm not on any nda's so should be good there uh but days of thunder 2 apparently no nicole kidman that's unfortunate margot robbie wow they have okay is tom cruise in it tom cruise is in it tom cruise was like i'll do it yeah he's like i'll do it but i don't want i don't want to go i don't want anybody my age to be sharing scenes with me and it should be mentioned that that is um
tom's car from the movie uh in the game as well that green and yellow car he did drive that uh you know one thing i gotta talk about with the movie and i'm sorry if it sounds like now i don't want to talk about the game but like the movie has this one scene where uh you watched the movie i did yeah okay tom cruise's um arch rival uh whose name escapes me right now because it's been a while ricky bobby no stop it he he like does a move in the during the during one of the races to screw
tom cruise over and and it's like you know hey that was pretty dirty play but it wasn't like wasn't like he like slashed his tires or anything you know what i mean it was just like the creative way to like screw you over and like you know the nascar gods wouldn't be happy about it i'm sure there'll be an article you know in the uh you know in the nascar times about it and people will read about it and steven a smith will have a hot take about it but like it wasn't that controversial you know
like it's just gonna be something people talk about he takes the checkered flag and does his victory lap tom cruise gets back in the car that is now like you know pretty beat this shit gets back in the car and just drives at the guy and fucking like you know uh tries to kill him yeah like yeah you like no he's like he t-bones him and it's just like wait a minute like you would be immediately you're the bad guy but you would be like immediately banned from nascar yeah probably on trial for doing
something like that you know what i mean like it was just kind of like rubbed off like i'm you know it wasn't brushed aside but it was it was kind of weird that it's like that's not like the end of the movie yeah i don't know i wonder maybe that maybe does that happen i don't know i haven't really watched much it's like charging the plate or charging the mound rather yeah i know that during f1 races because they occasionally will like um have their have their team radios come up like they will
play dirty during the race to like purposely box out specific people or yeah but this is post race right this is that's what i'm saying this has never happened post race this is nobody's ever been t-boned after a race or even just like taking a shot at somebody right like what the hell is going on here like he was actually driving home after the race he was like pulling into his driveway and then tom cruise t-boned him from the yard yeah tom cruise it would have been better if he just like drove all over his lawn right like that would have made more sense it's like oh he's angry and i'm angry about that scene i'm so fired up that i think we should do the essential games list
days of thunder is a movie i would recommend actually yeah you guys should watch it um but you have to watch it on like a huge screen like honestly i know back in the day they had a vhs and a 32 inch crt but i think this thing requires 77 inches or more and i don't know if it's just because some of us don't have that much wall mike that's what i was gonna say though 77 inches or more it sounds like i'm uh i'm at the caveman olympics again i'm fucking horny right it's like let's go you were the only one thinking that uh okay yeah probably true i gotta get uh offline i am so online right now uh back to the review of the game itself nah nah uh it's not even the best driving game we've
played on the nes so it's not gonna get it for that i wish that the pit stop thing was fun though i gotta say i wish it was actually fun because when i realized it was like oh that's me that's my turn like i was like hell yeah and then i realized i don't even really know what i would be doing so then i went to the manual i was like okay i get it now and it wasn't fun it should be like should be fun to work on cars right like they they kind of screwed that up a little bit but maybe it's because you also like have to pit like more than once a race like maybe you shouldn't do that like maybe
i'm just bad at my fuel or whatever but like make that make that like more rare don't make that like part of it because the the game is sold because we're racing and i want to make sure that like the racing is the best it can be and it's not so it's not on the essential games list joe yeah just to add to your your pit stop suggestions there too like i i wonder and i don't know i i'm assuming this is accurate to to real nascar but like yeah what if you had to do something that is actually different based on the condition of your car like you know i know that like i i don't know i know that you can
go in there with like not all of your tires are screwed up but like you have to just do all everything right before you know you don't you can you don't you can just fuel up if you want no i didn't even realize that but like but still i wish that there was like oh now i have to do i don't know how many other things there are to do other than change tires fuel up but like oh because of this one thing i got you know something that like connects you to the car a little more i i think i would appreciate more but again maybe i don't know how that would work but just a thought but the pit stop aside i think i think i just don't get this game i i don't know i i don't really have
much fun with any of it i'm not like saying it's a train wreck i just i don't know that even the actual racing is just very dull to me so this this is definitely not my cup of tea um and i'm certainly not going to vote it essential sean yeah i mean i i think that there's i was charmed by this game uh just from the things that they do simulate and the the visuals look good and like one thing that i didn't really mention is that like you can actually like you can actually keep track of the
other racers kind of like it seems like in in a lot of racing games that we've played it's just like oh you're gonna run into this every two seconds you're gonna have to have you're gonna have to pass somebody but even if you like sort of look ahead on a turn like you can see like that guy is that far ahead of you and just that idea of persistence i appreciate um i i'd say that the like the actual
feel of racing is a little wonky just because of the way that the gas pedal works i don't think there was any real way that they were gonna get past that for me um but what they did do i think they did well it's just yeah it's just it feels weird um not the best racing game we've played uh but this is way better than i thought i was gonna be uh but still not essential listing off some of the other racing games we've played and i'm gonna be a little liberal here with what a racing game is but um we have excite bike so let's start there uh would you put days of thunder above or below excite bike below i would put i don't even really like excite bike that much i would put this below excite bike
uh rad rad racer gotta gotta look it up real quick no no you don't come on rad racer yes i i gotta look it up but yeah this also below rad racer okay cool yeah we're not we're not doing the whole thing we're not we're not comparing rad racer yeah right now just saying you're gonna go through all of them yeah yeah rc pro am oh we can't we can't put go through all these what do you mean we got we got six more how much longer would it take rc pro am i think it's a no doubt that uh rc prime is better than days of thunder yeah i actually quite liked rc pro am cobra triangle i'd say below that's the water one right yeah cobra triangle was fun yeah that was kind of i did not say that this was
a great game wait a minute this isn't an attack on you i just was curious i was just curious where this would fall in the racing catalog i was wondering why you weren't answering al answer jr's turbo racing worse than this i gotta i gotta look it up i remember the name i can't i i don't really remember did i experience with this well then you're gonna be over honestly probably still
below just by looking at it but i i don't know al answer juniors was hard that's like that's the difference at least i felt like i could drive these these these laps yeah i don't know if i could actually do a lot of what al answer juniors turbo racing wanted me to do uh so i will agree with sean and so we have figured it out where where it's going but just just to list off the other two
there's rad racer 2 which is actually worse than rad racer 1 so yeah i'm not yeah i'm not sure maybe i'd put days of thunder over rad racer 2 maybe it'd be like middle maybe it'd be like equal to each other yeah i think i might put it over to i remember rad racer 2 being also very bland and then there's the final one bigfoot i think i think days of thunder is better than bigfoot i agree i also think that rad racer 2 is the other game that accelerated in the same way if i'm not mistaken oh interesting yeah you might you might be right i'll put um i'll put this game
above bigfoot only because i remember on the bigfoot episode you invited sean to a monster truck rally didn't invite me that's true we didn't go it means unapologetically my offer still stands sean whenever you want but actually watching uh watching this footage of bigfoot yeah i i think i actually would put it um below this game here's a question i should have asked on the main show does does days of thunder's pit stop have any like relationship to top gun the video games carrier landing sequence like is there like a shared point of frustration there for both games is it the same developer no but it's the same it's a tom cruise movie
um i mean i don't remember being i remember being much more frustrated with the landing than i was with the pit stop although i don't like the pit stop either but yeah it is weird that they both have this all right well okie dokie ethi
ethi!
