Nintendo 64
Released in 1997 by EA Sports
Grade: F
Wow. Just … wow. I know that N64 games don’t all age well, but this is the ugliest video game I’ve ever seen. Throw in delayed controls and the same simplistic AI you get from the other early FIFA games, and this is a surefire loser.
Where it falls in the series
It’s the first of three FIFA games on N64, and it got much better after this. To read about a decent soccer game, skip ahead to my review of FIFA 99 on PS1, which is very similar to the N64 version.
Gripes
The graphics are so fuzzy it’s hard to tell what’s going on, and sometimes it’s even hard to tell which team is which. You need a distant camera view to see a decent portion of the field, but the 3D scaling is awful, making every player look like a nondescript blob.
Even worse is that the controls are all delayed. The game boasts five different styles of control to choose from, but they’re all bad when they’re this sluggish. The game is immediately frustrating and doesn’t get better as you play along.
Just skip it, folks. Let’s call it the developer’s first try at doing soccer in 64 bits that shouldn’t have been sold to the public.