Sega Genesis
Released in 1994 by EA Sports
Grade: C+
This is about as good as soccer can get with 16 bits and three buttons, so it’s, you know, decent.
Where it falls in the series
It’s the second of five FIFA games on Genesis, and it’s often regarded as the best. I was shocked to find YouTube videos of FIFA 99 and 2000 in 16 bits, but as far as I can tell, these are either for mobile phones or specific to Brazil. Whatever, my dork meter has to hit the limit at some point.
Praises and gripes
This games attempts to strike a balance between real soccer and something that would make for a fun video game. Like soccer, it requires some patience and lots of nifty passing. Unlike soccer, there’s no benefit to passing back and forth forever.
The diagonal viewpoint gives the action a sense of open space, but it’s also too zoomed-in. Like other early EA games, the graphics won’t blow you away, but the animations have an effective simplicity to them.
The controls are easy to manage while giving you a nice array of moves. EA got pretty resourceful at this point in the series, utilizing double-button presses, and the velocity on passes responds well to how long you hold the button. This is key for soccer, where the subtleties make all the difference. There are shots, ground passes, chest-high passes, lobs, volleys, headers, bicycle kicks, and you can sprint with the ball by tapping the pass button and “passing to yourself” to make a run down the field. One annoyance is your players often head the ball to a teammate automatically.
Defense is simpler; you can switch players, sprint, and slide tackle, and it’s honestly pretty repetitive and frustrating. Running into the guy with the ball has no effect.
There are two play styles, simulation and the sped-up “action,” and two difficulty settings. On simulation, the gameplay is methodical and goalies are tough to score on. The AI defenders aren’t as recklessly aggressive as they are in the original FIFA International Soccer, allowing for a more soccer-like flow to the game. You can actually pass around and navigate the field with some strategy.
This all sounds great, but in the end, I don’t feel like it’s all that fun. It might have been the best soccer option in the mid-90’s, but I’m not willing to spend much time with it today.
Oh, in case you care, you’ve got international teams and many pro teams with made-up player names.