As an Australian, I should theoretically have no understanding of ice hockey. However, acquiring NHLPA Hockey ’93 as a kid changed that. It’s arguably the best version of video game hockey EA Sports produced in the 90s – a lot of people will tell you NHL ’94 is better because of the inclusion of official team logos and one timers, but the 1993 game has fights, proper injuries and plays just as well as NHL ’94 anyway.
EA’s PGA Tour series on the Mega Drive proved popular enough to encourage them to bring it to the PC to take on the Links juggernaut. PGA Tour Golf 486 is a rather odd name for the product, chosen because it was intended to run on processors of that level, which were still at the higher end of the CPU scale in 1994 when it was released.
Triple Play 96 is the first game in EA’s Triple Play Baseball series, which lasted until the release of Triple Play 2002, after which it was replaced by the MVP Baseball series. Prior to Triple Play, EA had flopped around on baseball, first licensing the Tony La Russa Baseball game from Stormfront Studios, trying to develop their own game with MLBPA Baseball, before going back to Stormfront for La Russa 95. Triple Play 96 boasted all kinds of things that hadn’t been done well in baseball games before – most notably huge sprites in the batting screen and competent fielding controls.
In 1993, all of EA Sports’ games introduced four player support. Of course the Mega Drive only offered two controller ports, so players had to pony up for the EA Sports 4 Way Play, which added two more ports to the system. The annoying thing is that it was separate from Sega’s own four player adaptor – EA games didn’t support Sega’s adaptor, and just about every non-EA game didn’t support the EA Sports 4 Way Play adaptor. Way to fragment the base, guys!
FIFA Soccer 97 is the first game in the series to use full polygonal models for its players. FIFA Soccer 97 also introduced the awesome indoor soccer mode, which sadly was cut by the time FIFA 99 came along. It’s not quite as polished as 96 or 98 – EA Canada seemed to have a few issues with collision detection and animation quality in this release, which lead to FIFA Soccer 97 getting some pretty average reviews from critics at the time.
Bulls vs. Lakers and the NBA Playoffs is the second game in EA’s pre-NBA Live basketball series. It’s a massive improvement over Lakers vs. Celtics, adding in features such as signature dunks, instant replay mode, improved shooting and passing control, a free throw meter and a much cleaner interface.
FIFA Soccer 96 was the first annual instalment of the series to feature a 3D camera, then dubbed by EA Sports as “Virtual Stadium” technology. This ad is for the 16-bit Mega Drive version, which lacked that feature, but was still a decent upgrade over FIFA Soccer 95.
Bulls vs. Blazers and the NBA Playoffs is the third game in EA’s NBA Playoffs series, which preceded the better known NBA Live series. The pace of the gameplay is much slower than the Live series, but it does have Michael Jordan in it.
In the modern era, sports game updates are relatively incremental affairs – the sheer time it takes to develop a game from the ground up doesn’t gel with the annual release schedule. In the 16-bit era, it was a different story – one year’s sports update could be substantially different from the previous. FIFA ’95 was EA’s second crack at a soccer game, and it offered numerous improvements over the first game, including domestic club teams, vastly improved graphics, control and animation.
Madden NFL ’95 is the first game in the Madden franchise to feature the licenses of both the NFL and NFL Players Association – real teams, real players.
