This year’s world championship in the USA, Canada and Mexico is an ideal opportunity for us to remember how the biggest soccer competition has been celebrated through video games.
How do you feel about the World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico so far? It could be said that the results of some matches were totally unpredictable.
We had similar unpredictability with the earliest World Cup video games. In the eighties and nineties, we never knew who would try to recycle an old game as the official game of the World Cup next. The situation was a bit wild, as we wrote about in the first part of our series of articles on video games of the world championships.
Now we continue the chronological review where we left off, but with an important change. For the first time since these games, the license for each subsequent edition of Mundial has remained with the same publisher.
World Cup 1998: France
Already in 1997, it was known that the sports branch of Electronic Arts had the rights to the official video game of the 1998 World Cup in France. EA Sports already boasted about it in the name of the regular FIFA game, which was then called FIFA: Road to World Cup 98. It was the only part of the FIFA series that had a subtitle.
FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 had all 172 national teams competing for the World Cup at the time, and we were able to play with them in the qualifying phase of the competition. For a long time, this was the record for the number of available national teams within a football game. However, FIFA 98 is often mistakenly listed as the official game of the World Cup in France.
The championship that brought Croatia the first of three medals so far was actually marked by a game called World Cup 98, which was released for PC, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Sega Mega Drive and Saturn, Super NES and Game Boy. . Basically it was almost the same game as FIFA 98, only focused on one tournament. But in the context of video games, this was finally what generations of gamers dreamed of: a game in which you have all the national teams divided by real groups, in the format of a real tournament, all the stadiums where they play, almost all the licensed jerseys (except the goalkeeper), the official ball, the official mascot, the official cup, etc.
Most importantly, World Cup 98 was the first World Cup game to be played in 3D, as well as the first to feature a commentator. This was also the first game where you could play matches from previous world championships through the World Cup Classics mode. 15 different matches were available, even those from the first World Cup in 1930. The developers made an effort and inserted specific hairstyles of football players of that time, visual filters that changed the appearance of the image, hired some old commentators and simulated the rules of former competitions (eg before there were no changes during the match).
All in all, World Cup 98 brought a huge evolution of virtual soccer for world cup video games. Electronic Arts achieved great commercial success with that game, and based on that, it kept the FIFA license for years to come.
However, it is worth mentioning that the championship in France in 1998 had two more games that carried the license of that competition. In Japan, the Konami company got the license and launched World Soccer Jikkyō Winning Eleven 3: World Cup France ’98. The game had all the nations competing in the tournament, but the names of the footballers were changed. Romario thus became Romedio, and Ravanelli became Rabanilli. If this reminds you of the practice of ISS later (and then PES), that’s because this game outside of Japan was essentially International Superstar Soccer Pro 98, the legendary ISS that many players first encountered on the PlayStation of the day.
The third game licensed for the championship in France was World Cup ’98 France: Road to Win. It too was intended for the Japanese market, but specifically for the Sega Saturn console. It had all 32 nations, official jerseys, a mascot and a trophy, but it was visually weaker than the other games on offer.
World Cup 2002: Japan and South Korea
The first World Cup of the 21st century had several firsts. For the first time, it took place on the territory of Asia and for the first time the host was shared by two countries. In the context of gaming FIFA World Cup 2002 also had several “debut” things.
It was the first world championship game made for PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. It was also the first world championship game for which original music was composed, performed by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The game brought the mechanic of determinable strength of the shot and pass, presented in FIFA 2002, and it was also possible to determine how strict the referee would be in punishing fouls. There was a widescreen display option, and you could also see the official ranking of the national team on the FIFA ranking list.
Although this was the most visually advanced game of the world championship until then, the fatigue of the material could already be felt at that time. Before the World Cup, EA Sports launched three games within a year. It was difficult to cram meaningful and specific things into an official World Cup game in such a short time, so these EA Sports products were often inferior to the FIFA games that preceded and followed them. Despite this, FIFA World Cup 2002 sold more than 3.5 million copies, which at the time was a record for a single World Cup game.
World Cup 2006: Germany
Four years apart is a long period in gaming. Therefore, the very next world championship knocked on the door of the next generation of consoles with the official game FIFA World Cup 2006 with a version for Xbox 360. This was one of the most represented games of the world championship because, in addition to the X360 console, it was also played on PC, PS2, PSP, Nintendo DS, GameBoy Advance, GameCube and Xbox platforms, and we also had a version for mobile phones.
In terms of content, this game was somewhat richer than its predecessor with 127 national teams. It also tried to be educational: the countries were represented by a view on the world map, and in the loading we also had “Did You Know?” messages with interesting facts from European history – and not necessarily football.
The addition of the Global Challenge mode was interesting, where players tried to “remake history” from real matches through various tasks (eg it was necessary to score a certain number of goals, etc.). The game had a virtual currency that unlocked classic national team jerseys and other accessories.
FIFA World Cup 2006 was also remembered as the first game of the world football championship that had online multiplayer on certain platforms. However, the support did not last long and the official servers for the online segments of the game were shut down in the fall of 2007.
Another specificity is related to the cover of the game itself. Namely, this was the first World Cup game that had 12 different covers for different markets, and for the first time in the history of World Cup video games, real football players were on the covers themselves. Steven Gerrard was on the cover for Great Britain, Lukas Podloski represented Germany, Xavi Spain, and Del Piero Italy.
As the third licensed EA Sports World Cup game, this one was already routine. Despite this, the practice continued until it finally changed, which we will write about in the next part of the text, which is also the concluding part.