FIFA '98: Road To World Cup

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FIFA 98: Road to World Cup
Developer(s)	EA Canada
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Release date(s)	June 17, 1997
Genre(s)	Sports
Mode(s)	Single player, Multiplayer, Multiplayer online
Platform(s)	Sega Saturn, PC, Game Boy, SNES, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Sega Mega Drive
Media	Cartridge, CD-ROM

FIFA 98: Road to World Cup (commonly abbreviated to FIFA 98) is a video game developed by EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts based around the game of football (soccer). It was released for the PC on 17 June 1997 and versions for PlayStation, SNES, Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn Game Boy and Sega Mega Drive followed.

FIFA 98 was the fifth game in the FIFA Series and the second to be in 3D. A number of different players were used on the cover, including David Beckham on the UK cover, Roy Lassiter in the USA and Mexico, David Ginola on the French cover, Raul on the Spanish cover and Andreas Moller on the German cover.

[edit] Game features

Considered by many the best game of the series^{[citation needed]}, this was the installment that began the official seamless balance for many fans from consoles to PC gaming. 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 indoor arena was kept for this game and for the first time, 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.