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FIFA Series

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Wikipedia-Article "FIFA Series"

Mega Drive FIFA International Soccer cover
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Mega Drive FIFA International Soccer cover

The FIFA Series is a popular series of football (soccer) video games, released yearly by EA under the EA Sports label since late 1993, being one of the most profitable and well known video game franchises. While there was no major competition when EA released both the first titles in their Madden NFL and NHL series, football video games such as Sensible Soccer, Kick Off or Matchday Soccer were being developed since the late eighties and were already well-known names when EA announced a football game as their next addition to the EA Sports label.

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History

The key points of EA's massive advertisement were the isometric view of the ground (when all other games used either top down, side scrolling or birds' eye views), detailed graphics and animations and of course, the FIFA endorsement (although it did not feature real player names). It was shipped for Christmas 1993, named FIFA International Soccer, and was released for most active platforms of the time.

While FIFA 95 did not add much other than the ability to play with club teams, FIFA 96 pushed the boundaries. For the first time with real player names, the PC, 32X and Sega Saturn versions used EA's Virtual Stadium engine, with 2D sprite players moving on a 3D stadium. FIFA 97 had crude polygonal models for players and added indoor football, but the pinacle was reached with FIFA 98:Road to the World Cup. Improved graphics, a complete world cup with qualifying rounds (including all national teams registered in FIFA) and refined gameplay. Months later, World Cup 98, EAs first officially licensed tournament game, improved Direct3D support, gave each team a unique kit and broke the sequence of poor video games based on tournaments started by US Gold's World Cup Carnival in 1986 and continued until Gremlin's Euro 96.

The following years' releases were met with criticism: buyers complained about poor gameplay, bugs that were never fixed, bad support and little improvement over the previous title. That led to a decrease in the games' popularity, but fans were still willing to give EA a tabula rasa each year. As both emulation and the console market expanded, FIFA was being challenged directly from other titles such as Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer (known as Winning Eleven in Japan and the U.S.). By FIFA 2003 EA made a determined effort to improve the game, and a year later, included a new mode (Football Fusion) that allowed the ability to play games from TCM 2004 using FIFA's engine, and when Konami announced that PES3 would also have a Personal Computer release, EA doubled the efforts the revive the series.

As it is now, FIFA is less popular than Pro Evolution Soccer on the platforms both games are released to, but still retaining a lead on PC market due to very low hardware requirements (the FIFA 06 demo is reported to be playable even on a Pentium 3 processor running on 733 Mhz with a GeForce 2 graphics card), opposed to the poor porting efforts (which in turn leads to bloated requirements, as the game struggles to run smoothly even on some state of the art computers) on Konami's title and also the appeal of Football Fusion feature.

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Games in the series

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FIFA International Soccer (aka FIFA '94)

Released weeks before Christmas 1993, this greatly hyped football title broke with traditional 16-bit era games by presenting a isometric view rather than the usual top-down view (Kick Off), side view (European Club Soccer) or bird's-eye view (Sensible Soccer). It only included national teams. The Mega CD version included some features from the next title, and is a highly polished version of the original version.

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FIFA Soccer '95

Using the same engine only with minor retouches, the game featured more teams (now with 8 club leagues), faster gameplay and more animations.

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FIFA Soccer '96

1996 was the year that saw the dawn of the first 32-bit systems, giving developers the power required to work with more complex 3D designs. Although there were several 3D football games released before (mainly on the SNES), those were usually sluggish and confusing. FIFA '96 for the 32-bit systems still relied on 2D sprites for players in a 3D stadium (the engine was called Virtua Stadium), but was much more fluid than any other preceding game (except the Actua games by Gremlin Software). The 2D versions had improved player sprites, and for many the game reached its 2D peak with this game. The CD versions had commentary from John Motson for the first time.

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FIFA '97

The biggest change was the inclusion of 6-a-side indoor soccer mode and polygonal players, with motion capture assured by David Ginola. This game features a then unprecedented number of playable leagues from England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and even features the Malaysian league for the first time with complete team rosters. The gameplay in the PC and 32-bit consoles, however left a lot to be desired and was very sluggish for a soccer game.

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FIFA '98: Road To World Cup

Considered by many the best game of the series, it had a refined graphics engine, team and player customization options, 16 stadiums, better AI and the popular "Road To World Cup" mode, with all FIFA-registered national teams. The most ambitious of the entire series, it even features many accurate team rosters with even national reserves for national callup when playing in the round robin qualification modes. It was also the first FIFA game to contain an ingame player/team editor.

British band Blur composed the well known "Song 2" for the game. American band Crystal Method also did 4 songs for the game, More, Now Is The Time, Keep Hope Alive and Busy Child.

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FIFA '99

This title was probably the last good one in terms of quality in the series. The indoor mode was not revived, the gameplay, although with increased fluidity, was generally frustrating, but the increasing number of websites dedicated to the game and a larger number of leagues (which came to a problem when the Portuguese League rights' owners tried to pull the game out of the shelves locally) ensured good sale. Graphically, it was a major improvement over FIFA '98, with the inclusion of basic facial animations. Fatboy Slim's "The Rockafeller Skank" was the music used in the intro.

