FIFA: Road to World Cup 98

Not to be confused with World Cup 98 (video game).

FIFA: Road to World Cup 98
Developer	EA Canada Extended Play Productions Climax Studios (Saturn) XYZ Productions (Mega Drive, SNES) Tiertex Design Studios (Game Boy)
Publisher	EA Sports THQ (Game Boy)
Series	FIFA
Date released	17 June 1997
Genre	Sports
Modes	Single player Multiplayer Multiplayer online
Platforms	Microsoft Windows Game Boy Mega Drive/Sega Genesis SNES Sega Saturn PlayStation Nintendo 64

FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 (commonly abbreviated to FIFA 98) is an association 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, Mexico and Brazil, David Ginola on the French cover, Raúl on the Spanish cover, Paolo Maldini on the Italian and Andreas Möller on the German cover. FIFA 98 was the last FIFA game released for the Mega Drive in Europe.

Game features

The game includes an official soundtrack and had a refined graphics engine, team and player customisation options, 16 stadiums, improved artificial intelligence and the popular Road to World Cup mode, with all 172 FIFA-registered national teams. No subsequent edition of the FIFA series had attempted to replicate FIFA 98's inclusion of every FIFA national team, up until 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa which included all 199 FIFA nations that took part in qualifying. With the new graphical improvements, players were able to have individual faces.

FIFA 98 even features many accurate team rosters, including national reserves for national call-up when playing in the round-robin qualification modes. In addition, eleven leagues were featured, containing 189 clubs. The game also featured a popular five-a-side indoor mode and was the first FIFA game to contain an in-game player/team editor.

For the first time in a FIFA game, the offside rule is properly implemented. In previous games, when a player was in an offside position doing anything except running, that player was penalised for offside even when the ball was passed backwards. The 32-bit and 64-bit versions of FIFA 98 corrects this so that the game would only award a free kick for offside if the ball was passed roughly to where the player in the offside position was.

Soundtrack

The theme music for the game was Blur's "Song 2". Four songs from The Crystal Method were also included in the game – "More", "Now Is the Time", "Keep Hope Alive" and "Busy Child" – as well as a song by Electric Skychurch entitled Hugga Bear. Des Lynam was retained for the game introduction and John Motson and Andy Gray remained as match commentators.

Stadia

There were 16 stadiums in the game, representing 16 countries from all six FIFA confederations.

Reception

The game was a bestseller in the UK for 2 months. Play magazine in issue 29 awarded the PlayStation version of the game 88%.

External links

• Soccer Gaming FIFA 98 Site
• Moby Games
• Game Faqs

Football video games