Walk down the tunnel to memory lane
Written: Mar 13 '05 (Updated Mar 13 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: For it's time epic,today it's fun and nostalgic
Cons: not perfect
The Bottom Line: FIFA is a fun football game, and is recommended to all those into retro games and the sport, but especially to those who grew up with it.
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| flash-hammer's Full Review: FIFA International Soccer for Sega Genesis |
It may seem hard to believe for gamers a little younger than I, but once, a long time ago, in a console generation far,far behind, there was a time without FIFA games. This time was pre-1994, when EA Sports, a branch of Electronic Arts, renowned for their crap games leading them to bring out games without Sega's seal of approval(hence those horrible cartridges) released FIFA International Soccer. Despite the fact the name contradicted itself slightly, with one of the F's in FIFA standing for Football, yet it taking on the American name of 'soccer', FIFA was an absolute revelation for football gaming, providing the noble Sensible Soccer with it's first real competition in the genre and proving a huge success for EA, who would soon make it an annual staple along with it's Madden(American Football),NBA Live!(Basketball) and NHL(Ice Hockey) games for almost every major system since.
FIFA is basically a football/soccer game. You play a videogame recreation of the beautiful game. That's it basically. You have the bare bones amount of options on offer, Exhibition,Tournament,League,Playoff and Demo, and can only select an International team, although their is a good,solid amount of those to choose from. You can save your progress in any of the competitions via a password system, as well as editing things such as fouls being on or off,the weather,how long each half lasts and if Off-Sides are on. while this may be standard practice nowadays, in 94 this was almost unheard of for a football game, but all of it would be for nothing if it wasn't for the engine, so how did it play?
The pitch is viewed from what is a slanted angle, neither vertical ala Italia 90 or horizontal ala Ryan Giggs World Champions, almost from an over the shoulder view of someone in the top corner of the crowd. This initially caused me some control confusion, although there are two settings, one to allow you to press simply 'Up' to run Up-to-the-right, to accomodate the slanted pitch(and therefore 'Down' for D-t-t-Left) and one where you actually press the diagonal on the pad to run that direction, which I prefer. Once this issue was sorted out, I took on memory lane in an 11-a-side match, the winner being decided by extra time and penalties if necessary...
The gameplay for FIFA is actually good, very good for it's time. The computer AI is well suited for the team it controls, and changes difficulty for them to a satisfactory degree(ie you may beat Greece 5-0 with Italy, but Brazil are definitely going to be a more challenging prospect), and the game even features something rarely seen in the series - decent goalie AI. Or at least that's how it appears most of the time, you do get the odd goal from the halfway line, in fact it's easier to score outside of the box than in, but on the whole the keepers do actually pull off a lot of saves in situations that I definitely expected shots to go in from, and that's on the basis of playing every FIFA from this entry up to the most recent.
In general, the game is just pretty fun to play, and there aren't many sports games over a decade old that can claim that. I mean it certainly isn't perfect, it's not even the best example of the sport on the console, I personally prefer any Sensible Soccer game or US Gold's Fever Pitch to it, but there is no denying an enjoyable game of footy can be had on it, and as far as I know it was one of the pioneers of 4 player gaming on the console, if you have a multitap of course.
If there were faults in the gameplay, it was mainly due to the lack of buttons on the original Megadrive/Genesis controller, but for the 3 buttons, the gameplay did exceptionally well. You have diving headers,sliding tackles,overhead kicks, for 1994, there was no football game for realistic. People often chastise the FIFA series for not being a true simulation, and while this entry isn't exactly a true-to-life representation of the game, with the scores often being a little high, but for it's time it was unrivalled in terms of realism.
The only other faults I can name are aesthetic. The player names are fake,the strips occasionally wrong and the fact that there are no club teams didn't endear the game to me, but thankfully it's gameplay brought enough merits to more than make up for it.
The funny thing is, in my review of FIFA 97, I said I felt it was the best example of the series on the console, and to be honest, I've no idea what I was talking about, because I actually found playing this game to be more enjoyable, despite it being older and more primitive.
Speaking of the controls, they only apply to the 3-Button pad, and look like this:
On the ball
A:Lob/Chip
B:Pass
C:Shoot
Off the Ball
A:Slide
B:Steal/Change Player
C:sprint
When on the ball, sprinting is accomplished by holding down B or C, and this causes some problems as you would imagine. the same goes for having steal, the 'safe' way to win the ball, and change player assigned to the same button. Strangely though, I didn't find controlling my players to be very tough at all after a few matches, and I don't suppose it would be any more difficult for anyone else, providing they have some experience with the series in this format. The response isn't bad either.
Graphically, the game was a revelation. The players, while not as large as in Konami's International Superstar Soccer games, were larger than any other rival game's, and were beautifully animated, with this at the time being the best animated game on the console. The players move fluidly from move to move, and the pitch and stadium look awesome, all the colours are vibrant, and the crowd well detailed. Graphically, the game was simply a marvel, and it holds up pretty well, even today.
The sound isn't brilliant now, but for the time it's crowd chants and realistic roars when a goal was scored were something special. Now it sounds fairly generic, but it certainly cannot be criticised on this.
On the whole, I have to say that Im glad I picked up a copy of FIFA International Soccer for the Megadrive. I was buying it purely so that I would have an incarnation of every FIFA title, but I've ended up enjoying it quite a bit, and it has brought me relief that all that time spent playing it at my friend's house loving every minute wasn't wasted time. It may not be overly complex or fancy these days, and the controls may be pretty primitive, but there is no denying that at the core of this game is a really enjoyable engine that all football fans with a love for retro games will surely find some worth in. To be honest though, the game is mostly recommended to those who grew up playing it, because if you have no experience with it, or at least football games from it's time, then Im not sure if you will take the same amount of enjoyment out of it. But, given that the series, especially the early entries, are games that I have nothing but fond memories of, and that I got my £2's worth out of this, Im going to hand the first ever FIFA 4 out of 5.
Other Related reviews
FIFA 96 for Super Nintendo
FIFA 96 for Sega Saturn
FIFA 97 for Sega Genesis
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 for Sega Saturn
FIFA 2002 for PlayStation 2
FIFA 2003 for XBox
FIFA 2004 for Gameboy Advance
UEFA Euro 2004 for XBox
Recommended:
Yes
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flash-hammer
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