Need for Speed: Underground 2 - Drag Race Flip

Need for Speed: Underground 2 is the best racing game I have ever played. I love everything about this game, and it was one of two games I played all the time between 2004 and 2008, the other being GTA San Andreas. I always liked racing games, but it was NFS U2 that made me want to play nothing else. It had amazing graphics, amazing sound (both car engines and 3D effects like reverb and echo), and a brilliant soundtrack. Most of all, it had an awesome atmosphere. I absolutely loved the fact the whole game took time during the night/evening, driving around the amazingly well-lit city was superb. Many people did not like the fact we were forced to visually modify our cars in order to progress through the game (getting stars for DVD covers). It was not a problem for me, after all we only had to modify one car, and we had four slots left. There was not even enough money to buy and fully upgrade five cars, so I did not understand all the bitching. Car handling was also great, you had to brake before every corner, and sliding through them would often cost us a second or two. The drifting mode was amazing as well, you did not have to worry about managing the throttle, you just accelerated and turned, and it was tons of fun, especially the mountain stages. All in all, this is a nearly perfect game, I even completed it again last year, this time with a gamepad instead of a keyboard, and I enjoyed it just as much as back then. I will probably go back to it many times, because my love for it has not faded one bit. Anyway, I have captured this video years ago and recently remembered it when watching something similar in DiRT 3. It was the only time I managed to do some kind of stunt in this game (not on purpose, of course). I tried to repeat this, but I never succeeded. Funny thing was, that the car was not even totaled and I was able to keep going. Usually even a slight contact with something in a drag race meant having to restart the race. I have been waiting for years for someone to make an arcade racing game as good as NFS U2 was, but I think I will have to wait a very long time. The only game that reminded me a bit of NFS U2 was Blur. While the singleplayer was disappointing, the multiplayer was amazing. It was a game where it did not matter what position you finished on, it only mattered how much you annoyed your opponents by ruining their races. The game also took time at night or in the evening, and the car handling was a bit similar as well. That was mostly why I felt a little nostalgic playing Blur.