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FIFA 2000

Although graphically slightly superior than older versions, the gameplay was an unrealistic portrayal of the sport. The gameplay was fast, simple and had a clear arcade feeling which failed to keep hardcore fans happy, especially with rival games such as ISS: Pro Evolution gaining in reputation. The leagues also featured many unlicensed teams, which substituted their real names for that of their home cities. Not surprisingly, this title was one of the most poorly received of the entire series. For the first time, U.S. Major League Soccer clubs were included.

Robbie Williams provided the theme song with "It's Only Us", after doing the same for Actua Soccer 3 (released a year earlier) with "Let Me Entertain You."

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FIFA 2001

This title had a new graphics engine, which allowed each team to have its own kit, and for some players, their own face. Slighly tweakable physics made the game a modding favorite for its fan community, which grew immensely at the time of this game. Despite the improved engine and the inclusion of 17 leagues, it still did not please many fans. With the release of more powerful hardware and emulators capable of running PlayStation games, by 2001 FIFA started to lose market to Konami's ISS: Pro Evolution series, a series only native to the PlayStation format. Moby headlined the soundtrack, with his single "Bodyrock" serving as the title track.

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FIFA 2002

With Konami's franchise taking the lead, EA decided to introduce power bars for shots and passes, actually improving the game. However, it was noticed by many players how the game seemed to predetermine results on higher levels. Doing away with ordinary colour pennants as club emblems, the license included official club emblems for the first time. The power bar could also be customised to suit the gamer's preference. A card reward system licensed from Panini was also introduced whereby after winning a particular competition, a star player card would be unlocked. The question often arose as to what merits a gamer achieves from this system of awards as it would not improve the playability in any way. Also there was a bonus game with the already qualified teams (France, Japan and South Korea), in which the player would try to improve the FIFA ranking of their chosen team by participating in international friendlies.

Fans were anticipating another FIFA:RTWC, containing all international teams and the option of squad selection. However, many of the international teams in the game were not licensed, some confederations such as Africa were not even complete. This left a lot of fans outraged and again dented their confidence in EA Sports. Gorillaz headlined the soundtrack of this game with the song "19/2000 (Soulchild Remix)".

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FIFA 2003

With the series clearly trailing in both market and fan / critic appreciation, EA completely revamped the outdated DirectX 7 graphics used in FIFA 2001 and FIFA 2002 and introduced new T&L graphics, featuring more detailed stadia, players and kits. An Elite league composed of the best European teams was also included (this feature was first present in FIFA 99), but the gameplay was more rigid and frustrating than most other games on the market. Timo Maas was the main artist on the soundtrack, with his song "To Get Down (Fatboy Slim Remix)" used during the opener (and later that year by Sky Sports' coverage of the FA Cup.)

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FIFA Football 2004

While not adding much to the engine (except some fluidity), the biggest inclusion were secondary divisions, which allowed the player to take lower ranked teams into the top leagues and European matches. Gameplay had a new feature dubbed Off the ball, which required the player to control two players at the same time to execute some plays; although the feature looks good in theory (using the analogue pads to control the second player), the execution is too cumbersome to be used properly, and could not be used at all if no directional pads were available (which gives a slight indication on how console-oriented the gameplay was). The online mode was boosted as the main feature, and it alone helped the game climb to the top of the charts. Another key feature was the Football Fusion, which allowed owners of both FIFA 2004 and TCM 2004 to actually play games from the management sim'. The title sequence was filmed in St James' Park, the home of Newcastle United, with the opening song being Kings of Leon's European hit "Red Morning Light".

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FIFA Football 2005

Improving the career mode, the game was extensively advertised and released much sooner than the usual late October date to avoid proximity with the release of Pro Evolution Soccer 4 and the EA Big release, FIFA Street. While most critics still considered it to have inferior gameplay to Konami's series, it was acknowledged to have improved significantly since the 2003 edition and had a less steep learning curve (favouring the on-line mode and casual/novice gamers). The game featured a return of create-a-player mode, as well as an improved Career mode. It was also the first version to feature the full Mexican League, which boosted sales in the USA. The game had no opening video per se, but its soundtrack was headlined by British DJ Paul Oakenfold, who composed the FIFA Theme especially for the game, using some sound bits from the game (like crowd noises and comments like "oh, what a finish").

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FIFA 06

  • Tagline: "The total soccer experience"
FIFA '06 Xbox 360 screenshot
Enlarge
FIFA '06 Xbox 360 screenshot

Developers of the FIFA series made a complete overhaul of the game's engine for the 2006 installment of the game, asserting it has dramatically increased the control of play, having rewritten more than half the programming code for the game which was released in October 6, 2005. In addition to a renovation of the game play engine,. which discards the "Off the ball" system and the limited set piece system in dead balls, developers boast a significantly more involved career mode and the introduction of “team chemistry” which will determine how well teams play together. This installment will break with a long tradition of commentating from John Motson and (more recently) Ally McCoist, replaced by ITV's Clive Tyldesley (it is yet to be known if he references "that wonderful night in Barcelona" during Manchester United matches, or any other matches for that matter) and Sky pundit Andy Gray (who has already worked in the series as guest commentator in FIFA 98).

Like NHL 06, the game also has a classic 16-bit game in the PS2 version - FIFA International Soccer

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Other titles

Outside the yearly series, but also from EA Sports:

Management games

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External links

FIFA Football Fan Websites

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