FIFA 98: Road to World Cup
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- This article is about the game in the FIFA series, and is not to be confused with World Cup 98 (video game), also by EA Sports, or with International Superstar Soccer '98 by Komani (released as Jikkyo World Soccer: World Cup France '98 in Japan).
| FIFA 98: Road to World Cup | |
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| Developer(s) | EA Canada |
| Publisher(s) | Electronic Arts |
| Platform(s) | Sega Saturn, PC, Game Boy, SNES, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Sega Mega Drive |
| Release date | June 17, 1997 |
| Genre(s) | Sports |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer, Multiplayer online |
| Media | Cartridge, CD-ROM |
FIFA 98: Road to World Cup (commonly abbreviated to FIFA 98) is a football video game developed by EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts. It was the fifth game in the FIFA series and the second to be in 3D on the 32-bit machines. A number of different players were featured on the cover, including David Beckham in the UK, Roy Lassiter in the USA and Mexico, David Ginola on the French cover, Raúl on the Spanish cover and Andreas Möller on the German cover. FIFA 98 was the last game released for the Sega Mega Drive in Europe.
[edit] Game features
The game marked the start of an upward trend in the series that marked it out as potentially the best gaming simulator for the sport in the world. The game was revolutionised, boasted an official soundtrack, 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. In addition 11 leagues were featured along with 189 clubs. It was also the first FIFA game to contain an ingame player/team editor.
For the first time in a FIFA game, the offside rule was properly implemented. In previous games when a player on the team was in an offside position doing anything except running saw the player of the game penalised for offside even when the ball was passed backwards. The 32-bit version of the game corrected this so only if the ball was passed roughly to where the player in the offside position was, the game would award a free-kick for offside.
The theme music for the game was included, with Blur's Song 2. The Crystal Method also did 4 songs for the game, More, Now Is The Time, Keep Hope Alive and Busy Child. Des Lynam was retained for the game introduction and John Motson and Andy Gray remained the games commentators.
With the new graphical improvements, players were able to have recognizable faces. The faces looked more like expressions, though, as the starting elevens of Bulgaria and Ukraine could consist of "sad"-looking players, while the starting eleven of Macedonia could have "tough"-looking players.
The game included most teams from the world confederations with the exception of the African confederation CAF, and is often thought of as being the most complete and well balanced game in the series when it comes to international play; in which neither the 2002 or 2006 series have matched.
[edit] Reviews
Play magazine in issue 29 awarded the PlayStation version of the game 88%.
[edit] External links
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