The Best EA Sports Video Game for Each Sport

Ray Lewis, the cover athlete of Madden 2005

If you’re around my age and liked video games and sports, then you know that there is no better company for that than EA Sports.

Well, used to be, anyway.

With the new Madden trailer being released, and lots of frustration surrounding it being, well, bad, I decided to take a trip down nostalgia lane and look back on the best of the best from some of the company’s classic franchises.

Disclaimer: I will not be discussing ALL of their franchises. That’s too many. I’ll be discussing the ones I played growing up.

FIFA: FIFA World Cup 2010

Call it a cop out if you want considering it isn’t a full FIFA game and just the World Cup version.

I don’t care.

World Cup 2010 not only was a great game mode where you could take any country (and, as someone who won the World Cup with San Marino, I do mean any country) and lead them to glory as a manager.

It also introduced the Captain Your Country mode, the game mode where you created a one player and worked your way through qualifying to become the captain for the World Cup Finals.

Why does that make it better than the previous FIFA installments that could do that for club play?

Because you could do it with 3 of your friends and their virtual pros as well.

The gameplay was great and the game modes followed right along with it.

Fight Night: Fight Night Round 3

Working your way up the ladder would get you more sponsorships and money to buy better gloves and shoes and stuff blah blah blah that’s all great.

This game had one extremely important feature.

The man you fought in the title fight of your amateur career became your rival for the rest of the career, and I can not describe the feeling of excitement I had when I saw his name pop up on the fight list, or the joy I had when I would knock him out with a haymaker after he headbutted me illegal.

Fight Night Round 4 was good in terms of customization, but nothing felt better than being successful in Round 3.

Madden: Madden 05

Football may seem brutal and simple minded, but it’s actually very complicated once you get into the nitty gritty.

So, before EA Sports released Madden 05, the glory was always with the offensive players.

You take the QB, you score points and then you win.

Madden 05 was the first in the series to truly put focus on the defensive side of the ball, not only giving glory to that side of the ball but teaching kids growing up about coverages and different defenses for different situations.

Gameplay for Madden in the mid 2000s stayed more or less the same, and I definitely could have gone the route of 07 or 08 which involved superstar mode, but Madden 05 will always be the one I remember most in terms of impact.

MVP Baseball: MVP Baseball 05

The owner mode in this game not only had AAA, AA and high A ball for your franchise, but it also let you design your own ballpark and make upgrades depending on well you did and how profitable you were.

This game kicked ass, and since EA Sports lost the MLB license the year after, was the last they ever made.

It only took MLB The Show 17 years after it to finally add in stadium creator again.

NASCAR: NASCAR Thunder 04

This was actually very, very hard.

NASCAR 05 was the first in the series to have the lower series to work your way to the top. NASCAR 06 was the first to involve your teammates and how they work together in the sport.

But NASCAR Thunder 04, despite having neither of those things, had the best career mode where it was actually legitimately difficult to succeed, the ability to hire the crew working on your car and phenomenal presentation to make it feel so satisfying to finally win a race.

The Playstation 2 era of NASCAR games was more or less perfect, but none was better than NASCAR Thunder 04.

NBA: NBA Live 05

NBA Live was all more or less the same, but 05 was the first to feature the entire All Star Weekend, meaning the three point contest and dunk contest along with it.

Game over.

NCAA Basketball: NCAA Basketball 2005

If you haven’t caught on, a lot of my favorites in this series involve something that no other version before it has.

NCAA Basketball always had the tournament. It had dynasty. It was always fun and I loved playing it.

But NCAA Basketball 2005 was the first to introduce the College Classics mode, a mode that put you into scenarios of the greatest college basketball games of all time with a chance to repeat history.

Pull off the upset with Texas Western over Kentucky in 1966. Beat Kentucky at the buzzer with Christian Laettner (or F #32 as he is in the game). Beat Kentucky with the 1983 Louisville Cardinals, or just beat Kentucky whenever you want to really.

A fun game that also got kids to appreciate the older era of players and games.

NCAA Football: NCAA Football 07

What does every middle schooler want in their college football game?

You’re right, classes and tests.

But seriously, even though that sounds like a joke, the 2007 version of NCAA Football’s superstar mode required you to keep up a quality GPA to continue playing and would also give you attribute boosts for your player.

If you ignored them, you’d become academically ineligible and be suspended.

The main thing I’m bringing up with this was suspensions.

NCAA 07, whether as the coach in dynasty mode or the player in superstar mode, had suspensions that needed to be dolled out at times and required hard decisions that added a personal storyline element to your career that the newer games just never had.

Never be upset at too much depth to your game. You never know when it may be gone forever.

Just look at Madden…

NHL: NHL 14

Right before EA Sports switched to the 4th generation of consoles, EA Sports hit the nail on the head with the last of 3rd gen.

NHL 14 had a great franchise mode as NHL games were prone to have, but it added to it with the implementation of “Live The Life.”

It took be a pro mode and gave your player personality to help them gain sponsorships, stay on managements good side and become a legendary figure in the sport.

The new NHL games have attempted to bring this back and have failed. Every time I try it, it reminds me of how good EA did it when it came to NHL 14.

PGA: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12

If PGA Tour 11 would let you qualify for and play in the Ryder Cup in career mode than this would be no contest.

Alas, it did not. And that leaves us with 12. The first Tiger Woods game to include Augusta National and The Masters.

Even if you consider The Masters to be overrated (looking at you Josh) you can’t ignore that it’s the most popular golf tournament on the PGA Tour calendar, so to have that available for the first time ever was huge for an already fantastic career mode.

So there you have it. The best of the best.

Maybe someday we can get back to games this good, but instead of waiting I would probably just go buy a refurbished PS2 at GameStop like I did during COVID and replay all of these iconic games instead.

Cause we’ll likely be waiting a while…