European Football Championship video games

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Euro 2000 PC cover

Not unlike other sports events, the European Football Championship has its own video games licensed from European football's governing body, UEFA. Only three games were released so far, since the first game was only released in 1996. Originally held by Gremlin Interactive, like many other licenses it's now held by Electronic Arts in their EA Sports label.

1 Euro' 96
2 Euro 2000
3 UEFA Euro 2004 Portugal
4 See also

[edit] Euro' 96

Euro'96, by Gremlin Interactive was the first game to replicate the European Football Championship, and using all the hype behind the Football is coming home campaigns, the Sheffield company modified some parts in their Actua Soccer title, including the 16 teams present in the final stage with accurate rosters and stadiums. It was sold for both Personal computers and the Sega Saturn, which had a well-known bug where crowd blocks flickered or disappeared.

[edit] Euro 2000

After EA purchased the license, it was expected the game would be as good as World Cup 98, a major hit two years before. Euro 2000 uses a modified version of the FIFA 2000 engine,

One of the major flaws credited to the game was the lack of the official groups: while it had all teams and allowed to play in the qualifying stages, there wasn't a predefined setting to choose one of the teams present in the final competition, and skip the qualifying stage (except the organizing teams, Belgium and the Netherlands). The same flaw (plus uneditable players) was pointed in the classic mode, which provided the semi-finals but playing the actual final relied only on luck.

Paul Oakenfold provided the soundtrack.

[edit] UEFA Euro 2004 Portugal

Using a modified FIFA 2004 engine, Euro 2004 enhanced the gameplay of the last installement on the FIFA series, in order to include better crosses and both fake and acrobatic shots, plus morale indicators which affected how the players performed.

It included more game modes, such as a fantasy mode, where two teams composed by hand-picked players square-off with each other, leagues and a knock-out "home and away" friendly match.